Project 4x4 - 4/4

Link: Behance (pativette)

For my final 4x4, I decided to apply my research and make a website of my own. Behance is a solid start, as it's a popular platform for freelancers and other illustrators. While I do have a lot of work I could put into this portfolio, I found that only my strongest and most recent or relevant work would benefit from being uploaded for various reasons. Old (read: high school) art isn't reflective of my current body of work, and neither is work from my foundation classes. It took a bit of weeding out, and I wasn't left with much - but it's got to start somewhere!

My work is chiefly digital painting, in Photoshop. I also use Illustrator and InDesign for specific projects (the weapon pattern was made in Illustrator!). As for inspiration, a lot of it comes from other illustrators and digital artists such as Claire Hummel and Leslie Hung. I'm also heavily influenced by video game design, which has pushed me to make work involving mythology and fantasy elements combined with digital media. My history and foundation as an artist is deeply rooted in video games and its rising popularity in the industry and artistic culture, so it doesn't come as a surprise that I would pursue a career as a freelance illustrator with a focus in video game design and/or visual development.

For the past 2 years, I've focused on exploring on various concepts and styles rather than a single body of work focused on one overarching concept. I find that I'm learning a lot more about what I like in my work and ultimately what it will have to say about themes relevant to me and my life, including but not limited to nostalgia, grief, and mortality. My work will not always have a story to tell, as illustrators are not only storytellers but also designers - but in the future, I hope what I have now will develop into something much closer to that goal.

Project 4x4: 3/4 - Kickstarter (Artist Example: Alexandra Douglass)

For the third round of this project I decided to look at a relatively well-known platform and specifically how stand-alone artists benefit from using it.

Kickstarter, like Patreon, is a website run by crowd funding, mean people pay what they want to support a project. Unlike Patreon, Kickstarter campaigns have to meet a certain goal by a specific deadline and if it does not meet that goal it goes unfunded.

My example today is Alexandra Douglass, and her Kickstarter campaign to fund a high quality, 6”x9" art book (including four teaser pages) for her upcoming webcomic, The Cloud Factory.



Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lexxercise/life-beyond-the-clouds-kickstarting-the-cloud-fact

First off: Kickstarters ran by single artists are definitely possible. But those artists always have some degree of help promoting their Kickstarter and making all of the exclusive material for backers.

Alexandra Douglass developed her project and following for it a couple of years before beginning her Kickstarter. Such development involved maintaining a blog following her world building process for the comic, as well as releasing designs and teasers leading up to the Kickstarter launch.

Her primary tactic to selling her project is via a promotional video discussing the content of her comic, eventual release, and reasons for potential backers to support it. She uses a combination of both material from her comic and physical presence throughout the video - which I think, personally, really stresses the amount of personal confidence and pitching ability an artist must have to sell their work.

Outside of Kickstarter, she shared her project across many other platforms including Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. This and most likely through word of mouth, she was able to fund her project 11 times over (Her original $7,500 goal to $83,632)

So where is the project now? This Kickstarter was funded back in May 2013. After some quick research, it looked like her project went on hiatus back in January 2014. There are a grand total of 7 pages currently on the website of her webcomic! What happened?

The goal of the project was to only publish the art book and its 4 pages. Since her project went over her goal, she did add three more (bringing it to a total of 7 pages) and many other exclusive collectables like booklets, pins, and prints. For such a successful campaign, however, the project does seem bit stagnant. I think the biggest takeaway from analyzing a project like this is to realize what’s working and after it works to keep doing it - initial success does not necessarily mean it will continue! I do think this is a difficult undertaking for a single artist like Alexandra Douglass, however, considering she’s only one person and as a freelance artist she has to do other projects to pay the bills. But it’s definitely important to ride the hype and carry that success into the work ethic going to the remainder of the project before it wears off.

2nd 4x4 Project

For this second 4x4 project, I decided to branch out from Society6 and take a look into other digital platforms that promote and market artist’s work. Patreon is a website similar to Kickstarter that involves crowdfunding, and allows artists to accept donations from patrons in exchange for monthly or weekly content depending on the number of patrons and the amount they pay monthly.

About
Sakimi-chan (Yue) is a Canadian concept artist. There is actually not much known about her except information provided from her deviant art and Patreon, but her internet presence is extremely well established and she's one of the most popular digital artists out there.
Website: https://www.patreon.com/sakimichan

Marketing
Sakimi-chan’s work mostly consists of fan-art, or work from other franchises. Selling work using the content of these franchises without a doubt involves a ton of research on their copyrights and policies on distributing such work, especially considering Sakimi-chan uploads pieces once or twice a week on top of maintaining Patreon. And she must do a good job, because doing the math:

Sakimi-chan makes roughly $518,277 a year.

Pricing
Since Sakimi-chan’s prints, tutorials, resources, and other Patreon rewards are mass distributed, they are are in the average price range for digital prints ($10-$50). However, a unique nature of Patreon allows patrons to pay whatever they want for certain ‘tiered’ rewards. Of course the higher a patron pays the more material they gain access to from the artist, and for popular artists such as Sakimi-chan this is an absurdly good system to gain profit from.

Presentation, Themes, and Aesthetic
Since Sakimi-chan is a fan artist, her work is heavily influenced by pop culture, primarily from America and Japan. Her personal work is chiefly character design and concepts, but are purely for the sake of practice or speed paints - she makes most of her living off of fan-based work and making her techniques and tutorials on sale to the public.

Project 4x4

For this project I decided to expand on the first and pace myself throughout the semester to develop my store. I originally was going to upload whatever I had, but I ended up noticing small edits or mistakes I wanted to fix or make on the prints before I thought about publishing them. I figured this would be better as a long-term project, so I could be making fixes or edits that would enhance the print rather than making hasty decisions and then regretting it later.

Here's the listing: Shipwreck