Plum Pudding

plum pudding talk 

Applying for work experience at agencies etc

Working on the other side, working with illustrators 

Kept asking for more work until got a per men’s title job

People send in work

Find artists through Instagram 

Find illustrators work through Instagram 

Attend book fairs 

Work closely with illustrators 

Look for animal characters 

Full colour spreads and spot illustrations 

Don’t want illustrators style to crossover within agency 

Maintain own online presence even if you have agent 

The do weekly mail out of illustrators work 

Send art to specific clients that work would suit 

About a third of their illustrators also write

Work with them to develop ideas 

Publisher usually act as middleman between author and illustrator 

If they see potential for animation they will include a clause in the contract saying the artist maintains animation rights 

They help with contracts 

Publishers often want to keep the rights 

Digital is not a huge market with children’s books 

Usually put illustrators work straight in front of publishers

If they feel development is needed, or portfolio needs certain things they will help

If the need to fill out certain aspects, character, covers, full spreads 

Would be beneficial to do an internship at an agency or publisher 

Animals 

Children characters 

Vignettes 

Full spreads 

Development sketches 

Character studies happy,sad, running, eating 

Show variety sketches and finished pieces 

Portfolio

This is the first draft of my portfolio, I have not decided on the order of the illustrations yet and there are a couple of extra pages that may be removed. After this mornings talk I would also like to create more character sheets exploring a range of emotions and actions as that is something potential agents and publishers will want to see. I also want to produce some more work with text, up until this point I have worked using black fonts of a white background to make the text easily readable but I think my work would benefit from text that suites the aesthetic of the illustrations. I have a print slot booked for tomorrow to print off 20 A3 sheets fro my portfolio so that I can put them together and start to test out different orders and see which works best. I want to wherever possible put landscape sheets together and the same for portraits but would also like to keep individual projects together. I am going to try out a range of orders to see what the best balance of the two is.

Michael Driver Talk Notes

Michael Driver Talk

Submit to zine fairs 

Help out at art events 

Get involved 

Engaging with real work issues 

Pop culture 

Relevant topics 

Instagram is useful 

Look who other illustrators work with, follow them 

Up to date topics help illustrations spreading 

Gaining exposure

Not really a good idea to message directly

Just a good way to get work seen by them 

A5 mail outs saves money 

A3 becomes very expensive 

See what works for own practice

Could send zines or small prints 

Important not to break the bank 

Could offset print runs by selling some of them 

Do mailouts when your busy instead of waiting to be quiet 

Mail outs 3 times a year 

When quiet

Check in with old clients 

Ask friends for contacts, more mailouts 

Website callec Ello

Make the most of the internet 

Make interesting things  

Email saying I like the work you commission, my work is similar 

This is they way I work and why it could be good for you 

Have to grab attention quickly 

Posting work out is better 

Keep a broad scope 

Creative industry is much more than just illustration

Don’t have to rush into jobs 

The graduates list 

Creative review 

Don’t work for free 

Keep links with other disciplines, animators etc

Can be very useful if you are asked if you can complete a project 

More attractive to employers if you can arrange it all yourself 

Make sure you look after everybody you know in the creative industry 

Pictolene-news outlet

Often gain jobs on the back of personal work

Rather than rubbish jobs making flyers etc

Can be very cliquey 

Leeds is a good way to avoid all that 

Can work from anywhere 

Just need to be good with communication and timekeeping 

Keep pushing 

Just do it 

Have confidence 

You’ll get used to what works and doesn’t emailing people 

Need to be own hype man 

Professional 

1/2 day to 1 day a week on admin

Reply quickly to job emails 

Can cost you jobs if you don’t 

Advertising is where the money is 

Bright colourful images 

Agents want illustrators who work on advertising

Advice

Human characters need some work

A bit static

More colourful 

More full scenes 

Make dummy books 

Work on character design 

PP tutorial

I had a one to one tutorial today that helped me to get a clearer idea of the direction my practice is going in and what I need to do. We discussed:

