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Events on February 15 - May 14, 2024 - MySCAD Events Calendar

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Events on February 15 - May 14, 2024, powered by Localist Event Calendar Software

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Below, please find a list of all clubs for Savannah's campus for the 2023-24 academic year.

This list will continue to be updated as more clubs register for the 2023-2024 year, we encourage you to keep checking this page.
If you don't see your club listed, please contact [email protected]. SAVANNAH CLUBS

2D Xtreme

Academic

Animation

2D Xtreme is dedicated to improving the community for 2D animators, to foster
fundamentals, and increase knowledge of industry news and opportunities.

Art History Society

Academic

Art History

Art History Society promotes professional development among students enrolled in the Art History program to increase the interest in Art History in our fellow students enrolled in other programs, as well as to increase the presence and visibility of the program in and around the college and city of Savannah.

Book Bees

Special Interest

All

The Book Bees exists for the purpose of giving students the opportunity to share their loves for books. Members participate in events, get together for reading time, and have a group to share their love for books. Members participate in events, get together for reading time, and have a group to share their recommendations with and find other students to discuss their thoughts and ideas.

FLUX

Academic

UXDG, IACT, GRDS, MOME, IDUS, ITGM

Flux exists to build and educate a community of problem solvers through user experience.

SCAD Active Minds

Community Service

All

Active minds exists for the purpose of increasing mental health awareness on campus, acting as an outreach to students, and creating a positive environment for students.

SCAD Zine Club

Special Interest

All

SCAD Zine Club exists for the purpose of SCAD students across all majors to work collaboratively on a design based zine.

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Below, please find a list of all clubs for Savannah's campus for the 2023-24 academic year. This list will continue to be updated as more clubs register for the 2023-2024 year, we encourage you to keep checking this page. If you don't see your club listed, please contact [email protected].

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My Secret Formula for Emailing Art Directors | How to Approach New Clients!

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Overview for how to cold email for an internship

Why cold email for an internship?

Cold emails work: I've gotten jobs, sold products, and put together million-dollar partnerships from cold emails. I've also hired people (and interns) based on great cold emails I've received.

How to cold email for an internship

Time needed: 5 minutes

This post walks you through the seven steps to get any internship (or job) by cold emailing:

At the end, I'll walk through other tips and resources on getting an internship and cold emailing.

Templates to cold email for an internship

Principles behind how to cold email to get an internship

But, before you start a cold email campaign to get an internship, remember five principles about cold emails:

1. You need to send a lot of emails. A 5-10% response rate is fantastic, and 1-2% is still pretty good. So to get an internship, you should expect to send hundreds.

2. Execution matters. The difference between a great cold email campaign and an average one can be 10X better results.

3. Don't just email. Email is a starting point, but you can increase your results by engaging over LinkedIn and social media at the same time.

4. Pique their interest first. Whenever you email someone, you need them to read it. This means, something about the subject and first line need to intrigue them.

5. Gain trust. You need your target to trust you (A) not to waste their time and (B) to offer something useful to them.

In the guide below, we'll walk through getting an internship step by step. But it all rests on these principles.

How to pick what internship roles to apply for

First thing, you need to pick what roles you're going to apply for. To do this, ask yourself four questions:

1. What kind of internship do you want?

If you're not sure, you can start by:

1. Exploring this list of 20+ different roles in tech and

2. Going through this exercise to identify your dream job.

Then pick one or more functions you want to get an internship in.

2. Do you need a paid internship?

If you don't need to be paid, you'll be able to choose from 100X more roles. You can cold email people who aren't hiring, and most of them will hire you.

If you do need pay, see if your school has grant programs to support unpaid internships.

Otherwise, you'll want to focus more on companies that either:

1. Post paid internships

2. Are hiring full-time where you could do the work (like a content marketer or junior SEO)

3. Recently raised money or have a big big budget, so they'll have both work to do and money to spend

3. What internships are available?

Now it's time to create a spreadsheet of the companies and roles you're interest in. You can:

In each channel, look for internship postings in the functions you're targeting. You can also look for entry-level job postings on the same sites, as these companies will have a need and be more likely to accept a paid intern.

4. What companies are you interested in?

If you're interested in specific companies that aren't actively hiring for interns, add them to your list now.

If you're interested in startups and technology, you can find ideas by:

How to create a list of people to cold email for an internship

Create a spreadsheet to track your internships

Create a spreadsheet to track the people you plan to cold email, and the companies and internship postings you researched above.

I'd suggest tracking their full name, email, LinkedIn URL, company, their role, a detail for personalization, any notes about them, and a link to the internship job posting if there is one.

One note of caution: don't add hundreds of people to your list until you've created a draft cold email and figured out how to mass personalize it (read more on this below). Otherwise, you'll have to go back to all of the profiles a second time to add the personal detail - or send a generic email to everyone and get a much lower response.

Search LinkedIn for people to cold email

Use LinkedIn's advanced search to look for people in roles you're interested in learning about.

You can search by:

School - Alums from your school are much more likely to respond

Connection - Reaching out to 2nd degree connections on LinkedIn, can increase your response rate 2-5X by letting you personalize your email and increasing their likelihood of responding when you follow up on LinkedIn

Job title - Use this to focus on the function (e.g. sales, brand marketing, content marketing)

Keyword - Use this to focus on an industry (e.g. healthcare, blockchain, software)

Company

Location

For example, I can look for a sales internship near me, working for someone who graduated from the schools I attended, who has at least one connection in common:

Note: This approach is particularly useful if you don't need a pay internship, because it'll be easy to convince people to give you an internship, and you won't have much competition.

Other ways to find people to cold email

LinkedIn is the best place to find people at scale: it's simple, powerful, and includes everyone on Earth who might hire you for an internship.

There is one alternative approach: search for people who are experts in what you want to learn. So, instead of looking for people by company, you can search platforms where people share knowledge publicly. These are people who've written great resources in the areas you're interested in (people like Hiten Shah, Julie Zhao or Andrew Chen - but a little less famous).

But this approach is way harder.

Your goal should be to find people working in the role you're interested in who share insightful content, but who aren't "influencers" with many thousands of followers (because influencers probably won't respond).

To find these people, search topics related to the type of internship you want on these channels:

How to find emails

Now comes the boring part: finding the emails of people you want to reach.

You could try skipping straight to LinkedIn outreach to save time, or choose from the five approaches below.

1. Search for emails online

It's worth doing this for the first dozen or so people on your list, to test your cold email approach.

Name + Company + Email

Taylor Thompson HiddenFrontDoor email

Name + Email + Company web domain

Taylor Thompson email hiddenfrontdoor.org

Two simple approaches to search for someone's email.

Then, search the results page for the "@" symbol to see if you get any email addresses in the search results.

2. Sign up for a paid email service

You can sign up for a free trial for email scraping services like Skrapp, that let you download emails based on a LinkedIn profile.

Skrapp is one of dozens of email finder services. Many have free trials.

The downsides to this approach is that between 20-50% of emails aren't accurate, and sometimes you have to pay to get emails.

The upside is that there are dozens of services, and many offer free trials, so you can sign up for a free trial, download thousands of emails, and move on to the next one.

3. Guess

Most companies use the same convention for all employee emails.

First name @ company

taylor@example.com

First initial + last name @ company

tthompson@example.com

First name + last name @ company

taylorthompson@example.com

Example naming conventions.

To figure out what convention a company uses, just try the following searches.

Large companies

Company name + email conventions

Google email conventions

Companies you have someone's email

Person's name + email + company domain

taylor thompson email @hiddenfrontdoor.org

Example Google searches to find email conventions for an email you don't know.

If you can't confirm an email convention, you can always cold email several common variants, and just BCC all but the most likely.

4. Use your school's alumni database

If possible, just constrain your search to alums from your school. This makes personalization easy, people are more likely to respond to your cold email, and you can find their email (or contact them directly) through your alumni portal.

5. Pay a virtual assistant

If only manual research works, you can always use a service like Upwork or Fiverr to hire a virtual assistant to follow the same steps you used when manually searching.

How to write a cold email for an internship

Checklist for a great internship cold email

When writing a cold email to get an internship, make sure to do each thing on this checklist:

1. Write a subject line that gets read (more below).

2. Explain who you are and why you're writing in your first sentence.

3. Explain why they should care. Typically this is because (1) you know someone in common, (2) you went to the same school, (3) you have skills they could use, and (4) you'll work for cheap or free.

4. Use quantitative accomplishments to build trust. People will always assume you're overselling your accomplishments. So if you've done something impressive, use numbers.

5. Make it personal. Look for ideas to personalize (more bel0w).

6. End with a question. This makes it easy for the recipient to respond.

7. Make scheduling easy. Include a Calendly link.

8. Keep it short. Write three paragraphs max. Each should be no more than a few lines. Cut any word or sentence you can.

9. Put details below the fold. If you need to include context, like questions you ask, details about your accomplishments, or a draft introduction for the recipient to send, put it after your signature.

You can also review several templates here for how to cold email for informational interviews, which is a great way to get an internship.

How to write a subject line to get an internship

A good subject line makes the difference between 25% and 75% of people opening your email.

There are two broad approaches to writing cold email subject lines for an internship:

1. Make your ask clear so they know (A) what the email's about and (B) why they should trust you, and (C) what you're offering them.

2. Intrigue them without necessarily giving them information.

The subject lines below include both options (with a few bad ones mixed in like, "I'd like an internship").

If you're not going to use a mass-email tool that lets you A/B test subject lines (more info here), stick with option 1. Here are some strategies you can try out to make sure people know why you're reaching out, why they should trust you, and what you're offering them.

Include a mutual connection
Taylor Thompson suggested I reach out

What you'll do for them
I'll write 20+ blogs as a free intern

Emphasize you're willing to work for free
Open to hiring me as unpaid Dartmouth intern?

Emphasize common school
Career advice for Dartmouth student?

Ask for informational interview first
Informational interview with Dartmouth student?

Include past accomplishments

Looking for internship, I acquired 10K users in last role

Different cold email subject lines you can use to get an internship.

Generic cold email template for an internship

Once someone opens your email, write a cold email that meets the requirements on our checklist above. Here's an sample cold email for a content marketing internship.
Subject: I'll write 60+ blogs as a free intern (from Dartmouth '23) I'm Taylor, a Dartmouth '23, and wanted to see if you're open to an unpaid marketing intern. I've written more than 100 articles for the D, and would be able to work full-time for 2 months this summer. During this time, I could write 60 new blog posts and manage SEO for Hiddenfrontdoor. Hopefully, this would result in 10K+ monthly visits for you. Would this be useful for you?
How to customize your cold email template

You could use the template above for all your email outreach, but you'll get more responses you customize your email for each person.

