Pay me!

(Season of the Witch pinup by JH for creator Jai Nitz)

I've talked to you guys some about doing work on the cheap for the experience or the exposure. There are reasons for and against. Number one for probably is that printed work is more impressive than sample pages, and so helps the hunt for paying work. And number two might be that you learn more by doing real work than by doing samples. The linked text piece, forwarded us by Illustration Department instructor Cameron Wasson, makes very strongly the case against.
http://positionrelative.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/craigs-pissed/
The unhappy fact is that almost everybody gets screwed over at least once. I think the trick is to try to manage it so your eyes are open, you're doing it for a reason and it only happens once. A whole lot of artists, myself included, are poor self-promoters and poor businessmen. If you recognize and believe in the value and rarity of what you do, as this piece counsels, you might be on your way to being that rare artist who knows his or her own worth.

JH

Arty Imitates Art

As we comic book artists struggle earnestly to bring observations about real life into our art, those smarty-pants fine artistes are stealing ideas and devices from comics!
Art Review | 'Comic Abstraction': Visions That Flaunt Cartoon Pedigrees

Thanks to Chuck for the link.
JH

Project Pickup

You who gave me pages to print can pick up your pages and printouts at the ILL dept office. They are kept in my mailbox, and grouped under your name. Just go the window and ask one of the work study students to grab it. I scanned all the pages you gave me but, for time's sake, only printed the first two or three this week. All your origs are waiting for you in the mailbox.

Warm up and have fun! Keep the original page close at hand so you refer to it for fine details. Think about inking a page then scanning and flatting it for the lab day (see preceding entry, below)! Then you can see if you have time left to ink a second page.

JH

Photoshop Phun

Hey, Ya'll,
Here's whatcha do to get the most out of next week's lab, which will be held in our usual building.
Save this:
http://www.Heebink.com/ILL193/Photoshop-Primer.wps
OR, if your computer doesn't have the Windows word processor or something more versatile, open this
http://www.Heebink.com/ILL193/Photoshop-Primer.txt
and copy it into the word program of your choice so the lines wrap. Read it, at least through Part 2, if you can possibly find the time.
Then download these two files
http://www.Heebink.com/ILL193/channels-CMYK.sit
http://www.Heebink.com/ILL193/layers-RGB.sit
OR, if you don't have the Stuffit expander, download the slightly larger unStuffed .psd's
http://www.Heebink.com/ILL193/channels-CMYK.psd
http://www.Heebink.com/ILL193/layers-RGB.psd

These files represent the two main ways you can set up a coloring file. Take a look and compare them. If you're scanning in your own art, you should follow the example of one or the other, based on what you decide after reading the Primer. You shouldn't change the mode (RGB, e.g.) or the size of a file after you've flatted it, so it pays to pick a plan and stick with it. The Layers method is easier, and slightly more intuitive. Makes a bigger file though, and can give you a shock when you--well, read the Primer. It defines flatting too, which is not to confused with the merging of all layers near the end of a job. That's called flattening.

Note that in the Channels file, you'll need to go to the Channels palette and click open the eyeball of the Alpha 1 channel, where the line art lives, in order to see it. Don't highlight that channel, you won't be able to work on the color. The CMYK channel must be hi-lit.

These are the files you'll be working on in the lab, unless you provide your own, and I will be grading you on what you produce, so that the whole day doesn't turn into a pointless jagfest. Trust me, it's happened.

I very strongly recommend you get your file flatted (with at least the randomly assigned colors--see Primer), so that what you do in lab will be productive and fun. We'll be critiquing but not grading the inking next week, so it'd be wise to trade away a chunk of inking time to get your coloring file squared away. (BTW, the files above are flatted already.)

We'll meet in our usual room. See you there.

JH