- changing the ‘about me’ page on my website to better appeal to my target audience. The text should be less formal, treat it as if the character next to it is saying it. In the text I say I’m a story teller so I should demonstrate that.
- add some simple animations to the site, even something as simple as some of the characters blinking would be good. Makes the page more interesting. Will stand out in a page full of still images. Feels interactive.
- broaden my scope of people to get in touch with. Look beyond publishing to animation, television, advertising etc. possible collaborators.
- I should look at the presentation as an advert for my work. Sell my practice. Think about the tone and language. Does it suit my practice and the image I’m trying to put forward.
- can show development work in portfolio, would be nice to see various stages not just polished finished products. Think about page layouts, full page images or a number of them on each A3 sheet.
- don’t treat deadlines as a end point, continue to develop work and experiment.
- speak to more agents. Send out portfolios and links to site.
- keep working on character designs demonstrating narrative, humour, character, emotion etc
- keep sending work to publishers at regular intervals as your work progresses, keep looking at the website, evaluate if you need to remove older images. As practice changes older work may no longer be relevant.
- make presentation boards/issuu documents for each completed project evaluating its success.

Portrait development

Contacting Publishers

Yesterday I updated my website with recent work, I have found two publishers that accept portfolios and want to make sure my site is showcasing my work as well as possible. My website now contains a range of work from character designs, development work and finished spreads from picture books. I have contacted two publishers, the first was Barrington Stoke that just ask for a link to an online portfolio or website and the second is The Bright Agency that that ask for a PDF of at least 10 illustrations. I put together a PDF including some recent character designs as well as pages from the books I've been working on recently. The publishers say that it can take them 2 months to look at portfolios and that they don't reply with feedback unless they are interested in your work. The odds of hearing back I would think are slim but this is an opportunity to get my work seen by publishers an I shouldn't let a lack of response put me off trying again. In my one to one tutorial yesterday it was suggested to me to send portfolios at regular intervals, maybe every 6 moths to demonstrate the progression of my work, work rate and enthusiasm. I found a number of publishers that accept unsolicited manuscripts but the books I have made at the moment are entered into competition briefs. once the competitions are over I can send the manuscripts to a range of publishers so I need to keep a list of publisher that I think my work would appeal to. So far the list is

- Anderson Press
- Templar Publishing
- Mogzilla
- Flying Eye
- Imagine That

Walker books don't accept submission but they do advertise jobs on their website. They are currently looking for a design assistant. It would be worth keeping an eye on their site to see if any positions come up that i would be interested in.

Contacting illustrators

Over that last few weeks a have been trying to contact children’s book illustrators, mostly illustrators that are also authors as that has been the focus of my practice this year. I have mainly been sending emails so have made an illustration saying hello to try and make them a bit more personal and to stand out and hopefully encourage them to respond. I have also included a link to my website. So far I have only had one response but it contains some useful information and advice. A lot of the advice is the same as we cover on the course but it is nice to have it reinforced by other practitioners. This does highlight why I should be aiming more at publishers and agents to try and promote my work at this stage rather than just asking for advice from fellow illustrators. This is the advice I got back from
Emma Levey:

"Hi Joe,

Thanks for getting in touch with me and good luck with your final year this term.

I am pretty busy at the mo so can't take too long on this but hope the little I can offer is worthwhile.

1. Be prepared for a long old slog! It's a hard industry to get in to and not the best pay. Don't work for free and only do spec work if you get paid for it.

2. Get an agent but do your homework. My advice is to look for agents that look like they would represent your 'style' and see if there's room for you (and that you'd stand out) on their books.Know that it's easy to get a rubbish agent and difficult to get a good one. Do not go with my old agent. They were TERRIBLE. But they did help get me my first book deal.

If you're specifically going down the picture book route then try looking for a literary agent.

3. Make sure you have a strong portfolio of about x20 images showing range. Character development, b/w illustrations, observational drawings and final pieces based on narrative projects.

4. Buy this book, it will pretty much tell you everything you need to know
https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/store

5. Attend book fairs. They're great for networking and for seeing what's going on in the market. 

You don't have to go to all of these but Bologna is the best one

Bologna Book Fair

London Book Fair

Frankfurt Book Fair

6. Draw, draw and draw!

Enjoy your last couple of months at Uni and make sure to try and stay in touch with other students on your course. The freelance life can be a little isolating at times.