Personalization works even when people know it's a tactic, because it:

1. Attracts their attention. Personal details will draw them in, increasing their chance of reading your email.

2. Implies you won't waste their time. If you did research before sending an email, you're likely to do it before speaking with them.

3. Shows you're diligent. This email interaction shows that they can trust you.

How to fake a personalized email for an internship

The simplest way to add a personal touch to your mail is to send the same mail to a group of people who share a common characteristic.

For example, the generic cold email template above includes two custom fields:

School (Dartmouth)

Function (Content Marketing)

You can do something similar by sending an email to people who:

Work at the same company (or have in the past)

Live in the same place

Have a common LinkedIn connection

Share some other characteristic that you can find online (like they're active on Medium, Twitter, or Quora)

How to personalize a cold email for an internship

The most common ways to personalize a cold email for an internship are to substitute out one or more parts of your email template:

Name

Current company

Past companies

Role (if you're applying to multiple roles)

Accomplishments from their LinkedIn profile

Reference to something they've written - like a specific blog, comment, or tweet

Reference to a personal interest you're able to find online

After sending a few test emails manually, pick your approach to personalizing, and add one or more fields to your spreadsheet.

As you add people to your list, write the personalized text for each person as it will appear in your email, so you can use mail merge software to mass-email a personal message to everyone on your list.

Internship cold email template for customization

Here's what a personalized version of the sample email above looks like:

I'm Taylor, a Dartmouth '23, and wanted to see if you're open to an unpaid [INSERT FUNCTION] intern in your team at [INSERT COMPANY].
I've written more than 100 articles for the D, and would be able to work full-time for 2 months this summer. During this time, I could write 60 new blog posts and manage SEO for [INSERT COMPANY]. Hopefully, this would result in 10K+ monthly visits for you.
I love what [INSERT COMPANY] does, and was really impressed by your experience [INSERT ACCOMPLISHMENT] and your past work at [INSERT PREVIOUS COMPANIES].
Would you be open to a call about an internship this summer?
Another approach to customization is to refer directly to what someone wrote - a tweet, blog, or comment you can reference directly:
I came across you on Marketing twitter, when I saw your tweet on [INSERT TWEET TOPIC AND URL].
How to send your cold emails for an internship

When sending cold emails, you can either send them manually or use a mail merge tool to automate customization from email templates (like those above).

Here's when to use each approach:

How to send emails in different contexts.
Here's a step-by-step guide to implementing a mail merge.
Mail Meteor is one (of many) GMail plugins that can let you send a good number of custom emails for free.

How to increase your response rate with social media

Use LinkedIn alongside your cold email

Custom LinkedIn requests a great tactic to use alongside (or even instead of) cold emails. I use this approach when:

1. I can't find an email.No email needed!

2. Someone hasn't responded to my email. This is a great way to follow up - some people never open spam and are more likely to see and respond to a LinkedIn request.

3. I have a common connection. Since the invite shows your common connections, this approach actually builds more trust than a cold email.

4. When I'm too lazy to look for emails. Often, I'll use LinkedIn first and only look for emails if I don't get responses.

All you do is add a custom message to your connection request. I've written a step-by-step guide to cold LinkedIn outreach here, as part of my guide to informational interviews.

If you want to reach out to hundreds of people, consider using LinkedHelper. It's a tool that automates LinkedIn outreach to reach hundreds of people each day.

Here's a sample connection request message:
I'm Taylor, a Dartmouth '23, and wanted to see if you're open to an unpaid marketing intern. I've written more than 100 articles for The D, and would be able to work full-time for 2 months this summer. Hopefully, this would result in 10K+ monthly visits for you. Does this sound useful for you?
Often, people will accept your connection request but not respond. In that case, you can follow up with the same text as your cold email above.

If they're interested, send a quick follow up to schedule time (and get their email):
Great! You can book some time here on my calendly ([INSERT CALENDLY LINK]), or let me know a time that works. Also, let me know your email and I can follow up there!
Increase response rates by interacting on social media

One other approach is to engage on social media. If you like, reply, or share someone's comments on Twitter and LinkedIn, they'll be more likely to recognize and respond to your cold email.

You can even use a tool like Phantombuster to automate interaction with people on your internship list.

How to follow up on your internship cold email

If you don't hear from someone, send a follow up email after three or four days.

Template follow up to cold email

Hi Nathan,
I wanted to check to make sure you saw my email below 👇. I'm a Dartmouth '23 with lots of writing experience and wanted to see if you could use a free content marketing / SEO intern this summer. Let me know if this sounds useful?
***
[ORIGINAL EMAIL HERE]
Other tips and resources for getting internships by email

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How to Cold Email For An Internship - Guide & Templates - Hidden Front Door

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Based on my experience hiring 10+ interns: Here's a step by step guide and templates to get hired for an internship from a cold email.

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BECOME A PART OF THE WIA COMMUNITY JOIN US LEARN MORE EMPOWER AND ADVOCATE…5050 BY 2025 OUR MISSION LEARN MORE GET THE MOST OUT OF BEING A WIA MEMBER PROGRAMS LEARN MORE SEP 2023 – Sanisha Agarwal MEMBER SNAPSHOT Our WIA Member Snapshot for September is recent graduate and newly hired Nickelodeon pr…

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We supply illustration portfolios for illustrators and agents in the illustration industry. Hireillo or let us help you find your next client.

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Work With Indies is a job board and a community for artists, designers, developers, and more, to find their next role working in indie games.

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Find New Clients And Grow Your Business | Agency Access

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Find and connect with thousands of creative industry contacts.

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What is #PortfolioDay?

Being a career artist means hopping from gig to gig fairly often. You have to be skilled at your craft and also be a wiz at self-promotion because you are always in pursuit of your next project.

#PortfolioDay is a creative job fair of sorts that takes place primarily on social media. Creatives who are looking for work will make a post with examples of their work using the hashtag in hopes of reaching clients and connecting with other professionals in the community. Clients in turn use the tag to find artists to hire!

The event was born out of the desire to make it easier for artists to find their next dream client and for clients to find their next dream artist. Now, thousands of artists across the globe share their work quarterly during each #PortfolioDay!

How do I participate?

If you are an artist looking for work around the time of the current #PortfolioDay, compose a post that includes the following:

A short intro.

The kind of work you're looking for.

Relevant experience.

A link to your portfolio.

A way to contact you.

Add the #PortfolioDay hashtag! Very important!

And attach 4 of your strongest works!

Concerned about bots scraping your images for datasets without your permission? Here are some additional recommendations to protect your work:

Only upload web-sized images to the internet

Watermark everything

Crop images shared to social media

Keep your portfolio behind a password or paywall

How do I find an artist to hire?

That's easy! Go to your favorite social media site and in the search bar, type "#PortfolioDay + (other relevant search term)" and hit enter. From there you can use advanced search to filters submissions however you desire.

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PortfolioDay is an event that aims to connect creatives and clients. It takes place four times a year on the second Tuesday in January, April, July, and October primarily on Twitter!

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Tweets by portfolioday

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Building and maintaining a successful Patreon around your comic

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Your latest publication, "I'm a Cop", combines words taken from actual police union leaders between 2020 and 2022 with images pulled from 1940s and 1950s horror comics. What is the process of connecting these elements to "showcase the ghoulish psychology of policing and challenge readers to see the real-life horror in what the police have been telling us all along"?
I make comics in a very, very strange way. I don't know anyone else that makes comics like me. I start with a really basic idea. The first part of the process is reading and collecting. I have files and files worth of police union statements, of transcripts of things that police said, dumped in a Word doc. I stayed with it for a little bit, and then I began looking for ways to isolate and highlight certain themes, taking a lot of time to try to find the synchronicity-that's a really pretentious word-the echoes, I guess, between text and image.

My page layouts all come from this comic called Planet Comics from Fiction House, one of my favorite publishers from the 1940s. They have crazy panel layouts because they're from the early days; they're really experimental. I scan the pages, take all the content out, fill in the text boxes digitally the first time, then print those out as empty panels. When I first started doing comics using collage, I was treating it like a puppet show. I would cut out little elements, I would print out backgrounds, and I would stage photos that would be put into panels. I think some of those images are striking because of the way they use depth, but those pages ended up looking too digital for me.
Why is physicality important?
Comics read well digitally. But there's something about them when you make it into an object. I'm working with really old comics and I think it's especially interesting how they've aged and decayed. I want to capture that in the work, and in some ways exaggerate it. I take an already degraded page-because the comics I'm working with are falling apart-and scan it in with my totally cheap scanner, and then I print it out with my ancient inkjet printer. Each step of the way, it gets further and further degraded. So while aspects of that process are digital, it always comes back down to this emphasis on the physicality of the age of it. "I'm a Cop" feels new, but it is also weirdly tactile-a little uneasy and off-putting.
How does the comic-book medium uniquely work for broaching the topic of police violence?
Crime comics have always been tied into propaganda. Certainly superheroes, which in the U.S. we think of as the dominant mode of what comics are, there's a lot of fantasy and space to play while being based on a cop mentality. The notion of criminality, the notion of people being inherently evil, and the notion that it's okay for a more powerful figure to commit violence against the less powerful figures-that's all part of the baggage of U.S. comics.

Viewers interact with comics a bit differently than how they interact with other mediums. Comics feel easy, but formally, when we read them, we're doing a lot to make sense of the page. Time doesn't make sense in comics. It's not logical. We just smooth that right over. I think that means that comics can be an ideal space to offer challenging material for people in a way that they don't recognize as challenging.
Who is your audience, who did you create "I'm a Cop" for?
I have no idea who my audience is. I never have any idea who's going to read my work. All my stuff is nonfiction, and I always work with voices of other people. What I'm interested in is seeing if I can expose people to stuff I hear about that I don't think they're paying enough attention to. With cops and the uprising in 2020, I was in the streets. But I'm not going to be like, "Hey, I'm an expert on this." I'm not going to inject my voice into a conversation unless I know I have something to say.

