Make Money With Your Art

As an emerging illustrator you may often find it hard to start convincing the usual agencies to utilize your skills. You may instead think to set up some sort of manufacturing profile by setting up an online store with a service that can provide you with the manufacture of an object while you provide the creative.

Although some of the terms and conditions of some of these sites can seem a little outrageous. I do suggest if you are an eager designer/illustrator. You have a good look at these as they may just help bring in a little income while helping raise your profile. 

Here are a few links .

http://www.shapeways.com/

http://www.ponoko.com/

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

http://www.blurb.com/

http://www.spoonflower.com

Ian Balls Work

All created using Blender and his technique bellow. Ian is a fine example of an open source software user making money from his craft using software he paid nothing for.

Blender As Anime Studio

Yay, I found this wonderful set of tutorials by Ian Ball where he explains how to use Blender 3d ( Open Source ) to build animatable 2d characters similar to Anime Studio Pro. I for one am very keen to get this happening for some of my Oscar McCoska character designs. Have loads of animating fun once you master this simple technique. Very cool!!

Although the technique is a little bit more of an effort to Anime Studio Pro. It certainly is better 'cause its free.



Here is the link..LINK TO PART ONE 
Here is the link..LINK TO PART TWO

Sometimes Cheap is OK

I know I am trying hard to push the open source community alternatives for software. But sometimes you have to fork out a little cash to get the thing you need for a job or two. I was in a situation just recently where I knew the tool I wanted was in a big dollar option called After Effects. Although I am an After Effects user, I just didn't want to fire up the box I have it running on to do the job. So I decided to search around to find the not so industry standard program to do the work. I couldn't really find a freebee, but I did come across a couple of cheapies that combined could really give a big end of town product a run for your money.  They are around $50.00 US and are good additions. If anyone does know of a freebee ( open source ) alternative, please let me know I'll post it here.

So first off is PhotoAnim;

I was looking for a tool that could repose some photos I had for a job. I know about Anime Pro but it’s just a little pricey and somewhat complicated. I just needed a quick fix but nothing to break the budget. So a search on forums turned up this little beauty. It’s really intuitive and a breeze to get results. 

The other is Timeline FX;

 I knew I could do some of this in Blender but time was an issue. I had only a couple of hours to do the work and It needed to be very tweakable in front of clients. As far as quick particle effects you can't go wrong at $45.00 US.

 

Online Pose Bank

I am often needing to find poses for characters running, shooting or jumping. Its often a task to get the one I want. I recently stumbled across Posemaniacs. A veritable goldmine of male and female poses. Its a tool I will add to my arsenol.

Others Share My View

If you have read my blogs to date you should know I am an advocate for opensource and free computers ( from the dumpster etc ). The co modification of design to enforce industry standards has in my view flattened out the look of design. Virtually nothing "authentic" is being created by design students and the way students sell themselves out creating volume instead of content is meaning the industry is being eroded away by cheap work. The cost of programs, updates and training being a part of the equation. Its so refreshing to see others trying to spread the word about open source tools. Recently at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Vienna, Ramon Miranda gave a speech about the liberating results of using open source as a designer  in a world monopolized by software that claims industry standard. Ramon as a successful illustrator has eked out a good living from tools like Krita, My Paint and Gimp. He is saying here in this slide from his presentation That the fashion is to buy what is the most used software and by doing that designers become dependent on the next software version. This sets the standards for what is avant-garde. So the design world flattens over time to have the same look and feel both technically and stylistically. We become slaves to the speed at which the software evolves. Design becomes gimmicky and predictable as a result.

Gemini Rising Concept Designs

I have also been working on an up and coming Sci Fi adventure for the Sci Fi Channel. The project is being developed partly by the Blender Open Source community. I have designed several military and alien space craft for the show. Keep a look out for the space shuttle design. Although it was modeled by another contributer. I created the initial concept design.

Dragon Defense

Well time for another blog entry. I am sick at home today so I can afford the luxury. Recently I have been working on a book cover design using Krita, Inkscape and Gimp. All standard freeware/open source tools for designers.

Diane Rapp of Quicksilver novels and I agreed on a cover design for her next book "Dragon Defense" The story describes a scene where some people mainly children, are locked away In a prison hidden high in the cliffs of one of the planets deserts. A plan is hatched to get them all out by flying in one of the planets dragons to a balcony high up on the cliff face. A boat that has seen better days is used as a basket to ferry the escapees away from the desert strong hold.
So the cover had to portray, desert cliffs, dragons with special colored wings and the rickety boat with kids all strapped in and excited.

 

Diane sells her kindle books on Amazon,if your keen for a colorful read choose the link Quicksilver Novels

You can now purchase a poster image of this book cover from the following places.

Animation On A Budget

Well Well Well, look what the guys who created Toonboom have done for us all. Its called Vectorian Giotto and you can get it here

I have been using a version of Flash I bought some years ago for a while now, Flash 5 to be precise. I never shifted to another version because of how painfully "PhotoShopy" complicated the software had become. Initially Flash was an animators tool. Its user design was based on the traditional way of animating and it was quick and easy to design both graphics and animation in, that is if you understood held cell animation. That’s not to say the latest version of Flash is lousy. But it is messy and over complicated for those of us who just want to draw and animate stuff. So now along comes VG and all I can say is, thank you great gods of vector illustration. I am hoping that some plugins get developed for exporting as swf is not always in demand.