I work in a shared studio space which definitely staves off the lonely vibes and is a very supportive environment. “

It was really nice to get this reply and it covers some very important and useful information. I had been thinking about attending the Bologna book fair, ideally getting a table at it to display my work. Every illustrator I have talked to mentions the importance of building and then maintaining a network that helps to provide job opportunities and also acts as a support network. Networking isn't something that necessarily comes naturally to me so I need to make sure I attend these events to get used to it.
The advice about what a portfolio should contain follows on from our portfolio workshops and tutorials and highlights the importance of demonstrating a range of work/skills. Including work that demonstrates your abilities in a range or formats and stages of development.
The advice about agents is really good, it is difficult starting out to know what a good agent is and also easy to feel like they are doing you a favour by giving you your first break. I need to start researching literary agents, looking at who they have on their books and thinking about how my work would fit.

Presentation Task- Planning

Presentation plan

Start with brief description of what I’m going to talk about
Give a background to myself, what I did before college
What it was like coming back to education
Breaking my practice in the first year
Feeling lost and not knowing what my practice was
Getting into a cycle of experimenting
Enjoying communicating through my work
Moving towards children’s books
Completely changed how I see my work
Lack of confidence
Building slowly

Questions
1 - I see my self as a children’s book illustrator who works primarily digitally. I write and illustrate children’s books and enjoy using humour and emotion in my work. I think I am at a stage where I need to step more into the professional world.

2- not really

4- online social media, through my website, entering competitions

5- I have been using social media to direct people toward my website, Instagram has been most effective so far bit I think other platforms will overtake it once I have more substantial completed projects.

6- I have had some but need to be more proactive in getting in touch with industry professionals, hopefully get some from the competitions I have entered as well

7- when I started my work did not have any meaning behind it, I wanted to make images that looked ‘good’ or impressive, this may be because I came from a background of graffiti art. I feel that the way I think about my work has changed massively over the three years as well as the aesthetic of it. I have learned how to apply my work within the industry.

8- useful, I value getting the degree but it isn’t the reason I came here, I wanted to learn new skills. I feel that the thought process that guides my practice is the most useful change and has had the most impact on my practice. On top of that gaining confidence in my work, understanding the industry and learning new processes have been the biggest changes through the course

9- where I was before coming here.


How I have changed over the 3 years. (Talk about struggles)
Where I see my practice now.
What I plan to do next.
Where I aim to be in the future.


10- to showcase my practice and be able to articulate what I do and who I am.
As part of the jobs I want to work on I will need to be able to explain my actions and choices, describe how and why I work as I do and promote myself .

11- yes, sections of it could be used on my website, could be taken forward into meetings with publishers etc. Build confidence is articulating my work. It will be useful to look back at in the future and measure if I have achieved what I wanted, have my goals changed and what progress I have made.

Drinks water side
Gif
Stop motion
Jump off point, the future
Pause early on to slow pace
Humour to break tension

Contrasting - why it’s better
Branding, clothes

Presentation Seminar

Pp presentation seminar

What is the purpose of the presentation?

Sections could be used as a pitch
Could use a video, maybe around 3 minutes
Where do you fit in the professional world
Why do you do what you do
How do you present yourself, can transfer to website and beyond


Dress appropriately- who is your audience- what is the tone of your presentation
Say hello, smile
Look at the forehead, or just over their head if your nervous, helps avoid eye contact
Speak clearly, confident
Use silence, slow the pace, adds emphasis, helps manage time
Start with description of what your going to say
Summary to start
Preamble

Preparation builds confidence
Cuts out waffle
Plan it, structure the presentation
Don’t try and cram too much in
Use arm and hand gestures
Good posture
Move around
Gives confidence
Be human
Not robotic
Use slides to prompt rather than notes

Breathing to calm nerves
Take drink, can use it to regroup
Slows the pace
Looks confident

Break up into sections
Referring back to summary
Appropriate language, what’s appropriate?
Try not too be too rigid
Avoid playing it safe
If you’re selling yourself it should be interesting and appealing

Starting off too fast
Could use props to slow down the pace
Usually levels out as time goes on
Pause, take a breath
PLAN THESE BREAKS IN BEFORE HAND!

