Sup. Ide love to get work in illustration or comic, or even an in-between animator, but I don't have a degree in art, or prior experience, and live in Oregon where there aren't really any of these kinds of jobs. I also don't have much experience with adobe programs, as I can't afford them working in a kitchen right now. Is there any way to get in the industry from here?
The great thing about art is it’s one of the few careers that you can break into that don’t require a degree or schooling of any kind. You can be entirely self-taught, but if your portfolio is rocking, then you’ll get hired.
If you’re starting at ground zero, I’d say start with the cheapest — but still the most impressive — art technology. A pencil. If you hone your skills and your craft so well even just with a pencil & paper, You can build a following, get noticed, and start earning money to save up for adobe programs and online classes in digital art.
A few ideas:
—Make great drawings and take pics of them and start an instagram or tumblr and start gaining followers and offer online commissions.
—The best way to get into comics is to MAKE YOUR OWN COMIC. Scan it and put it on the web. So many comics artists launch their careers with their personal work as webcomics and cheap xerox printed comics. (Nimona being a great example. Noelle Stevenson launched her entire career by just posting a comic page once a week.)
—Go to the park on your off days, start sketching people for $20 and sell it to them.
—Put some work up in the restaurant for sale. Maybe they’d even let you sit in the corner and sketch customers, then sell them to the diners.
—If you get really good and really fast, you can get jobs doing storyboards for advertising agencies, or even concept art jobs freelance.
There are art jobs in every city in the world. There are plenty of startups and creative agencies and small game companies in Portland for sure. If you’re nowhere near a medium-to-big-size city then get creative. Look around your town. People need art for all kinds of things. Start drawing out in public. Start putting your work around bulletin boards in town. You’ll start getting hired for all kinds of little jobs that you can save up to get started digitally. Remember, you don’t HAVE TO start with Adobe programs. There are free clones of photoshop and illustrator online, just google them. Lynda.com is a great cheap resource to learn any computer program, and it’s only $25/month. There’s also a ton of free videos there. And literally anything you want to learn has a video on youtube.
Get creative. Use what you have, then upgrade as you go. If you really want this to work, then put the time in and people will notice.
—Agent KillFee
