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Grandma Kernik: Davey, honey? Are you up? School will be starting soon.

Grandma Dolores: Well, David. Would you like some cold cereal?

Grandma Kernik: I don’t understand. How is that a school on your computer? You kids.

Me: It’s an online school, Grandma. You don’t even have to leave the house.

Grandma Kernik: Well, I wouldn’t go out in this old thing anyway.

School’s in for Summer

If you can’t tell from my typing, I’m waiting for video to compress and upload. Even as I enter the home stretch on the Sparky Firepants Digital Illustration School launch and still intensely fascinated by how awesome it’s turning out to be, I’ve got more fantastic ideas ready to hit the page. As soon as I wrap up the launch, I’ll be moving right into more very exciting and cool things.

Before I go into that, I need to let you know about a special offer on Digital Illustration School. It would be very wrong of me to not let you in on this, since you were nice enough to hang out here today.

The first course in the school will be ready for download on Tuesday, June 2. For the first week that it’s online, I’m having a Grand Opening Special. The rate for the Vector Course Value Pack will be reduced (ok, slashed) for a whole week.

Two things you need to know to take advantage of this:

1. I’m going to send out a discount code via e-mail. If you want to get the code, you need to sign up on the site before June 2nd.
2. The sale ends at midnight on June 9th. After that, the price almost doubles.
3. This is just for the Vector Course Value Pack. The other stuff is priced so cheap I’m almost giving it away as it is.

To recap, that means that for the first week, the price on the Vector Course Value Pack is $175. After June 9th, it goes up to $295 and stays there. Forever.

I don’t know about you, but even as a “creative type” with my limited math skills, that sounds like quite a deal.

If the course isn’t your thing, it’s cool. Maybe you know someone it would be perfect for, in which case you would be an amazing friend if you told that someone about this killer deal. Also in which case you could potentially earn some cash, since I’ll pay a whopping 25% commission if your someone purchases anything on the site. I’m going to set up an affiliate program soon but for now I feel really happy about offering you $43.75 just for helping an artist learn some mad new digital skills.

So before you forget, go sign up now.

How to Get and Keep Illustration and Design Jobs

The next exciting thing being hatched by my madly manic brain is a series of blog posts that will tell you how to get work as an artist.

I was thinking about how I’ve been getting art-type gigs for a really long time now. I was also thinking about how I used to hire people for art gigs. So with all this golden knowledge collecting dust in my noggin, it’s borderline criminal to not share all the inside information.

So I’m kicking off a series of blog posts that tell you how to get work as an artist. I’ll tell you everything. What to say (and not to say) in an art job interview, how to deal with the monotony of production work, and even deep, dark secrets about portfolio reviews that will probably make you angry… but at least you’ll know how it all works.

What about working at a design McJob while you pine away for that glorious freelance illustration career? Yep, I’ll clue you in on that stuff, too. I’ve done it. You can do it. There are just a few things you need to know that your boss isn’t going to tell you.

What about freelance gigs? How to get them, where to get… and where NOT to get them.

Right here, on the blog, read it when you need it.

So my presentation yesterday at the SCBWI Oregon Spring conference went over nicely. The grandmas went missing just before I was supposed to go up and talk. I think they got lured into the tea room.

I was in extremely good company. Mark Fearing spoke just before me on Graphic Novels. He’s an amazing illustrator and also an animator (animators RULE). He’s got a graphic novel coming out in 2011, which sounds really promising - so look for it!

At the end of his talk, Mark said something really awesome. It was about rules and how he doesn’t like them when it comes to talking about getting your work sold.

You know how I am about rules. There are so many ways to approach any endeavor. People can have success with completely opposite approaches.

My talk was about not creating art in the computer, based on this blog post. The title sounds very rules-ish, right?

In fact, before,during, and after my talk I learned that at least three artists in the room (including Mark Fearing) create their art directly in the computer.

It’s a perfect example of not applying stuff people tell you (me included) about how to create your art. The rules are, there ain’t no rules.

I can talk on the blog and in my digital illustration course about my approach to creating digital art. It works for me. It’s a proven method and lots of people buy my stuff.

Regardless, if it goes against what works for you, then please do one of two things:

1. Ignore me. Move along, nothing to see here. Do your thing.
2. Tell me about it so I can share it with my people.

One of my grander plans for the digital illustration school is to bring in guest illustrators to demo their methods. There are as many methods as there are people and I think this would be a huge help to students - knowing that there isn’t just one way.

So my talk went well. People seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say and I think they were entertained. Here’s a sampling of some of the images I brought up to demonstrate my points…

My head floating out of a robot. At least they knew I would be weird right up front.

I used Jenni's bread to talk about illustration. Yep. Officially wacko.

I also used coffee to talk about illustration. Where was I going with this?

Believe me, I knew they were wondering.

It's a NASA flight control panel. If you weren't there, you wouldn't understand.

My first attempt at creating art in the computer. Hideous, scary, and really, really bad.

A recent illustration for Highlights Magazine. I eventually figured out a method.

The final pencil sketch for the Highlights High Five illo. It was "done" before I even went to the computer.

There was more to it than these slides show. I wish you had been there.

It was fun. People laughed at me (thank god).

I think the reason I felt good about it was that aside from the little slide show, I pretty much “winged” my talk. Sure, I knew where I was going, I rehearsed a few things. Mostly it was conversational and that made it much more relaxed for me and (I think) the audience.

I think I helped some people, which was the whole point of me standing in front of them and waving my arms around while talking about weird stuff like bread. 

If I gave even one person in the audience a seed of an idea about how to use their computer to create illustration, then I succeeded.

If I made them hungry, then my plan for total world domination kicked off nicely.