Keeps slides simple
We are illustrators, slides should reflect that
Don’t avoid vulnerability
Everyone in the room can empathise

Tailor presentation to personality
What suits you
What suits your practice
Don’t take yourself too seriously

Use 3’s when listing things
Look more at use of language
Structuring sentences
Imagery, alliteration

Could have quote on a slide then talk around it
What have you chosen it
What does it mean to you
Make it personal to you
Why do you do what you do!


Give a black ground to what makes you want to do this

College Network

We were talking in the seminar before Easter about the importance of maintaining the network of illustrators from the course. The network could act as a support network to offer advice and feedback. Keeping contact with everyone would be mutually beneficial helping to inform each other of possible jobs, recommend each other to potential employers and clients help each other with larger collaborative projects. We have had three years of offering feedback through crits and my work has definitely benefited from them, it would be very helpful to continue some form of platform to extend this process beyond the end of the course. With some members of the course most likely moving away from Leeds this could take the form of an online discussion page. As well as supportbwith work  the network could help support and advise each other through what is a fairly daunting transition into the professional world.
In a more positive way we could all work together to promote our individual practices to as a group to reach a wider audience. This could be through exhibitions or publications both online and printed. Doing this would help to combine the reach of all members of the network and produce an appealing publication without one person having to put in a huge amount of work. Publications could even become a regular practice showcasing everyone’s latest work.
We have talked before about being proactive and creating projects for ourselves instead of waiting around doing nothing. This would be good practice at working collaboratively on self promotion and would be less daunting than trying to do it alone.

Promotional Material

My website has been live for a while now and I have been trying to expand my social media presence on Instagram and linked In. I have gradually been populating these sites with my work but still struggle as most of my up to date work has been completed for competition briefs and I don't want to put them online until the competitions have finished. Instagram has been working well, making gradual progress expand my connections. I think I could make more use of Instagram by messaging Illustrators who have been published and asking them for advice about how they got started.

I also would like to start making some promotional material to hand out at events and sent to publishers. Something to make me and my work stand out when sending manuscripts. I was thinking of making post card sized prints, possibly personalised fro each individual scenario if possible or if not something nice and simple but that has a simple narrative to it. I want the illustrations for these to catch both the eye and the imagination of the person receiving it, whether its a simple joke or something more emotional stimulating I would like them to have an impact and be memorable.
I could also make other products but need to make sure they are tailored for the purpose. primarily they are something to advertise me and my work so need to be able to showcase my work as well as possible. The items need to be something fairly small so that they are not an inconvenience for the person receiving them. Business cards are the easiest and simplest option but I would like to find something that is more interesting/unique to stand out and something that is more likely to be kept/used to remind the person receiving it of my work.

Ideas
- Pin badges
- Personalised note pad with my work as the cover
- Signed a5 print (single image or comic layout)
- Small story book
- A set of character stickers (maybe components to make your own character/scene)

Time to get to work on the illustrations!!!

Extended briefs

I have now finished all the competition briefs for my extended module. I chose briefs that would help me develop my practice and possibly help me gain some exposure and contact publishers as well. The main focus of my extended module has been illustrating children’s books, I have completed:

- the Carmelite prize- illustrating a children’s book based on a story that they supplied
- the Templar prize- to illustrate an original children’s book that I wrote myself, I only found out about this competition with 10 days left until the deadline. This provided a good exercise in working towards a strict deadline. I enjoyed the process but found I wasn’t able to test out idea as well as I would have liked.
- the Penguin book cover brief- I entered this competition this last year and didn’t really enjoy it but decided to try again this year. Although book cover design is not the focus of my practice it was a good excercise in combining image and text effectively and working to a strict layout. There is less freedom that designing book pages and a large amount of text that needs to be included, the cover also has a very specific purpose that needs to be considered throughout the design process. I think it is beneficial for my practice going forward to be familiar with book cover design and also the be able to apply my practice a range of formats.
- I have completed two submissions for the Macmillan prize, one of the books was taken from my COP module earlier in the year and the other is an updated version of a book idea I had last year. I have submitted both to the competition and ideally I’d hope they do well and I receive some feedback about my work but I also plan to keep working on one of them so that I can have a finished book ready to showcase at the Hanbury exhibition. The polar bear book I have entered for this competition is a project I have really enjoyed and something I would like to continue with and send to publishers that accept manuscripts. It would be helpful for me to get as much feedback about both my illustrations and writing as possible at this stage.