I realized that what could be added to the particular conversation about policing-about reform, abolition-is listening to the police. The amazing thing about their unions is that they function as sort of a collective voice and they straight-up say who they are, showing that it's very much on the surface why policing is so rooted in violence and why this repetition of violence isn't going to go away. And the utter disdain they have for the public. Almost everything I pulled out in my research was from press conferences, so these were public statements people have been exposed to. But I'm like, "Have you been paying enough attention to this?" How do you get people to pay more attention? You put it in a totally different form.
How do you handle spending so much time with hateful material? Or with material centered around defeat and disappointment, as is the case of Failure Biographies, your project on forgotten artists who once had big dreams?
I always have several projects going on at once. So I'm able to pull away from it. The police union project was something that I always worked on alongside other things. I probably checked in every day on police unions as the actual research part of it. One of the reasons that I finished the comic-and why I didn't even try to contact my publisher and decided I was going to put it out myself-is because I just had to be done with it. I couldn't spend any more time with this text and this toxic material. Then you take a little break. Then there's the reception. I've been talking to a lot of people who sent me all their own research and journalism into police unions. I think I'm going to do another volume, which I was not planning to do. I feel like stepping back into the mud.
Do you feel a sense of responsibility to produce another volume?
I think there is a responsibility in getting the project right. When you're dealing with a subject this fraught and this serious, I felt the need to, for instance, take really good notes. I don't usually put full citations in the back of my works, but I wanted everyone to know exactly when and where these cops said what they did. Readers are going to ask you about the subject you're making work about. I don't know if that's responsibility. I think it's like an invitation. People continuing to respond invites me to continue the project; if it just disappeared immediately, I might not. So "invitation" might be a slightly more positive way to think about it.
I love that answer because I think a lot of people struggle with political art and its ability to affect change, if that should be the point of it at all.
I feel like that's what I have to offer in all my work: being like, "Hey, would you consider thinking about this thing that is hard or uncomfortable to think about?" It's a reason why we see a lot of educational comics, not that they're very good a lot of the time. There's something about comics that might be useful for this idea of opening up spaces for conversations. Comics always catch us off-guard.
You're an educator yourself, a lecturer in the English department at San Jose State University. How do you balance that with making comics, which might seem incongruous on the surface?
Academia has not been super kind to me. I'm a contingent faculty; I'm probably lifetime contingent faculty. And I got a doctorate, you know. But one of the reasons I stick around is I need to use the libraries, I need the access. I really, really value breaks. If there's any advantage to being a lecturer, it's that I'm not required to do anything over breaks. If I figure it out right, I get almost four months a year that I don't have to do anything related to school. I'm fiercely protective of that because that's when I get so much of my own work done.

In terms of balance, the bad news is that I'm always too busy. But weirdly enough, I've sold enough comics right now to be able to teach a little less. That's an advantage of this life: if your career is heading anywhere, in any way that can give you any money, you can subtract a little from your other responsibilities. It's not ideal, but I worked in bars and music clubs for a long time, and this is better. I created the whole time I was working in the service industry. But academia, while a lot of it is draining-it's a totally flawed system-you do sometimes get rewarded for your ideas and intellectual labor. In the classroom at least, we get to talk about ideas that certainly feed the art, feed your interests, feed your research. I teach creative writing. I teach a class in the history of comics, which has been enormously useful for me because I've always made my comics from the perspective of old ones.
I imagine it's nice to feel like your creativity has value to the people around you.
It is, even when people don't necessarily understand it. My department values what I do but I'm not gonna lie, they're not always clear on what it is. It probably would've been easier for me if my work slotted more easily in specific disciplines. I work between a lot of different disciplines and that's what is most rewarding to me in the arts, but it's definitely a challenge on the academic job market.
Is it not a challenge in the art market, too, to pitch such hybrid works?
I'm a minor member of a number of different artistic communities. I hang out a little bit with poets. I hang out with cartoonists. I also hang out a little with academics. I met the guy who wrote the afterword for "I'm a Cop", Travis Linnemann, because I'd been posting samples online as I was making it. He contacted me one day and it was like, "holy shit," he has this book about U.S. policing and horror tropes and our two projects really seem to be in relation. In conversations with him and through him, I have been connected with quote-unquote "real" academics who study criminal justice, or cultural criminologists who are messing with data. I'm not a member of those communities but it is a real privilege that the arts would be an entry into them.
What does your ideal workspace look like, when you're shifting between modes of creation?
I'm never going to have an ideal workspace. I live in Santa Cruz, California, and I teach in the Silicon Valley. It is so expensive here. I can't imagine ever being in a place where I could justify having a studio space; I can't even justify having a room. I have a corner in my bedroom with a nice, big desk with all my materials. During the pandemic my daughter was taking school online just feet from where I'm working. I literally have a guy with a leaf blower outside my window right now. It's not the absolute best space, but it's been an enormously productive space. To me, it's like, what's the bare minimum I need? How can you make any space into your space? If nothing else, I just need a space where I can have stacks and stacks of things sitting out at all times. I need 4 feet by 4 feet where I can cut things up.
Have you always felt the need to create no matter the circumstances?
I got my MFA in fiction and for a long time I thought I was going to write novels. I don't regret it, but I never was satisfied with the final outcome and I think it's because I wanted my medium to be distinct, to figure out a way to do things that other people weren't. The work can be in lineage with other things-because everything is in lineage with other things-but I want the actual product to not resemble anything else. I wrote an unpublished novel that was about making comics and there was actually a comic within the book. I had this idea that half my book would be an attempt to translate comics into text; I would do these weird descriptions of what panels looked like. And it was interesting, I don't hate it. It's in a drawer somewhere. But at some point I was like, Oh shit, I just need to be making the comic.

I didn't go to art school. I'm someone who studied art and art history. I studied comics because I was really obsessed with comics. I came to it feeling like an observer. Sometimes, if you're really obsessed with something, maybe what you want is to step into the space. At least try it. You might already be in the space. We tend to feel like everything is operating through cliques and scenes and movements, but I believe there's actually less of that than we think. People aren't going to give you permission to step in because it doesn't occur to them that they need to give you permission. I've found indie comic artists to be a nurturing and beautiful community, but no one asked me to join them. I had to start making first.
Johnny Damm Recommends:

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Your latest publication, "I'm a Cop", combines words taken from actual police union leaders between 2020 and 2022 with images pulled from 1940s and 1950s horror comics. What is the process of connecting these elements to "showcase the ghoulish psychology of policing and challenge readers to see the real-life horror in what the police have been telling us all along"?

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When I started my search for a literary agent, I noticed how difficult it was to sort writers-only agents from agents who rep illustrators. Many lists and directories that exist now are heavily tilted to writers. I wished some of those directories had an illustrator category to help find agents more suited to my work.

This list is in no way the definitive resource for illustrator agents, but I hope it makes your search a little bit easier.

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When I started my search for a literary agent, I noticed how difficult it was to sort writers-only agents from agents who rep illustrators. Many lists and directories that exist now are heavily tilted to writers. I wished some of those directories had an illustrator category to help find agents more suited to my work.

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Partfaliaz | Partfaliaz is about inspiring portfolios

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Illustration agencies in the USA | Partfaliaz

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Here is a short list of illustration agencies located in the USA. You can browse it by images or reach their site by clicking their name.

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Illustration Agencies list - 46 Reps & Children's illustration agencies

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Looking for representation as an illustrator? We're going to list the top illustration agencies open for artist's submissions right now.

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Resources - Maria Vicente, Literary Agent

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Publishing industry resources for writers covering topics like query letters, literary agents, contracts, money, author branding, manuscript guidelines, nonfiction proposals, graphic novel pitch packages, and writing advice.

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Creator Resource is a site dedicated to providing comic book freelancers with as much information about the industry as possible.

On Creator Resource, you'll find information on the latest rates that creators are being paid, and resources to help you navigate comic book contracts, copyrights, trademarks, and more.

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Comics Are for Everybody Creator Resource is a site dedicated to providing comic book freelancers with as much information about the industry as possible. On Creator Resource, you'll find information on the latest rates that creators are being paid, and resources to help you navigate comic book contracts, copyrights, trademarks, and more.

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Write an Incredible Resume: 5 Golden Rules!

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An Ode to the Cover Letter
By Carolyn Zimatore, Director, Talent Management at HarperCollins Publishers
My five-year anniversary with HarperCollins has come and gone. On top of that I celebrated my ten-year anniversary in book publishing this past March, and I still have to pinch myself sometimes because every day I get to work with such intelligent, creative, and passionate people. Book publishing is a very special industry-you get into it because you love books, you care about them, you love talking about them, you love how they feel,you love how they make you feel. That's why to me, whose primary job function is to hire people into book publishing, the cover letter is so very important.

Here are some great reasons why you should submit a well-written, well-thought-out cover letter each and every time you apply for a job in publishing.

We want to know the "why"

Why do you want to work at HarperCollins? Why are you interested in working on, let's say, romance novels, if that's the job you are applying for? Why do you want to be an editor? I don't like to think of publishing as just a job. It's a career, and it's full of people who LOVE books. We want to know that you love books, too.

This is especially important if you have no publishing experience, or you are looking to switch industries. Prove to me that you aren't just going to indeed.com and applying to every opening that has the word "marketing" in the title. It's fine if that's how you found the job opening, but we want to know you are excited about the prospect of marketing books.

It is also great if you write about why you are interested in the imprint or genre the job works with. It helps if you already have a love of informative, beautifully designed books if you are applying to a job with HarperDesign, for example.

I am not sure which is worse: a generic cover letter that says "I would like the open position at your company" without any mention of what the company is or what the job is or why you want the job, or no cover letter at all.

Interested in multiple job openings?

That's great! You should apply for them-but there has to be a reason why, let's say, you like subsidiary rights and design. What aspects of those jobs, based on your knowledge of them or on what you read in the job ad, do you think you would like?

And you should be submitting a separate cover letter for EACH. Why? Because they are different jobs! In the second paragraph of your cover letter, I should know why you are qualified for the job. Do you have experience doing some of the things that you would be doing in the role? Address it! Even if it is not spot-on but a transferrable skill-explain it.

Address any holes in your resume.

Don't live in the area? We tend to fill jobs very quickly, so if you are planning on taking a month or more to move to the NYC area AFTER you get a job offer, it is going to take you a long time and a lot of applications before you find something. But perhaps you have a friend who already lives in the area and he or she said you can crash at their place for a few weeks while you find your own apartment-note that in the cover letter! You can say "while I currently reside in ___, I have a place to stay and I would be able to start within two weeks of an accepted offer."

Look, I know applying to jobs is incredibly stressful, and doing it right can be very time-consuming. That being said, putting extra effort into your cover letter-at least when it comes to applying for jobs in publishing-will really pay off.

The resume does not tell your whole story-you see what I did there?-use your cover letter to show your interest the job and why you are qualified for it.

Good luck, and I hope to read your cover letter in the future!

