Starving Artists Unite!
by JAMIE NOGUCHI Published: October 12, 2004 |
Deciding to become a professional artist is one of the most difficult choices you can ever make. Certainly, starting artists are more akin to starving artists. You are never going to make Forbes top 100 richest people. But that's not why you've decided to become an artist. The thought of sitting behind a desk in a stuffy cubicle while some pencil-neck named Bob asks you to come in on the weekend frightens you more than any of Dante's nine levels of Hell. Neck ties cut off circulation to the creative centers in your noggin and power skirts just are not as comfortable as your flannel pajamas. Face it, you are an artist. Art is what you were born to do.
If you are fortunate enough to find professional work through an agency or land a paying job at some company, most of what you will find in this article will not be of much benefit. For those of you who have decided to rough it and fly solo, this article presents some ideas for you to consider.
Keep in mind a few things as you read along. Advice is worth as much as you pay for it. I know a little about living off of my artwork, but that does not make me an expert. I know what works for me and I have learned a few things that I think can be useful to other artists, but in the end you must figure out what works for you. The one rule in the art world is that there are no rules.
Still, it's fun to hear what other artists have been through so let's get down to the brass tacks. You can click on ahead if you want to skip to certain sections or just read through top to bottom.
- Money - Money issues.
- Deadlines - Best practices to meet and exceed expectations.
- Building Your Business - Advertising, websites, promotion.
MONEY
"Money don't get everything, it's true." - John Lennon
As I am what you would call mathematically challenged, money talk is always fairly difficult for me. Unfortunately, that happens to be just about the most important thing for any young artist who wants to live off their craft.
Putting a price tag on your work may seem a bit daunting so it's a good idea to break things down piece by piece. Let's start with some basic figures.
In a given year, there are 365 days, approximately 250 of which are work days if you're working a typical American five day a week work schedule:
A typical American work day is about eight hours (hopefully you crazy cats take at least an hour for lunch. Gotta let that food digest). This gives you approximately 2000 work hours in any given year:365 days/7 weeks = 52 weeks (rounding down) 52 weekdays x 5 work days = 260 days 260 work days - 10 vacation days (at least) = 250 actual work days
You're not really going to be working 2000 hours a year. Even if you have a regular job, your actual work hours for a year will vary from year to year because that's how life goes. And these calculations are based on a typical American work schedule. It's probably different depending on where you're reading this from. But 2000 is a decent estimate for us to base some more calculations upon.250 actual work days x 8 work hours = 2000 actual work hours
Okay, so if you're working for the man, you're working about 2000 hours. Now it's time to figure out what your yearly expenses are. This part is so depressing, but you have to have an idea of the minimum you need to make it through month to month. Calculate what you need per year and then divide that by twelve to get a monthly estimate. It helps to keep these numbers small so you're not depressed when you're not landing monster gigs with equally monstrous paychecks.
Say you've figured out that you only need to make $24,000 a year to meet all your expenses. Wow, you really are a starving artist! This means you need to make at least $2000 a month to meet your year end goal. $2000 seems like a much more manageable number that $24,000:
Now is a good idea to decide how you want to charge clients. Do you want to charge per hour or per project?$24,000/12 = $2000
If you charge per hour, your rate is $12/hour:
Doesn't sound like that much and potential clients may be attracted to such a manageable sounding number. But this rates assumes that you will be working full time, eight hours a day, five days a week, 250 days a year. That's a pretty big assumption. You're probably not going to find enough work to keep you that busy year round. You may find that you need to bump up your hourly rate to something like $20 to make you monthly goal. Or, you can go with option two.$24,000/2000 = $12
If hourly rates aren't working out for you, you may want to try charging per project. I personally prefer to charge per project. It may seem a bit daunting at first. You're not likely to get a $2000 gig right when you start looking for work. But you may find that $300 - $500 dollar jobs are well within your reach. You will have to work four to six gigs at that rate to make ends meet and you'll most likely have to work on them at the same time in order to hit your monthly goal. But you're an artist. Working on multiple projects at the same time keeps your creativity flowing! And as you build up your reputation and clientele, you'll be able to charge those monster rates.
Remember to keep your eyes on the prize. Keep your monthly and yearly goals in mind as you work out pricing with your clients. You will be able to measure your success or failure and thus be able to adjust your pricing scheme accordingly. We'll talk about SMART goals sometime later.