Tintin annual launch night

I made a Tintin cover annual for a brief set by North Bar, the aim is to raise money for St Gemma’s hospice by selling books of the cover as other merchandise. The cover I made and covers by 23 other artists will be displayed in North Bars venues in and around Leeds starting with their first venue In Leeds city centre. The is a launch night this Friday and all the artists involved have been invited to attend. This could act as a networking event, I don’t know who the other artists are but presume most are Leeds based. North Bar also works with a number of independent breweries that could be possible clients for my illustrations. This is another avenue I would like to explore and meeting the management of North Bar while showcasing my work could act as a good introduction. I need to make sure to make the most of the experience!

Publishers etc

I have been looking at more publishers to contact and possibly invite to Hanbury, I am still finding that a large number, especially the larger publishers do no accept unsolicited manuscripts but I have found some that I am able to contact and try to ask for advice or a chance to show my portfolio.
I found a publisher called Halliday books that seems quite interesting, the company is a design agency as well as a publisher, they design corporate identity, branding, character development and animation as well as publishing children’s books. The site is not the same format as other publishers and they don’t have many books showcased on it but the ones they do have received critical acclaim.
The site doesn’t say if they accept manuscripts but does have a contact form. It would be worth getting in touch to ask them for advice and inquire about pitching a book or showing my portfolio to them.

The next publisher I looked at is Lonely Planet Kids which is a large company with bases all over the world including the UK. I wasn’t sure about looking into contacting them as they are such a large company but I did notice on the site they have a list of their illustrators and authors, it could be useful to contact them to ask advice, especially ones based in the UK. Could possibly lead to inviting them or a representative of the publisher to Hanbury.

Graffeg

Graffeg is a publisher based in male that accepts ideas for children’s picture books, the format for submitting seems a lot more open that the other publishers I have looked at and suggests more of a collaborative effort between the author, illustrator and publisher. This could be useful for first time authors/illustrators to work alongside someone with industry experience. The specification is to submit a document that includes:

- a brief description of the idea for the book
- an outline of the story
- the target audience incliding age range
- the purpose of the book
- what will the reader learn/gain from reading it
- illustrations outlining the story
- a word/page count
- a preferred format, small, medium or large, softback it hardback

They also accept submissions for gift and stationary ideas such as calendars and cards related to their core subjects

Looking through the range of children’s books published by Graffeg the core themes appear to be nature/animals, the only have a fairly small selection of children’s books. Looking at the books they publish many of them deal with quite serious or dark subject matter, the loss of a loved one, mans relationship with nature and cautionary tales of love. This could be a good publishervto approach about my books that deal with more than just simple fun narratives.

Barrington Stoke

http://www.barringtonstoke.co.uk/blog/2014/04/02/dont-slush-pile/

I was just about to give up on my research into Barrington Stoke as they do not accept manuscripts but their contact us page pointed me to an article on their blog explains why they have always taken a proactive approach to publishing. The article was very honest and made some good points about why their business model was not suited to accepting unsolicited manuscripts as well as the problems it presents for the industry as a whole. Just as I was about to start looking at other publishers I noticed a comment at the bottom of the article asking about how they find illustrators. It turns out that they do accept emails linked to portfolios or websites from illustrators. I plan to send links to my website and try to see if I can arrange an opportunity do take my portfolio to show them in person. That’s definitely the first time reading the comments section of anything turned out to be a good idea!