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By Carolyn Zimatore, Director, Talent Management at HarperCollins Publishers My five-year anniversary with HarperCollins has come and gone. On top of that I celebrated my ten-year anniversary in book publishing this past March, and I still have to pinch myself sometimes because every day I get to work with such intelligent, creative, and passionate people.

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The following is a list of literary agents who represent graphic novels and comics. Every agency on this list has mentioned an interest in graphic novels either on their website or their blog, or made a GN sale- no second-hand info unless it was well vouched for.

If you're looking for the basics on how to write a query or pitch for your graphic novel, agent Maria Vicente has put together a helpful guide over on her site!
Literary Agents Who Represent Graphic Novels
current number of agencies listed: 138
last updated September 2021
5 Otter Literary: Ali McDonald
https://fiveotterliterary.com/agents/

Adams Literary: Josh Adams
http://www.adamsliterary.com/

The Amy Rennert Agency
https://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/amyrennert/

Andrea Brown Literary Agency: Laura Rennert, Caryn Wiseman, Kelly Sonnack, Jamie Weiss Chilton, Jennifer Laughran, Jennifer Rofé, Jennifer Mattson, Kathleen Rushall, Saritza Hernández, Jennifer March Soloway, Jemiscoe Chambers-Black, Paige Terlip
http://www.andreabrownlit.com/

Aragi, Inc.: Nicole Aragi, Frances Coady, Duvall Osteen
http://www.aragi.net/

Ayesha Pande Literary: Ayesha Pande, Anjali Singh, Kayla Lightner
http://pandeliterary.com/

The Book Group: Brenda Bowen
http://www.thebookgroup.com/

Bookmark Literary: Teresa Kietlinski
https://bookmarkliterary.com

Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc: Emily Forland
http://brandthochman.com/

The Brattle Agency, LCC: Christopher Vyce
http://thebrattleagency.com/

The Bright Agency: James Burns, Alex Gehringer
https://thebrightagency.com/us

Britt Siess Creative Management
https://brittsiesscreative.com/

C&W Agency: Sophie Lambert, Alexander Cochran
https://cwagency.co.uk/

Carol Mann Agency: Myrsini Stephanides
http://www.carolmannagency.com/#!myrsini-stephanides/xna5n

The CAT Agency: Chad Beckerman, Christy Ewers
https://catagencyinc.com/

Chase Literary Agency
http://chaseliterary.com/

Creative Authors
https://www.creativeauthors.co.uk/

CRWN Studios
https://www.crwnstudios.com/

Emerald City Literary: Mandy Hubbard
https://emeraldcityliterary.com/

Erin Murphy Literary: Ammi-Joan Paquette
https://emliterary.com/

Ferly Agency
https://www.ferlyco.com/

Folio Literary Management: Adriann Ranta Zurhellen, John Cusick, Jeff Kleinman
https://www.foliolit.com/

Fox Literary: Diana Fox
http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/fox/

Frances Goldin Literary Agency: Sam Stoloff, Matt McGowan
http://www.goldinlit.com/
http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/goldinlit/
Agency represents Rutu Modan.

Full Circle Literary: Stefanie Sanchez Von Borstel, Nicole Geiger
https://www.fullcircleliterary.com/

Gernert Company: Seth Fishman
http://www.thegernertco.com/
http://motherwrite.blogspot.com/2010/07/interview-with-agent-seth-fishman.html
Represents Kate Beaton, Tillie Walden, Ryan North, etc

Grand Design Communications
https://www.granddesign.us/

HG Literary: Carrie Hannigan, Rhea Lyons, Ellen Goff
https://www.hgliterary.com/

Holroyde Cartey Ltd. International: Claire Cartey
https://www.holroydecartey.com/

Howard Morhaim Literary Agency: DongWon Song, Kate McKean
http://www.morhaimliterary.com/
http://www.dongwonsong.com/submission-guidelines
http://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/kate-mckean/
Represent Eric Orchard, Trung Le Nguyen.

Inkwell Management: Charlie Olsen, David Hale Smith, Jessica Mileo, Stephen Barbara, Claire Friedman
http://www.inkwellmanagement.com/
http://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/jessica-mileo/
https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/claire-friedman/
Represent Noelle Stevenson, Nate Powell, Jeff Lemire

JABberwocky Literary Agency: Eddie Schneider
http://www.awfulagent.com/

Janna Co
https://jannaco.co/

Jason Yarn Literary Agency
http://www.jasonyarnliteraryagency.com/

The Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency: Jessica Felleman
https://www.jenniferlyonsliteraryagency.com/

Judith Hansen
http://hansenliterary.com/
Represents Gene Yang, Kazu Kibuishi, Scott McCloud, Robert Crumb, Hope Larson, Josh Neufeld, others.
**Does not accept unsolicited queries.

Laura Dail Literary Agency: Elana Roth Parker
http://www.ldlainc.com/

The Lisa Richards Agency: Faith O'Grady
http://lisarichards.ie/

Liza Royce Agency: Liza Fleissig
https://www.lizaroyce.com/

LK Literary
https://www.lkliterary.com/

Mad Woman Literary Agency
https://www.madwomanliterary.com/

McKinnon Literary: Tanya McKinnon, Devin McIntyre
https://mckinnonliterary.com/

Painted Words: Shadra Strickland, Claire Easton
https://www.painted-words.com/

Pippin Properties: Holly McGhee, Sara Crowe, Elena Giovinazzo
http://www.pippinproperties.com/
http://www.saracrowe.com/submission-guidelines
Represents David Small

RHA Literary: Stephanie Steiker, Claire Anderson-Wheeler
https://www.rhaliterary.com/

Rodeen Literary Management
http://rodeenliterary.com/

Rubin Pfeffer Content, LLC: Melissa Nasson, Rubin Pfeffer
https://rpcontent.com/

Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency: Suzy Evans, Thao Le
https://dijkstraagency.com/

Sanford J. Greenburger Associates: Ed Maxwell, Wendi Gu, Abigail Frank
http://www.greenburger.com/

Signature Literary Agency: Gary Heidt
http://www.signaturelit.com/

Skylark Literary: Amber Caraveo
http://www.skylark-literary.com/

Stimola Literary Studio: Pete Ryan, Erica Rand Silverman, Rosemary Stimola
http://www.stimolaliterarystudio.com/

The Tobias Literary Agency: Natascha Morris, Matt Belford
https://www.thetobiasagency.com/

Trident Media Group: Alex Slater
https://www.tridentmediagroup.com/agents/alexander-slater/

Tugeau 2
https://tugeau2.com/

United Agents: Laura Macdougall
https://www.unitedagents.co.uk/

The Unter Agency: Jennifer Unter
http://theunteragency.com/

Ute Körner, Literary Agent LLC
https://uklitag.com/en/

Wernick & Pratt Agency: Linda Pratt, Emily Mitchell
https://wernickpratt.com/

Wolf Literary: Rach Crawford
https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/rachel-crawford/

The Zack Company, Inc
http://www.zackcompany.com/

If you have any updates for the list, please get in touch!

Every agent listed has their own submission guidelines, so be sure to check out their sites and check how they want graphic novel queries formatted. Some agents specialize in nonfiction, others in MG or YA. Personalize your queries and pay attention to what genres they're looking for.

Good luck!

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Literary Agents Who Represent Graphic Novels

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The following is a list of literary agents who represent graphic novels and comics. Every agency on this list has mentioned an interest in graphic novels either on their website or their blog, or made a GN sale- no second-hand info unless it was well vouched for.

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A BIG CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR HONOREES!! Our judges reviewed 96 submissions this round. A total of seven placed, with a surprising triple tie in fourth place! Without further ado, we are so excited to announce our honorees! Click on the title or image to view ...

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Kids Comics Unite is a community of kidlit-ya graphic novel creators that offers free and paid resources, courses, membership programs, and networking opportunities.

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If you would like to keep in touch with us and other comics peers, we have a Discord channel. To request access, please fill out this form: https://t.co/5MkkYrQPaf

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If you'd like to be added into the Creator Resource Discord, please submit your name, email, and website (or socials) for us to review. We will go through requests periodically and do our best to add people as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once approved, you will receive an email with an invite to the server and additional details. Thank you!

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If you would like to keep in touch with us and other comics peers, we have a Discord channel. To request access, please fill out this form: https://t.co/5MkkYrQPaf

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If you would like to keep in touch with us and other comics peers, we have a Discord channel. To request access, please fill out this form: https://t.co/5MkkYrQPaf
— Creator Resource (@CreatorResource) July 31, 2023

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If you'd like to be added into the Creator Resource Discord, please submit your name, email, and website (or socials) for us to review. We will go through requests periodically and do our best to add people as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once approved, you will receive an email with an invite to the server and additional details. Thank you!

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If you would like to keep in touch with us and other comics peers, we have a Discord channel. To request access, please fill out this form: https://t.co/5MkkYrQPaf

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If you would like to keep in touch with us and other comics peers, we have a Discord channel. To request access, please fill out this form: https://t.co/5MkkYrQPaf

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If you would like to keep in touch with us and other comics peers, we have a Discord channel. To request access, please fill out this form: https://t.co/5MkkYrQPaf

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If you'd like to be added into the Creator Resource Discord, please submit your name, email, and website (or socials) for us to review. We will go through requests periodically and do our best to add people as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once approved, you will receive an email with an invite to the server and additional details. Thank you!

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Everyone dislikes the nerves and awkwardness that often accompany networking-and artists and creators can be reluctant to take time away from their work for this uncomfortable task. But it's important! One of the best ways to build your client base, land more freelance gigs, and set up more collaborations is by hitting the networking circuit and forging those new connections. In our pain-free guide to learning how to network, we'll take you through the five W's of networking for artists and creators. These networking ideas will have you networking like a pro in no time at all.

So, how do you network? Don't stress about taking some expensive networking course. Let us give you some quick and dirty networking tips.

Which brings us to our next networking tip...

What Prep Work Should You Do Before You Begin Networking?

Before you learn how to network, you want to make sure you're presenting yourself in the best way possible both online and in real life. We've compiled all the things you should consider before you start business networking.

You should also think about targeting your portfolio images to whatever industry you might be trying to break into or get more clients in, whether it's wedding photography or interior design. (Want more details on how to curate your portfolio? Check out our guide on choosing images for your portfolio.)
Ready to build a portfolio website that captures clients' attention? From image-focused themes to a built-in proofing tool, we've got you covered. Start your free trial with Format today!
To craft a killer elevator pitch, think about what you want the person you're speaking with to come away knowing about you and your work. Use that to come up with your compelling, memorable explanation. Once you have that, test it out in front of a mirror or even a few friends-and then time it, so you know you're not talking too much. Building connections is roughly 10 percent talking about yourself and 90 percent asking intelligent questions and being an engaged listener with others.