Once you have a fairly decent idea of how much you need to make to survive and have decided to charge either per hour, per project, or a combination there of, it's time to set some policies.
If you plan to art for a living, never work for free. Sure, it's called freelancing, but if you emphasize free too often, you're going to starve. Like really starve. Food good! Starve bad!
Before you start any work demand half of the agreed upon payment up front. Demand is a fairly strong word that possibly shouldn't be used with the client at the onset of your dealings. You can use demand's nicer cousins, request or prefer. But really, you must insist on a portion of your contract up front. Paying rent is a good thing. If you're domicile-challenged, your art career won't go much farther than a cardboard box. Money first. Art second. Money in hand gives you a measure of security that you'll desperately want as a freelancer.
The "Half-Up-Front" philosophy is a great CYA (Cover Your Ass) strategy. If for some reason your client pulls out of the deal in the middle of the production schedule, you at least have some money to tide you over. Had you wimped out and let the client dictate payment on completion terms, you would be SOL (no, not the Sun God. Shit Outa Luck). Money don't get everything, it's true. But it will feed you.
I can't stress enough that you need money in order to art. Especially when you're starting out, every little bit counts. Until you're able to build a steady business and steady clientele you're going to need to be adamant in your contract negotiations. No money, no art. If your potential client won't play ball, move on to the next one (well, unless of course it's some ginormous monster corp contract that will set you for five lifetimes. But if you're dealing with said monster corp, if they're serious, they'll give you a little something something up front).
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DEADLINES
"All I have in this world is my balls, and my word, and I don't break 'em for no one, you understand?" - Tony Montana
Never miss a deadline. Period.
Ha! Yeah right! True, you should never miss a deadline. Clients hate to get late artwork. But life happens and there will be deadlines that you can't meet. However, you can hedge your bets and give yourself some breathing room when it comes to deadlines.
Chances are that your client will have an unreasonable expectation for how long it actually takes to produce a piece. They're not stupid. Obviously, they have enough money to hire a freelancer, they must be doing something right. But they're not artists. It is your job to educate your client as to your capabilities. Educate them on your process, how you research, what you actually do. Spend some time to bring them up to speed on what exactly it is they're hiring you to do. You don't have to take them on a guided tour of your studio (holy crap, you can afford a studio?), but an educated client is a better client. If they know where you're coming from, they can adjust their expectations.
Here's the sneaky part. When it comes time to actually set a concrete date for a deliverable, take a tip from Chief of Engineering Montgomery Scott (yes, I'm a Trek dork. I'm not a hardcore Trekker, but I'm pretty far along). If it typically takes you a week to complete a finished piece (is anything really finished?) bill for two. It's sounds shady, but keep in mind that when you're doing a piece for yourself, you typically don't have to deal with outside corrections. Clients rarely like the first thing you produce. They usually have little things that they want changed. Or they might want you to redo the entire piece. Giving yourself double the time to complete the work gives you breathing room to deal with those corrections. And hey, if they do indeed like the first thing that you hand in, more money for you!
On the subject of corrections or changes, be sure that you get paid. When you're working your contract ninjitsu, make sure that you have a section on corrections and changes. You should set a policy for yourself and keep it consistent in all your contracts. Resist being the nice artist by allowing one round of changes for free. If they ask you to redo the entire piece in their first round of changes, you're screwed. Every time you put color to paper or pixel to screen you must get paid.
In order to set appropriate deadlines, you must know your own capabilities. Whether you're a digital artist or a traditional medium artist you must develop a workflow. Put simply, a workflow is a set of steps used to reach an end goal. For example:
It's a good idea to map out your workflow on paper. Writing your process down will help you analyze its steps and determine where you can save time by streamlining or combining steps. Though the above example is fairly basic, you should be as detailed as possible when you're mapping out your workflow. The faster you are, the more money you can make.STEP 1. Collect reference material. STEP 2. Sketch on paper. STEP 3. Scan sketch into Photoshop. STEP 4. Clean up sketch in Photoshop. STEP 5. Digitally paint sketch.
As a digital artist, learning the keyboard shortcuts in your software will increase your productivity. The menus are nice and helpful and the software developers are paid handsomely for developing GUI (Graphical User Interfaces) that are functional, easy to navigate, and pretty to look at. But clicking through them to get the tool or action you need will slow you down. Learn those shortcuts. Hell, many advanced 3D and music recording programs allow you to map your own shortcuts. Shortcuts = sooooo gooood!