Anderson Press

https://www.andersenpress.co.uk/about-us/submitting-a-manuscript/

Anderson press is based in London and publishes children’s book for a variety of age groups. Their website states that for picture books the required amount of text is approximately 500 words. It is worth bearing in mind these kind of specifications when working, I would also like to compare this with other publishers to see if there is a fairly standard word ,count throughout. It would be a good idea to create books that could be submitted to the largest number of publishers possible. It would also be interesting to see if the books by my favourite authors and illustrators fit the criteria.
Anderson press only accept manuscripts posted to them. I would think this is a good way to cut down the number of submissions and filter out the people who are not willing to spend the time and money to print and post their manuscript. Personally I feel that sending a high quality print of my work to a publisher is much better for me than sending a low res pdf. I work mostly digitally and use a lot of textures in my work that can become lost in a low res image, I also think that digital looks much more appealing once printed out, especially on nice textured paper.
I would like to find out who works at the picture submissions department at Anderson press and invite them to our Hanbury exhibition in July.
I had a look through the recent releases in the 0-5 age range and there is a broad mix of books. There are remakes of well known classics, bold fun and colourful books for very small children, books to appeal to both parent and child, books based around humour, books that deal with difficult emotions, and debut books from new authors/illustrators. I read an article that gave advice about submitting to publishers and it mentioned the importance of researching the publisher to make sure your work fits with their current releases, I definitely feel that I could  approach Anderson press with my books.

Characters for portfolio

In my one to one tutorial for the extended practice module we talked about the trend of character based children’s books and it was suggested to me to create some character sheets to add to my portfolio. Publishers at the moment are looking through portfolios and picking out characters to use as the basis of books so it seems that in some cases it is better to have a range of characters than developed books, I have mentioned before that publishers want to be involved in the development of books from the early stages and by working this way they can be involved from the very start. I have been working on one off characters, mostly animal characters as that’s is something I feel suits my work. I have been creating a range of characters some by themselves and some as part of more detailed compositions. At this stage I feel it would be a good idea to look at the current trends in children’s publishing, specifically based around anthropomorphised characters, human characters and subject matter. Through these character sheets I want to be able to demonstrate my ability to communicate through my illustrations, especially simple narratives, actions and movement and emotion. I think creating a portfolio in this way will allow me to showcase a broad range of work demonstrating my skills, rather than just showing a finished book that is all completed in the same format, media and aesthetic. The characters need to have exactly that, CHARACTER! I don’t want to create generic animal characters, I want to develop them further putting them into appealing and interesting scenarios to inspire ideas and possibilities in anyone viewing them. The character sheets are effectively a menu for publishers and the illustrations should stimulate the imagination but not be so specific that they limit their possible uses. I want to play with interesting situations, humour and emotions through these characters.

Can you do everything

I have been concentrating on children’s books this year, the ones I have enjoyed most are the ones I have written myself but I think as much as this could be a strength of my practice I should also be looking for opportunities to work with authors. I found an article by an author and illustrator talking about the pro’s and cons of writing as well as illustrating. By doing both you can be more appealing to a publisher as you are effectively fulfilling two roles, the problem is if you are significantly better at one of those roles than the other. Your illustrations could be let down by you writing or vice versa. As a writer and illustrator you are hoping agents and publishers will want to take on your artwork and writing. I think I should be working on preexisting texts and trying to find authors to work with as well as writing my own stories. When illustrating your own story you can alter elements of either the story or the illustrations to make a more cohesive and immersive book but it is likely that professionally I will not have that luxury. It is important to be able to work to someone else’s story as a collaborative effort responding to feedback. This is another avenue of children’s book illustration I need to look into, it would be good to talk to authors about their experiences of collaborating with illustrators. I could ask;

- how they are usually introduced?
- what appeals to them about an illustrators work?
- what are the common problems encountered in collaboration?
- what makes collaborations run smoothly?