This is a crucial networking tip for creators and makers: your business cards should be professional, but they should also definitely show off your aesthetic. Take a peek at your brand identity guidelines, and make sure your business cards adhere to them. As a creator, it's also a good idea to put some of your own artwork, design, or illustration on the card. Or, if you're a model, one of your best modeling shots. Or, perhaps, some of your crafts or ceramics.

Whatever the wares or services you're promoting, you want the people you're networking with to get a little taste of your work, right up-front. Make sure to include the URL for your online portfolio website on there; a small QR code linking directly to your site can also make it super simple for new acquaintances to check it out on the go.

Some websites that have business card templates you can start with and modify for your needs are:

Having business card anxiety? Check out our guide for how to create impressive cards.

Who Should You Try to Network With?

Need some networking ideas? A large component of learning how to network successfully is knowing who the right people are to talk to. It doesn't even have to be limited to people in your field-professionals who may not seem directly related to what you're doing can later connect you with some unexpected new gigs.

Here are some other types of people you should consider connecting with.

Where Should You be Networking?

Don't limit your networking to just offline! In-person meetups are crucial to building out the creative network you have, but you can also network from the comfort of your own home.

Here are some social media websites that are great places to start:

Instagram: ideal for creatives working in visual mediums to share their work and connect with each other.

TikTok: This video-focused app is all about creating bite-sized, short-form video content. With its massive popularity it's a great place to showcase your work, get discovered, and engage with your community.

Twitter: great place to build your personal brand through tweeting about issues you care about and attracting like-minded people.

Facebook: wonderful for following the professional pages of people you admire, creating your own business page, and using messenger to introduce yourself.

LinkedIn: good platform to build connections through relevant industry groups-comment on other people's posts, or share your own thoughts and links.

Another hot networking tip: there are also many private Facebook groups for women and non-binary creative types, LGBTQIA+ people, or BIPOC makers, which can connect you with more experienced people in your creative field for advice, or fellow professionals seeking new freelancers for contract work. Ask around in the general groups for adds to these groups.

Industry conferences: A great place to start are industry conferences, which give you the opportunity to learn new skills, connect with other freelancers, and meet potential employers or clients.

At the local level, if you're a part of professional associations or local networking groups, they'll often host happy hour events or other networking opportunities that you can attend to meet creators like you. If you're not a part of those built-in creative networks, check out websites like Meetup to join groups that appeal to you and start attending events. Some other websites you can use to find networking events are Eventbrite, Groupspaces, and DownToMeet.

You can also do a bit of gonzo business networking at "creative clusters" like cafes, bars, and co-working spaces, where other freelancers tend to congregate and strike up casual conversations with other regulars.

Don't forget to hit up shows, events, and openings at art galleries, art schools, fashion week, and any other soiree where other creators and makers are likely to be.

When is the Right Time to Follow Up?

You might feel a little nervous about pursuing your connection after an event. But don't hesitate to get in touch-reach out to them while you're still fresh in their memory. Ideally that means within 24 hours, but for sure within a few days, of your initial meet.

Not sure how to start that email? We've got some networking tips on what you can say.

"I really enjoyed our conversation and hoped we could continue it further; would you be free sometime next week for coffee?"

"I was interested in hearing more on the project you're assigning work for-would it be possible to meet in the next few days to talk more about it?"

"I really admire your work, and would love to get your advice on getting started as a freelancer, if you have some time to spare. I'm happy to buy the coffee."

Here are some examples you could adapt:

Don't forget to include the link to your online portfolio so they can see more of your work!
Want more tips on how to succeed as a freelancer?
A Guide to Social Media Strategy For Your Creative Business
How To Market Your Photography Business For Free
How To Write Product Descriptions That Really Sell

Now that you know how to network, go forth and flourish! Here's to successful connection-building.

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Totally Easy Networking Tips For Artists And Creators

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Are you an artist or creator who wants to learn how to network better? This handy guide has all the key networking tips you need to land tons of new clients.

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How to Engage Your Social Media Audience

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How to Engage Your Social Media Audience

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Artists today have the opportunity to connect to their audience using social media. While the most important thing for an artist is the process of creation, it's also important that the work reaches the desired audience. This is why artists use social media to engage with people who admire their art.

But, what happens if you fail to get the people to engage? In that case, you need to improve your social media strategy. Here are 6 tips to help you as an artist engage your social media audience.

Let's take a closer look.

1. Share The Process of Creation

People who follow you on social media already admire your work. If you want to give them something special to truly enjoy, show them how you work. "Behind the scenes" of creating a piece of art will make people feel:

In addition, they'll feel like they're getting to know you and your art better. Share videos or images of how you create a piece of art from beginning to end. Try a time-lapse video for extra excitement and fun.

Storytelling is another strong tool artists can use to engage their social media audience. It implies sharing the story behind the piece of art and telling people about:

Once again, you'll be letting people step into your world and give them a reason to connect to you and your work. This will inspire them to comment, share, like, and communicate with you more freely.

Everyone would love to have a face-to-face meeting with their favorite artist. Luckily, social media gives you the chance to connect to your followers using live videos. Live videos can be perfect for increasing engagement. All you have to do is:

You can discuss your upcoming events, talk about your latest work, and answer questions from followers. This will bring you even closer to them and help you create a stronger bond with them. Therefore, use live videos whenever you have a good reason to do so.

Your audience isn't only made up of people who love and appreciate art as viewers. There are those who are artists as well, and look up to you or see you as a role model. To increase engagement with that part of your audience, you might think about offering educational content such as masterclasses. Make an IGTV, Facebook, or YouTube video and teach them about:

improving their painting

being more confident with their art

different techniques

quality art equipment and tools

anything they'd enjoy

These online workshops and training can be extremely valuable to your followers. They'll be able to learn from you and advance as artists themselves. And in the process, you've made them even more loyal to you.

Your work is what makes you the artist you are. Social media serves as a space where you get to promote your work and show it to the world online. Presenting your work is what will get your followers engaged. All you need to do is:

post images and videos of your latest work

ask for feedback

read the comments and answer them

Make sure that you truly embrace what your followers are telling you and pay attention to their perception of your work.

Finally, there's one last tip we want to share with you and it's a big one. In order to get your followers to engage with you more, you need to reciprocate. They need to see how social, interested, and open for communication you are. And any time you are communicating, make sure that everything you write or post is proofread and accurate. That means that you should:

answer their messages

respond to their comments

thank them for their support

respond to every action they make

This way, you're showing them that you welcome their engagement and, in turn, you inspire them to keep up the same way.

As an artist, it's up to you to motivate your followers to increase their engagement towards you via social media. Use the tips we've listed above to start improving your relationship with your followers and we're sure you'll see the improvement sooner than you expect.
Author's bio. Daniela McVicker is a passionate digital marketer. Daniela is interested in everything related to SEO and blogging. She contributes to and other websites where she shares her experience and helps marketers make their names in the online world.

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6 Tips for Artists to Engage Their Social Media Audience - Art Business News

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Artists today have the opportunity to connect to their audience using social media. While the most important thing for an artist is the process of creation, it's also important that the work reaches the desired audience. This is why artists use social media to engage with people who admire their art.

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A curated collection of opportunities for animators, illustrators, comic creators, and writers

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Let's Chat

After your first interview, your profile will be available to not just one, but to all of our agents. Your happiness and success is as vital to us as our clients, which is why we want to find you a job that's more than simply a good fit for your skills, but a job where you can thrive.

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After your first interview, your profile will be available to not just one, but to all of our agents. Your happiness and success is as vital to us as our clients, which is why we want to find you a job that's more than simply a good fit for your skills, but a job where you can thrive.

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Studio Hog is a directory site for animation and vfx companies. It's designed for those interested in finding new studios or just exploring studios in other locations. Ontop of listing the studios we also provide each studios estimated size, location, link to website, career page, linkedin, imdb, glassdoor profile and linkedin profile if available.

We are constantly finding new studios from around the world to add to the directory. However the functionality for adding studios and updating studio information is current on an invite only basis. But will be public soon. In the meantime if you would like to add a studio, update studio information or links please visit the contact page to send me an email.

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Studio Hog: Animation, VFX and Game Studio Lists

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Lists of Animation, VFX and Game Studios, for those looking for new companies.

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Portfolio Dos and Don'ts with Ellen Su, Artistic Recruiter at Titmouse

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10 tips for creating a portfolio website

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10 tips for creating a portfolio website

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You've decided to get serious about art school. But before you can prepare for an exciting journey that will hone your skills and push you to achieve things you never thought possible, you've got to take an important first step in the admission process: creating your portfolio.

After reviewing countless student portfolios, we wanted to offer some tips for compiling your portfolio. This advice will help you create a portfolio that showcases your technical, creative, and conceptual abilities and separates you from other applicants.

1. Read the criteria closely

Every school has its own set of requirements for a portfolio. Take a close look at what each school you apply for is requesting from applicants - how many pieces, what format, when it's due, and so on. Make sure your portfolio submission meets every requirement.

2. Organize examples effectively

The way you arrange the different pieces in your portfolio reflects on your presentation skills and thought process. If you are conscientious about the order in which your work is presented, admissions counselors will be able to better understand your work's narrative and focus on your skill set.

3. Write clear, concise labels

Most art schools want some basic information about selections in your portfolio. A title, date, and description of the medium are standard. If more information is requested, elaborate without being excessive.

4. Be ready to discuss each piece

Whether it's during an interview, a portfolio presentation, or even in an email, you may have to answer questions or explain parts of your work. You don't need to memorize the details of each selection, but it won't hurt to revisit the works and remember their creation process. This is especially important if you're including works from years ago.

5. Tell stories

Showcasing your technical ability is important, but you should also include works in your portfolio that show your storytelling skills. Think about the deeper meaning of each example. If you can tie this meaning to a specific experience or unique attribute that sets you apart from other applicants, even better.

6. Don't get hung up on quantity

As long as you generally meet the minimum requirements mentioned in the school's application, you shouldn't be overly concerned about how many works are in your portfolio. More pieces could help, but not at the expense of your standards of quality.

7. Get outside advice

Creating an art portfolio makes you think a lot about your own work. It's easy to get boxed in by your perception and let it cloud your judgment. Seeking advice and opinions on your work from a trusted advisor will broaden your perspective and help you see your portfolio in a new light. Attending a National Portfolio Day in your area is a great way to get input on your portfolio.