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BUILDING YOUR BUSINESS
"You're going to be bad for business. I can tell." - Satine
The nice thing about being an artist is that folks who aren't artists look at those of us who are as some sort of mystic alchemists with ninja powers that are arcane and almost impossible to divine. How many times have you heard, "Oh wow! I could never do that!" or "Man, that must have taken years to finish! How did you do that?" These people are rarely willing to put the time and effort it takes to turn out a decent piece of art work. As you and I well know, it's more hard work than anyone usually realizes. But hey, if it was easy, everyone would be arting.
For the starving artist, this means that there are always people looking for good art work and willing to pay. You just have to find them. This means advertising, possibly the lowest form of artistic expression ever created by human hands. If you want to make money with the artness, people need to know who you are and what you can do. Fortunately, there are many low cost opportunities for you to get your stuff out there. This section could be an article in itself so I'll just provide some quick sketches.
Word of mouth is the cheapest way to get gigs. You have friends. Hell, even I have friends. Chances are they know someone who is willing to pay for some artwork. It may not be much, but you need to start off somewhere. Yeah, that means you have to actually interact with people which is always a scary and frightening prospect, but you gotta eat. You may find that most of your early business is generated through word of mouth. Brush up on those interpersonal skills!
The second cheapest advertising source available to you is the internet. With all the web authoring programs out there, you don't even have to know how to code HTML (HyperText Markup Language) to set up a decent web portfolio. You should also put up the money and register yourself a nice, easy to remember domain. It can even be your name if it's available, but even if you're using a cheap hosting company, a good URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that you can recite easily and stick on post cards and business cards will help generate business.
You do have a business card, right? Make sure all your relevant contact information is easy to read. We'll go into some design schemes for cards some other time, but you've gotta have one. Actually, you'll need a significant larger number than one. Cary about ten with you at all times. You never know who you're going to run into.
Post cards totally rock! They may be slightly more expensive than business cards, but they're a great way to advertise your services on the cheap. Send them to absolutely everyone! Okay, that may be a little reckless. Best target art directors or directors of advertising if you're sending cards to businesses.
If you have a larger advertising budget than a typical starving artist, you may flirt with idea of some high end advertising. Since I'm still pretty much a starving artist, I don't have much advice on the cost benefits of taking out a full page ad in an illustrator's catalog or hiring an agent (holy crap! You can afford an agent?) so you're pretty much on your own there. I'm guess you'll be able to reach a higher profile client base if you spend a lot more on your advertising. Many of those illustration and stock catalogs find their way into the hands of magazine copy editors and big advertising firms. And agents will have more contacts than you will at least when you're starting out. If I ever get the scratch to pay for such things, I'll let you know how it turns out.
Art contests can generate business. There are a number of fairly high profile art communities online and elsewhere which guarantees your entry will be seen by a large number of people. One of them might offer you some work.
When you start out looking for business, most likely you'll need to take whatever you can get. But eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, you'll want to sit down and develop a business plan for yourself. How can you tell if you're successful if you have no way to measure it? You're going to have to set some policies for yourself, what types of work you'll take on, work schedule, payment schedule, milestones, contracts. The more detailed your plan, the better. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer or someone who has lawyer tendencies to help you draw up your contracts and your business plan. Often times they can present you with scenarios that you will not think of. Since you're just worried about yourself, your plan might be as simple as:
* I don't do windows.
* I will only work with money in hand.
That means half the negotiated contract amount up front.
* Deadlines fear me! If I miss a deadline,
I'll give you a bowl of ramen.
* I get paid for every round of corrections.
The price will be determined on a per case basis.
* If I miss a deadline due to corrections, no ramen for you.
* Profanity is free but smiles will cost you a bowl of udon.Your business plan may also include milestones that you set for yourself. These could be anything from how much money you'd like to be making a year from now, moving your business into a studio, hiring additional artists, setting up a small art and design business, whatever you want out of your art career. Keep in mind that as your business grows, your business plan should grow along to reflect that.
That's pretty much all I've got for this first article. I hope you found at least some of it useful. Feel free to email me with comments or questions. Thanks for reading!
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