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

- hardworking 

- meeting deadlines 

- teamwork 

- happy to take on feedback 

- passionate about my work

Weaknesses

- struggle to evaluate own work 

- organisation

- taking time on each stage of development (tend to get carried away)

- lack of confidence

I tend to get carried away with projects, I get an idea a start working. Could benefit from setting and sticking to a more organised plan to fully explore all avenues before committing to an idea. I need to come up with a more structured way of working that forces me to take more time for the research and development stages of a brief. I have struggled with this over all three years of the course and feel I have improved however I think my work would benefit from more organisation. This links to my organisational kills, again I think this has improved throughout course but could be helped by applying more organisational tools. I have a small work space at home that tends to get cluttered and keeping it organised with work laid out and a more a detailed calendar/plan of action would benefit my work. Having a board or wall dedicated to my current projects to attach images and research to would help me to keep an overview of the project and the direction it is moving in instead of becoming distracted and losing sight of the end goal. 

I struggle to evaluate my own work, especially when I have been working on the same problem for a long time. I lose perspective and start to dislike illustrations that I was originally happy with. I try to get feedback from peers and tutors as often as possible that helps me to reset back to what the aim of the project is and where it could be improved. I tend to get too focussed on individual illustrations and lose sight of crucial details that once pointed out to me seem blatantly obvious. I work everyday, not always all day but I never have a day off. I think this could be part of the problem and comes down to organising my time better. I think it is important to have days to step away from work and clear your mind. When I look back at previous projects I notice things that could easily be improved but also strengths in the work that I hadn’t noticed before. This comes back to time management and organisation, I need to allow space in my schedule for these breaks that still allow me to meet deadlines. Having these breaks doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing or having the day off, the time could be used to work on social media/online presence updates and networking. 

Penguin and Literary Agents

I have been looking at the information on the Puffin and Ladybird books pages. I started by looking at how they accept submissions and that led me to interviews talking about the roles that editors and literary agents play in the process of getting a book published. penguin do not accept blind submissions from illustrators only from agents but I want to learn more about the company, the agents and the process.
I realised that most of the big publishers would only accept books from agents so I decided to use that as my starting point. On the penguin website they have links to list of agents in the UK and point out that you can go to the library to borrow The Writers and Artists year Book that contains a complete list of UK agents.
http://www.agentsassoc.co.uk/members-directory/

I found an interview with an agent stating that the most off putting thing for them with an author/illustrator is them not being open to collaboration. Collaboration is extremely important and makes up some part of every stage of publishing whether its working with the agent, a publisher or other illustrators and writers. Agents like to work on the book with the author/illustrator before showing it to a publisher to make sure its in the "best shape" possible to make a good impression. The agent also talks about a lot of people being nervous about presenting their work to publishers which she says is entirely understandable but encourages them to be brave and bold when writing covering letters to accompany your work. Your lack of confidence will be passed on to how the publisher feels about your work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPTGZYLHOyg

- practice articulating your work and communicating it to publishers. written and spoken
- be open and enthusiastic when collaborating
- be aware that your work is likely to change several times
- don't take things personally, your work will be criticised

What am I trying to say?

I want my online presence to showcase my work to as many people as possible, but as well as being accessible to a wide audience my work has to reach the 'right' people, as my presence needs to put me in a position to be seen by possible clients and by publishers. A lot of that process will be actions taken by me to be proactive and create a network myself, but an online presence can act as a foundation, an ever-present and readily available display of my work.

Using a variety of social media enables me to cover the most ground and tailor the presence to each audience:

·        Instagram allows me to develop a network of other artists, to gain exposure and to keep followers up to date with current projects;

·        The Dots and Linkedin provide less personal, more professional opportunities for collaborative projects, for networking with professionals and companies, and for keeping up to date with available job vacancies; 

·        Twitter, if used correctly, gives access to a huge audience as well as facilitating interactions with clients, companies and followers; Twitter is not primarily image based, and seems more useful once you have a certain level of exposure rather than to gain exposure in the first place.

By comparison with these media platforms, my own website gives me more control over appearance and content so that I can adjust the balance of professionalism and individual personality as well as making links to other web pages, blogs, etc.