8. Showcase your technical ability

Technical skills are what allow an artist to communicate the message or meaning of a piece. They also give admissions counselors a sense of your potential. Art schools understand that young students still have growing and learning to do, but they also want to see a foundational level of technique that can be developed in school.

9. Don't choose cliché examples

Your portfolio should include pieces that art schools won't see from every other applicant. One type of work we see in portfolios often is portraits of still life - while pictures of fruit or flowers can show technical ability, they're unlikely to tell a story or have a "concept." You should include them, just include some other examples along with them.

10. Show how you'd like to develop

Art schools know that even the best-qualified applicants still have a lot of learning to do, and they appreciate prospective students who have a sense of direction. It's not required, but if there are areas you'd like to direct your future art career towards - animation or graphic design, for example - include these kinds of pieces in your portfolio. If acceptable, explain these focus areas and why you chose them.

Your portfolio shows art schools that you are a creative, well-rounded, technically capable artist. If you take your time, edit carefully, and seek outside help, you can compile a wonderful portfolio that shows off your abilities and helps you get into the art school of your dreams.

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Top 10 tips for creating the best art portfolio

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You've decided to get serious about art school. But before you can prepare for an exciting journey that will hone your skills and push you to achieve things you never thought possible, you've got to take an important first step in the admission process: creating your portfolio.

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Welcome to the Entry Level Skills Hub, a collaborative platform designed to offer detailed insight into various entry-level roles in the games industry.

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Indie Game Academy - HowToMakeAPortfolioV1.pdf

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Okay, well maybe this isn't universal knowledge, but it should be. It is the 21st century, you're a professional illustrator (or you will be), and you need a website. They have become a primary method for art directors, editors, and agents to find talent. But if you're not already familiar with the options, setting up a website can be a daunting task.

Don't worry, friend. I'm here to help.

This post is broken into two sections. First, we're going to talk about the technical end of setting up a website; what you need, where to put it, and how to build it. I won't go too deep into detail, and you're encouraged to do your own research, but this will give you a jumping off point. After we've covered framework, we'll discuss layout and content.

Reasons to Have a Portfolio Website

"Why do I need a website?" you might be asking yourself. "I don't know how to make one. I'm an artist, not a web designer!" There are some big reasons why a website is the best way to market yourself as an illustrator.

No One Wants an E-mail Attachment
Unless requested to do so, most editors and agents do NOT want e-mail attachments. Art files are generally too big and exceed e-mail file restrictions. Spam filters will sometimes flag e-mail attachments from unknown senders. And if a director or editor is looking to make make a fast decision, waiting for an e-mail from an artist can take too long. Having a URL (web address) that can be quickly provided and shared on social media, on a business card, or in person is an easy and convenient way to get your work in front of the people you want to see it.

Your Twitter/Instagram Is Hard to Navigate
In the age of social media, some artists use Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as their primary art depositories. And why not? They're free, and it's easy to post images. But they're not so easy to navigate as a director or editor hiring an artist. Art gets mixed in with everyday photos and text posts, making it necessary to scroll or follow links to find the art you're looking for. When you're a busy director looking at dozens of portfolios, this gets annoying. Directors want a pleasant and efficient web-browsing experience so they can quickly find the right artist for the job.

Give Hiring Professionals the Full Picture
Before the age of the Internet, the traditional way of introducing your work to editors and agents was to send postcards or an illustration packet. Postcards are still a common method of reaching out to publishers and agencies, but you are limited by the size and the cost of printing. A postcard can give a glimpse of what you, as an illustrator, are capable of; a website can give a fuller picture. You can host as much art as you want on a website, organized by style, genre, medium, and more. Draw them in with the postcard, but show them who you really are with your website. Speaking of which...

Who Are You, By the Way?
Editors, agents, and art fans aren't just interested in looking at your art. They have questions for you. Who are you? Where are you located? What is your background? What books and projects have you worked on? How do I contact you? You can, and should, provide these answers on your website.

You're Worth it! Look, you're reading this because you are, or you want to become, a professional illustrator. You and your work deserve a professional presentation, and so do the directors and editors who are looking to hire you. Yes, building a website is time-consuming, yes, it can be costly, and yes, it requires design skill to make something great... but the same is true for your art. Your website is an investment in your career, so make it a good one.

Free Services

If money is an issue, or you don't feel ready to host your own website, there are free website options that will allow you to build a gallery relatively painlessly. Here are a few of the more common ones for artists.

Behance is a great portfolio solution because it's designed specifically for portfolios. It allows you to upload your work by project, enabling you to organize images by publication, genre or subject matter. The service is a part of Adobe, so you can link your account to the Creative Cloud and also search job listings and other portfolios.

This cloud-based web design platform is free to use, offers domain registration, and easy site-building. Its design templates are easy to search and offer a number of options for portfolio and art-based sites. There are also video tutorials to walk you through website creation.

Weebly offers a free hosting package with a subdomain option (so your URL would be yourname.weebly.com) and an array of themes for easy website creation, including portfolio themes. If you have a budget, Weebly also has other pricing tiers that offer many more features, but for a portfolio website, the free option is really all you need.

Not to be confused with wordpress.org (which requires hosting and installation), wordpress.com is a blogging platform. It offers a variety of themes that make the design and layout of your website as easy as a few mouse clicks.

Blogger is not as popular among artists as it once was, but many still use it. It is another blogging platform like wordpress.com. Uploading images is easy, but scrolling and image organization might be issues, here.
*Note (2018/12/28): A previous version of this post included mention of Tumblr as a portfolio option. Tumblr has never been the best portfolio option, but that entry has been removed altogether since, in light of recent Tumblr policy changes, I cannot safely recommend the site as a reliable place for artists to build a presence.
Hosting

Though it may seem daunting, hosting your own website is the best option for artists. It allows you to fully control your presence on the web and how your work is displayed. If the cost worries you, think of it as an investment in your career; you may not be financially ready to have a site now, but it's a goal you can save and build toward.

There are two components: the . The domain name is the unique web address by which art directors will find your website. Many artists choose to use their names for their domains; for instance, my address is domain name and the web host nilahmagruder.com. This is a good time to think about branding. Your domain name is going to be your home on the web, so think about how you want to present yourself to art directors, clients, and readers.

Domain names typically cost anywhere from $10-15 a year, but if you're purchasing one along with hosting, sometimes web hosts will throw in the domain for free. A web host is the company or service that will provide server space for your website. Most charge a monthly fee, depending on how many features you want your website to have.

Three things I suggest checking your chosen web host for: web space, bandwidth, and a site builder. Most modern web hosts provide an abundance of the first two; for a portfolio website, you likely won't need more than 5 GB of space. Also standard in most web hosting plans is a site-building component, or one-click installation of a content management system like WordPress. This makes your site setup relatively painless. Most site builders provide templates and themes that allow for drag-and-drop website development, so you don't need to know anything about coding.

You should research web hosts and compare their packages, but here are a few suggestions to get you started.

A popular host among artists, Bluehost offers some of the most affordable hosting packages around. It includes one-click WordPress installation, eCommerce support and free site builders to aid in your website setup.

SquarespaceAnother popular service among artists, Squarespace offers domain registration, hosting, and design templates that make setting up your website quick and easy. This is an ideal solution for individuals who are new to website maintenance.

I've been a Dreamhost user for several years. Their prices are a little higher than Bluehost and Squarespace, but they also offer one-click WordPress installation and site building. Dreamhost recently rolled out a free site builder called Remixer for simple web design. The downside is that Remixer does not allow HTML editing as an option, but if you're new to web design, this should not be an issue.

Content Management Systems

A Content Management System (CMS) is an application designed for managing a website. They allow you to set up a website using templates or themes, and update it quickly and painlessly. You can establish multiple users, multimedia, comment systems, and also add plugins to give your site more functionality. Knowing how to code a website is not strictly necessary to use a CMS, though it can be useful.

This is the commonly used website CMS, and it's a good starting point if you're new to CMSs. It's free, and most web hosts feature easy one-click WordPress installation.

This is the CMS my website uses . It's a bit more streamlined than WordPress, so I would not suggest this if you're just starting out. If you're a more experienced designer that wants a little more control over their website than WordPress, then Kirby is a good option.

HTML and CSS

If you have the time and interest, you can learn to code your own website. The easiest language to learn is HTML (hypertext markup language), and it forms the basis of most websites. You can easily create a functional portfolio website with just HTML. If you want more unique design options for your website, then learning CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a must. It certainly depends on your level of interest in maintaining your website. If you'd rather not worry about coding, then a CMS is a much better alternative. Even if you're using a CMS, getting familiar with the coding languages your CMS uses can help you with customization.

Don't Forget

I've mentioned this before, and I'll mention it again: do your research! And I mean beyond Google. Chances are you have friends and acquaintances that have their own websites, and if you don't, you have access to communities of artists who have websites. Ask around; who's using what services, how much do they cost, how are their sites set up, what have their experiences been like? Browse portfolio websites and make a list of the features they have in common, and make another list of the features you like or don't like. Use this information to craft a website that's right for you and your art.

And hey, if you build a website and after a while discover that you don't like how it's set up, that's perfectly natural. Your tastes and knowledge may have grown or changed. Websites are super customizable, and you can make changes at any time, anywhere from switching templates to switching hosts.

Special thanks to for providing their expertise to this blog post. Head on over to Deborah Kim and Part 2, where we'll discuss how to arrange your content! Sarah O'Donnell

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Portfolio Websites for Illustrators, Part 1

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that every artist needs a portfolio website. Okay, well maybe this isn't universal knowledge, but it should be. It is the 21st century, you're a professional illustrator (or you will be), and you need a website. They have become a primary method for art directors, editors, and agents to...

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Disney Character Designer Reviews Portfolios

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Sweeney Boo is a comic artist, illustrator and writer who works with various publishers including BOOM! Studios, Archie Comics, Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Marvel, Image Comics, DC Comics and more. She is also the author of graphic novels Eat, & Love Yourself, and Over My Dead Body and is the current artist on the Harley Quinn ongoing for DC Comics.

Represented by Britt Siess of Britt Siess Creative Management.

