I got a note yesterday from a 14 year old asking me about how to become an illustrator, what an illustrator exactly does and a leeeeetle about payment and stuff since she wants to become one.
I ended up with quite a lengthy answer, since i described to her how i went about becoming one.
Anyone who's intrested in that story here comes the note i sent her:
hehe... well i'd say anyone can become an illustrator but if the goal is to become a good illustrator it involves a lot of hard work. If you love drawing and painting though it won't be that hard.
I can't give you a receape for becoming an illustrator i can only tell you how i did it... I drew since i was a little kid. I remember drawing fuchur the wind dragon from the never ending story while my best friend drew a spider, i must admit i was a bit snobbish and aware that my picture was much better than hers. Throughout school art always was my favourit class. At about your age i started an evening artcourse once a week where i learned something about composition and colors.
I attended that course as long as i was still at high school(it's called gymnasium in germany)but i think what was just as important was that i started uploading manga pics i had drawn on the internet. I got good feedback and i guess i got a little addicted to my art getting attention. And drew more and more in my spare time. I uploaded a pic about 4 times a week.
That was real good training.
At school my one of my major subjects was art i had such an amazing teacher who got me intrested in architecture and more background stuff.
I didn't care what i would do after school as long as it involved drawing. I started at a grafic design school the HTK where i learned to use a lot of programs like photoshop and indesign. I also had two brilliant comic teachers who tought me ever so much . There I ditched most of the of the subjects unrelated to art and really intensly focused on illustration. I illustrated a childrens book( alice in wonderland)
did some comic pages, storyboards, designed two magasines and lots of other stuff. The work i concluded my studies with was an artbook. Three years well spent says I.
About half way through my studies i started at the alligator farm, a comic studio that was just trying to establish itself. There, with loads of lovely people, who where as interested in drawing as i was, we created a collection of comic short stories and revived comic serie called Perry- "Unser Mann im All"(our man in space)
After i finished my studies at the HTK i stayed for a whole year at the comic studio and did nothing else than work there... none of us there got paid. There was no money. But we all thought that some day we might make it work and that eventually we would get paid. i don't think that i would have worked out as a job you could live from...
I left the studio, for i still wanted to keep studing. I wanted to go to the animation school hamburg and that's where i went. 7 months we where tought the priciples of animation, background, layout, storytelling und storyboard . After these 7 months we were to divide into groups that would each make a short animated movie.
That was real fun and i had a great time there.
During the animation school and also before, small paid jobs would come in.(Its good to have a website!!!) People would aproch me for illustrations they wanted for something or other and one of them that came, when i was at the animationschool was realy important to me. A computer game firm aproached me and said they needed 30 character designs ans some turnarounds for a game they where producing. That went well and they wanted me to start working there. I refused since i wanted to finish the animation school.
They offerd me the job for after i finished school and so we had a deal.
I've worked there now for 7 months love it there.
You asked what an illustrator does. Well he illustrates anything anybody wants him to for money.
Usually an illustrator doesn't work at a firm but has like a home office a small studio where he wors on commissions for people. It can sometimes be really hard to get jobs as an illustrator which is why it important to know tonns of people who might nead illustrations for bookcover, audiobooks, magazines and whatnot and also other artist to who you can refere work when you have to many jobs or who can refer jobs to you when they're overworked and have to many.
I know life as an illustrator isn't easy... I'm ok cause i was lucky but working as an illustrator can be really hard at the beginning and you dont get paid very well at the beginning. That hopefully improves after a couple of years but i guess that is that way in most jobs.
okay this turned out to be a real long note...
^^ hope there's some usefull info in it...
bye
simone
is the account dedicated to documenting our movie...storyboards,BGs for fun animation and whatnot...
watch the movie here:
[link]
my own artbook:
[link] own illustrated book "alice in wonderland":
[link]friends and awesome artists ( totally unsorted
)
happy and stressed
...lol before work i go there just to reasure myyself that it is still there and that it is still wonderful... i know thats a bit silly but it makes me really happy since it took me so long to set up properly... at some point i didn't believe that i'd ever get it done...
... we just have an important deadline next week which meens lots of overtime and probably all of next weekend T.T
is the account dedicated to documenting our movie...storyboards,BGs for fun animation and whatnot...
my own artbook: [link]
)
to all of you!