In order to gain greater exposure I need now to think about how I present myself online. I primarily work on children’s illustrations and my illustrations are based around storytelling, emotions and humour, so these should be showcased throughout. This is something I have not done well up to this point. I have been posting single images that show my skills as an illustrator but not necessarily as a communicator/storyteller. I should start to put up sequential images that tell stories, or one-off illustrations that communicate an idea, emotion or situation. We had a talk at Hanbury Hall about using current events to create exposure. Although as a children’s book illustrator I should stay away from very serious, contentious or gritty subject matter, I could still create images that tackle the more light-hearted stories of the time or just current trends in culture.

The majority of children's book illustrators I have looked at have a fairly standard online presence, typically consisting of a website which is easy to navigate with a gallery, a concise ‘about me’ page and clear contact details. Some also have a shop if they sell products themselves. From talking to other illustrators it seems that in children's book publishing it is still common practice to take hard copies of illustrations to publishers to show your work, so it could be that a proactive approach will be more important for me than an online presence. The priorities are to get in touch with publishers and make them aware of my work, to try and form collaborative projects with other illustrators to build a network, and to maintain connections once they are made.

At this moment in time I am not very comfortable with contacting publishers. That needs to change. My next step is to start sending out emails, prints and letters to publishers as well as mock ups of my books to those publishers that accept them. I don't necessarily need to contact them asking to be published but just to ask for advice which would be beneficial to me (which could lead to an opportunity to show my work).

The first step is to research the publishers and find out which my work would suit so that I don't waste their time and mine, and also so that I can show my knowledge of their work when contacting them. As well as explaining my work to them, I can explain why I think it fits in with their current catalogue. Research will also help me to discover the best way to contact them and what I should send. I would like to create some prints to send out: not a full portfolio, just a single image that would showcase my work and make someone smile or laugh. These images could be sent in emails or printed and posted out to publishers.

Childrens book illustrators online presence- Jon Klassen

I have been looking at the online presence of successful childrens book illustrators to see how they market themselves, what platforms they use and how the make their presence appropriate and appealing to their audience.

Jon Klassen's main platforms appear to be Tumblr and twitter. His tumblr is populated with a variety of images from works in progress, finished products, personal photographs and promo material (event poster etc). The layout and content seem fairly straight forward, the blog offers viewers a chance to see how the illustrator works, contains information about upcoming events and displays finished products that are already available to buy as well as future releases. The photographs add a personal touch, giving an insight into the illustrators life. This definitely makes the blog feel more relaxed and appealing, creating a connection between the artist and the viewer.
His twitter feed feels even more personal, there are mentions of products and examples of his works but the majority of the posts are observations and interactions with fans and other illustrators. This is a great platform to interact with people from a range of backgrounds to create a network and show the personality and ideas behind your work but is not as good as a platform to showcase and sell work compared to other platforms centered around images.
It would be interesting and informative to contact Jon Klassen and talk to him about his use of social media and his online presence. What he thinks about the importance of it and what works best.


- Does only having finished illustrations take away from the impact of individual illustrations?
- Does more variety make for a more interesting and appealing gallery?

I feel like a gallery made up of only finished illustrations, in my case that would usually be mostly made up of double page spreads, could become overwhelming and detract from each individual illustration. I think it is important to think about how the illustrations work as a whole and the layout that suits them best. A combination of roughs, characters, animations and finished pieces could have the most visual impact, especially when the layout has been carefully considered, in the case of Instagram this could be as simple as the order they are uploaded in or creating illustrations that connect across three slides.


- Should I use different images on different platforms? Use my website for finished work and display works in progress on Instagram, Tumblr etc?

I think varying the images to suite the platform is a good idea. For example on Instagram I could include a variety of works from the roughest of sketches to finished products as well as personal photos. This platform can be used as an informal collection of work that also gives an insight into my personality. I often find it more appealing to buy direct from an artist than from a third party especially if their site feels more personal. Creating a connection with potential buyers is important on all platforms but they ways and extent to how it is done vary from platform to platform. The type of content appropriate on social media may not be advisable on your own site or on The Dots. Different illustrators approach this in different ways, some really go all out and create a wild and crazy online presence that moves away from the usual conventions where as some have a site that is simple and easy to navigate with only the necessary information included. You cannot please everybody and both of these approaches will have their fans and critics. What is important is to chose and presence that suits the personality and audience of your work.