Clients:
Insomniac / Dynamite / EA Games / Dogu Publishing / Titan Comics / / Marvel Entertainment / IDW / DC Comics / Disney Publishing / Scholastic / Action Lab / A Wave Blue World / Archie Comics / Image Comics / Boom! Studios / Space Between Entertainment/ Warn Everyone Comics / Bliss Comics / Huion / Sakura Of America / Graphmaster / Hachette / Mad Cave / Harper Collins / XP Pen / Dark Horse / Imagine FX / Valiant / / Ankama

Interviews and features:
Newsarama / CBC / Art side of Life / Dan Ekis podcast / Previous World

Nominations:
- 2021 Joe Shuster - Cartoonist - Eat, and Love Yourself (Boom! Studios)
- 2020 Joe Shuster - Cover Artist
- 2020 Joe Shuster - THE DRAGON AWARD (COMICS FOR YOUNGER READERS) Marvel Action: Captain Marvel - Sam Maggs, Sweeney Boo (IDW Publishing/Marvel Comics)

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Sweeney Boo is a comic artist, illustrator and writer who works with various publishers including BOOM! Studios, Archie Comics, Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Marvel, Image Comics, DC Comics and more. She is also the author of graphic novels Eat, & Love Yourself, and Over My Dead Body and is the current artist on the Harley Quinn ongoing for DC Comics.

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MeeMee Costa - Storyboards, Vis Dev, Sequential

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MeeMee Costa - Storyboards, Vis Dev, Sequential

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A new board for my concept, "The Apple Mage" that is currently under development as a video game (that I'm solo developing!)

This board follows Red as she navigates her mysterious dreamscape with an interesting lookalike leading the way. She's revealed something...but Red isn't sure quite what.

This was a test for myself to see how far I've come over the years with my new experiences in the Animation Industry as a Storyboard Artist. This was done over a hiatus in about a week or so.

I had a lot of fun making it, and comparing it to the first board I've ever made (all the way at the bottom) is so much fun! I feel like the growth really shows here.

Thank you for looking!

Animatic Below!

An animatic of what it's like in my day to day. Totally honest, 100%.

-Done in a straight 6 hour stretch of the night, fueled on the fact that if I didn't finish it then, I'd wake up and not want to at all. (ain't that just the way!)

-It's groovy (and has cats!)

-Music: "Oncle Jazz" by "Men I Trust"

A little looking for work animatic I did (because I was lookin for work!)

-done over the course of a few hours!

-has little rabbits?

2022 EDIT: This was my first board, ever ! I made this back in 2020, and I've kept it here as a reminder for myself just how far I've come. Check it out if you want to see what I was boarding like two years ago, and compare it to now if you'd like!

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Red, a brand new adventurous soul on a quest to save her grandma, runs into a rowdy and disgruntled Restaurant Manager, Crabapple, after succumbing to hunger pangs.

These Characters are a part of an ongoing personal project of mine called The Apple Mage! More Character concepts can be found in the respective tab. Thank you for looking!

This is one of my longer boards, and one I put a lot of love into!

Animatic below!

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A new board for my concept, "The Apple Mage" that is currently under development as a video game (that I'm solo developing!) This board follows Red as she navigates her mysterious dreamscape with an interesting lookalike leading the way. She's revealed something...but Red isn't sure quite what.

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Tale Linh Do is a storyboard artist currently working on feature films at Netflix Animation. She is based in Toronto and Prague.

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Anthony Lee Winn - TV/Film/Videogame storyboard artist

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Anthony Lee Winn - TV/Film/Videogame storyboard artist

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I'm a storyboard artist and illustrator within the entertainment arts industry.

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Artofpav - Alex Pavlenko, concept art and entertainment design, freelance artist

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This is the most recent list of employers currently signed to collective bargaining agreements with the IATSE and/or the Animation Guild, Local 839 IATSE. All persons employed by these employers under Local 839's jurisdiction are covered by the applicable CBA, which can be found under Contracts & Wages.

Are you working for a non-union studio and interested in organizing it? Visit our Start a Union page here.

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This is the most recent list of employers currently signed to collective bargaining agreements with the IATSE and/or the Animation Guild, Local 839 IATSE. All persons employed by these employers under Local 839’s jurisdiction are covered by the applicable CBA, which can be found under Contracts & W…

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"Wander Over Yonder" Style Guides by Craig McCracken & Alex Kirwan

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Wn To eeADVENTURE TIME CHARACTER STYLE NOTES ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES YOU WILL SEE SOME GENERAL RULES AND GUIDES THAT WILL HOPEFULLY HELP YOU DRAW THE CHARACTERS IN ADVENTURE TIME. BUT ALSO KNOW THAT ALL OF THESE ""RULES'' ARE INTENDED AS A PLACE TO START, NOT AS THE ONE AND ONLY WAY TO DRAW FOR THIS SHOW. WE WANT YOU TO HAVE FUN. WE'RE NOT LOOKING FOR "ON MODEL'' DRAWINGS. WE'RE LOOKING FOR "IN CHARACTER" DRAWINGS.WE ARE LoockiING FoR, SUD, WECM CONSTRUCTED TRY TO THIAK OF FINA'S Bopy AS A SERIES OF _, BENDABLE TUBES.

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Wn To eeADVENTURE TIME CHARACTER STYLE NOTES ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES YOU WILL SEE SOME GENERAL RULES AND GUIDES THAT WILL HOPEFULLY HELP YOU DRAW THE CHARACTERS IN ADVENTURE TIME. BUT ALSO KNOW THAT ALL OF THESE ""RULES'' ARE INTENDED AS A PLACE TO START, NOT AS THE ONE AND ONLY WAY TO DRAW FOR THIS SHOW.

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What Does Brenda Look for in New Design Clients?

A presence on Instagram. Brenda puts a huge emphasis on a designer's on Instagram profile. As she put it, Instagram is today's portfolio. 🙌

Versatility within a style.

In addition to illustration skills, hand lettering ability is also key to create complete designs.

Clean technical work. Patterns without lines or gaps.

Should Artists Have a Set Number of Pieces in Their Portfolio Before Reaching Out to an Art Licensing Agent?

I hear this question from my Start Your Surface Pattern students all the time and was looking forward to Brenda's answer. She explained that quality is much more important than quantity if she can see enough of a range in skill level with for example just three designs, that's enough. Later on when artists are exhibiting at a trade show is typically when she'll need more volume in the portfoliio.

What Do You Wish Every Artist Who Signed On With BMD Was Already Aware of About the Licensing or Design Process?

It can take a long time to get established as an artist. Have patience and be in it for the long haul. (Amen to that!)

Christmas designs sell year-round and they're a huge part of the work that Brenda licenses. It's smart to have holiday designs in your portfolio that include common anchor icons - Santa, snowmen, wreaths, Christmas trees, and woodland animals.

Brenda encourages artists to go with their inspiration when creating collections but to remember to balance it with what the market needs.

⭐ And I love this sage advice on getting a rejection from an agency: "If you reach out to an agent and they don't take you on it's nothing personal. It just may mean that their client's don't line up with your style."

What Advice Do You Have for Surface Pattern Designers Who Can't Decide if an Art Licensing Agency Is Right for Them or Not?

If you're not sure if licensing your work is for you, do lots of research before you decide. Network with other artists to learn about all the options available. When you get the the point that you're ready explore further, reach out to and interview a whole variety of art licensing agents. Keep asking questions through the process.

She also suggests paying attention to the exit clause offered by and agency to be sure that the terms work for you (for example, do they keep your art?). And be sure to have a lawyer look at your contract before you sign.
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There you have it. I hope this clears up some of the uncertainty you may have had about working with an art licensing agency. If you're curious to hear how another agency operates, I highly recommend checking out this post next, an interview with my personal art licensing agent, Julie Newman - What You Need to Know About Art Licensing Agencies.

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Art Licensing Advice for Surface Pattern Designers with Brenda Manley - Elizabeth Silver Surface Pattern Design

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Thinking about licensing your artwork with an agency but not sure if it's the right path for you? Brenda Manley, founder of Brenda Manley Designs, shares what she looks for in new artists to represent and inside info on her agency for illustrators and surface designers looking to license their work.

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How to create a clickable hyperlink in a PDF document with Adobe Acrobat

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Slice Creative Network | Attractions Industry Freelancers

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Creative freelancers serving the Attractions Industry.

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WEBTOON Academy is where you can find resources to help you find success on WEBTOON.

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Presented by the Level Ground Comics Workshop Committee Cover image by Avery Hick In celebration of Pride Month, the Level Ground Comics...

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How to insert hyperlinks in Photoshop for PDF

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How to Create a Clickable Hyperlink in Adobe InDesign CC

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If you have a love of print and pattern design then you probably dream of having a career as a surface pattern designer. How you fit into the industry will depend on your goals. Do you want to work autonomously or would you prefer a regular paycheck? There are lots of different options and what you choose will depend on your experience, your dreams and goals as well as your current work/life situation. Let's have a look at some of the possible jobs of a surface pattern designer for you to consider.

Jobs of a Surface Pattern Designer

Full Time/Part Time Employee

Working as a surface pattern employee will require you to usually report to a design manager or product developer/buyer. Your role is to ensure that your designs encapture the creative vision of the company. You need to be able to adapt your personal design style to the signature brand style. The bonus of working as an employee is that you will get a regular paycheck however the amount of creative freedom in your designing will depend on the company you work for. Also, companies seeking surface pattern and textile design employees will often ask for tertiary qualifications.

As a textile designer you have the option of becoming a freelance or self-employed designer. Freelance design will usually entail designing from a set brief that a client gives you. This means that you need to be able to be adaptable in your design style so that you can design to fit any brief given. Working directly with a client means that you will be in total control of what you charge each client but as you are not working for a company or are not being represented by an agent or studio, you will need to build your own list of clients.

As a freelance designer, surface pattern designers often engage with an agent to sell their work on behalf of them. The agent will take a commission for each sale made (this will vary from agent to agent). It's important if you are going to work with an agent that you find someone who is a good fit for you. For example, if your strength is creating designs for fabric lengths for apparel or homewares it would not be the best move to have an agent who specialises in illustrative work.

Although agents do take a commission for every sale made, they will usually have a broad clientele base which will enable you to have more options to sell your work. They will also often exhibit at the major trade shows such as Surtex and Blueprint. Another benefit of having an agent is they will manage all of the financial aspects so you can concentrate on designing.

Licensing your pattern designs will mean that you will retain the copyright for your designs. You can set up contracts to allow clients to use your artwork for a specific time period, product and/or geographic location. You will need to make sure you have clear guidelines for the terms and usage of the design in a licensing agreement. Usually, the designer will receive a flat fee (or an advance against the royalties) as well as a percentage from the sales. You can choose to license your design exclusively to a particular market or product or non-exclusively which will allow you to license the same design to different markets at the same time. At the end of the licensing period, your client will no longer be legally able to use your design and you will be able to license it to another client.

Designer/Maker

You might have the creative vision of wanting to bring your designs to life in the form of a product. This would allow you to have complete creative control from initial concept right through to the manufacturing of your design onto a product. This is an exciting process but will require you to have lots of different hats on. The design process will become only a small portion of your job. Unless you hire someone else to help you, you will also be in charge of manufacturing, developing, shipping and marketing just to name a few jobs. You will also need to make sure that your product is viable in the marketplace so that your product has the potential for success.

Design Studio

Design studios sell designs to clients such as retailers and manufacturers who buy the designs to use within their product ranges. Each design studio will have their own way of working. If you are an in-house designer you will be required to work in the design studio and will usually have targets for the number of designs you are expected to complete per week. If you are a freelance designer working for a studio, you will work at home and will be given set briefs to work with. You can usually let the studio know how much or little work you are available to complete per week.

There are pros and cons to the different ways of working, for example, some people will find working from home difficult as you need to be self-disciplined and motivated while others will find it liberating. Have a look at the different options and see which one suits you best.

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Jobs of a Surface Pattern Designer - Pattern and Design % %

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If you have a love of print and surface pattern design you may want a career as a surface pattern designer. Click to find out some of the job options

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IFESINACHI ORJIEKWE | CREATIVE BLOCK #102

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MICE 2022: Fundraising for Comics with Crowdfundr - Crowdcast

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David Barach of Crowdfundr and Alex Hoffman of Fieldmouse Press outline the benefits of crowdfunding as a way to get your work funded as well as walk through creating and launching a campaign.

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Demystifying Taxes for Artists - Crowdcast

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Need get your money skills as sharp as your pencil? In this engaging session, accountant Hannah Cole talks about the tax side of creative businesses.

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Alice Lee - Illustration, Painting, Ceramics

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Alice Lee - Illustration, Painting, Ceramics

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Hi! This is a WIP version of my website that I am building and illustrating live, with daily updates. I'm trying to combine illustration and front-end code in fun + interesting ways, so things are a bit experimental + WIP here. ✨Thanks for stopping by! ~Alice

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Hi! This is a WIP version of my website that I am building and illustrating live, with daily updates. I'm trying to combine illustration and front-end code in fun + interesting ways, so things are a bit experimental + WIP here. ✨Thanks for stopping by! ~Alice

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I am an animation student currently in my last year at The Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. I specialize in Visual Development and Character Animation, but also have experience in Illustration, Stroyboarding, 3D Modeling and Maquette Construction.

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for un-agented, self-identifying historically marginalized authors & illustrators

hosted & moderated by beth phelan

August 1, 2022: 8AM - 8PM ET for childrens & YA fiction/nonfiction
August 2, 2022: 8AM - 8PM ET for adult fiction/nonfiction and for artists & illustrators using #DVart Disclaimer: As #DVpit has grown, unaffiliated groups/accounts have appropriated the hashtag and logo without authorization. Please note that if an event or giveaway is endorsed by or affiliated with #DVpit, it will be clearly stated here or on our social media. Any other programs, services, or events not represented on this website or on the official twitter account are outside our control and supervision.

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hosted & moderated by beth phelan August 1, 2022: 8AM - 8PM ET for childrens & YA fiction/nonfictionAugust 2, 2022: 8AM - 8PM ET for adult fiction/nonfiction and for artists & illustrators using #DVart Disclaimer: As #DVpit has grown, unaffiliated groups/accounts have appropriated the hashtag and logo without authorization.

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Throughout the month of October, the Cartoonist Cooperative will be sharing interviews with members of the Co-op who have a new comic available at the ShortBox Comics Fair 2023!
NOTE: The Cartoonist Cooperative is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way formally connected with ShortBox.

Cartoonist Cooperative: We'd love it if you could introduce yourself and tell us about your background in comics.
Virus Visal: Hello! I'm Virus Visal, a comic artist from México. I've been publishing online and also self publishing zines and comics. I had a webcomic that ran for around 11 years and a bunch of smaller self contained comics both online or in paper. My work has been published in English in two anthologies: "Dirty Diamonds #7 Imagination" & "Built on Strange Ground". My new standalone comic "The Swarm" is at the ShortBox Comics Fair!
CC: Tell us more about your new comic!
VV: The idea of this comic was born from very horrible situations I got to see happen at my first office job, and then the stories told by other friends and colleagues at other jobs. While I myself have been lucky to escape such situations, I still have a lot of angst that such things keep happening and have a deep desire for revenge.

Here's the synopsis: Something terrible happened to Gaby at the office and she doesn't know how to deal with it, she is so powerless... Or so she thought until watching a swarm of locusts, when there are many others like you it doesn't matter if you are small and unimportant, together you can destroy anything!

CC: Tell us about your creative process; how did you develop this comic and what are the steps you took to bring it to the final stage?
VV: I had a small 12 page script saved on my computer for like three or four years, and when I got into SBCF I knew this was my chance to finally get this story off my chest. Sometimes a girl just needs to feel the pressure of a deadline to get to work, you know?

So I dusted off my script, re-worked it to meet the page count for the fair, and made concepts for the characters (first in human form and then changed them to bird people). Stuff just kinda happened naturally; I think this comic really wanted to get out of my brain.

CC: Talk a little about your creative philosophy. What keeps you making comics?
VV: That's a great question, I just fricking love comics man! Ever since I was small I just loved stories and drawing, and comics are the perfect match. I've had so many fears and insecurities in my life, I even made peace with the fact that I will never "make it" in comics since I do have a day job in order to support myself. But despite everything, I just could never stop making comics: it's the perfect medium and it's the thing that fills my heart with creative passion (as corny as it might sound).
CC: What helps you get through creative anxiety?
VV: You are like a faucet of water and you gotta get out all the murky stuff that got in there in order to get to the clean water that's waiting deep inside. Our work is like that: it's okay to not be great or perfect, and it's better to finish something you have doubts about because it will help you grow as an artist, and whatever you do next will be better and better with time and experience.I always say, you just gotta push through! No matter the fear or anxiety, just finish the darn thing!

CC: Can you tell us about your newest projects/projects you have in development? Feel free to plug anything here as well eg. socials, website, etc.
VV: Right now I'm working like crazy to finish a comic we made a kickstarter for earlier this year: Xibalbá (thanks to the Co-op for their help spreading the word about it).

I don't have much to show for myself in English since most of my work is in Spanish, but if anyone doesn't mind my rambling in Spanish you can follow me on social media:

Twitter - https://twitter.com/VirusVisal

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/virusvisal/

Tumblr - https://virusvisal.tumblr.com/

Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/virusvisal.bsky.social

Here's the link to "The Swarm"! https://www.shortboxcomicsfair.com/shop/p/the-swarm-by-virus-visal

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KidLitGN – Hosting Pitch Events For Creators of MG and Younger Graphic Novels

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Updated August 17, 2022.

If you are pursuing traditional publishing, your road to signing with an agent will likely begin by writing a query letter. But what should you include in your query letter?

Read on for all kinds of query letter help!
PARTS OF A (TYPICAL) QUERY
Your first paragraph should include your character's age if you are writing for kidlit, something about their personality, and what they want and are dealing with at the beginning of your story.

The body section of your query letter should include your inciting incident, turning points that progressively up the story's stakes, and finally, what's at stake if your character fails and what do they get if they succeed that ties back to growth from what they want from the first paragraph.

Your final paragraph(s) should include information about the manuscript, including your title, age group it's written for, word count (rounded up or down to the nearest thousand), comp titles, and any other fact about it you would like to highlight. This includes if you want to highlight that you share a marginalization with your main character. You can also include a couple of sentences for your biography, though, your biography usually shouldn't be longer than any of the body paragraphs. Finally, don't forget to thank the agent for their time!
SAMPLE QUERY LETTER
13-year-old Gabe doesn't care about being a brujo protege when he rather be reading and engaging with his followers on book TikTok. But when his mama becomes seriously ill from an ailment that seems to be coming from the commission dedicated to protecting brujx, he must shelve his TBR list and dust off his wand to save her.

With the help of his followers, he gets closer to a cure and the truth-the commission headmaster, Antonio de la Rivera, is seeking to be the only brujo left standing. Now he must band together and meet some of his long-time followers and friends in person to defeat the brujo. Including his TikTok crush, Ruby, who turns out to be a seasoned bruja.

Though success is easier said than won when they must fight off fantasmas, evade a nosey detective trying to show that brujx are real, and make sure Gabe's little brother doesn't fall under the curse as well. If Gabe doesn't succeed, all of humankind might fall under the brujx spell, not just brujx. But if he can save the day, he might just realize his abilities aren't the curse he's always thought they were and finally find a home within the brujx community, offline.

BRUJO is a middle grade contemporary fantasy featuring a Mexican American main character. It is 45,000 words long and will appeal to fans of WITCHLINGS by Claribel A. Ortega and Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova.

Like Gabe, I am Mexican American. I live in California with my husband and newborn. Per your submission guidelines, please see the first ten pages of the manuscript below.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Sandra Proudman

(Contact info)
14 QUERY LETTER TIPS
1. ELIMINATE THE WHY?/HOW? Eliminate any chance for an agent to ask why a certain fact is how it is. Or why a certain character makes a certain choice. i.e. Luna is a vampire with a soul who goes on a secret mission. Well: Why is she going on a secret mission? And what is this secret mission? A better sentence would be: After vampire Luna loses her soul going after a human slayer who curses her, she ends up on a secret mission on behalf of the slayer who promises to give her back her soul in exchange for a leaf from the tree of life.

2. DON'T BE VAGUE: This one definitely lends itself to cracking Tip #1. There's no reason to be vague in a query. Being mysterious isn't really a good thing. It's okay to reveal some juicy info that a reader won't find out until the last chapter to an agent/editor you're trying to hook. And you want to be as specific as you can so that your query makes sense.

3. IT'S OKAY NOT TO INCLUDE EVERY STANDARD PART OF A QUERY: Don't stress out about a bio. It's okay not to include one at all! Focus on telling an agent about your story. Especially if you're submitting through Query Manager, there will likely be other other sections in your submission that you will be able to talk about yourself. You also don't have to include a note on why you're pitching said agent unless it's on their submission guidelines. Always follow their guidelines!

4. ASK A FEW PEOPLE TO READ YOUR QUERY LETTER: Feedback can be vital to getting your query ready to send off. You may think you've written the perfect query and then someone will spot a mistyped word you'll be shocked you missed!

5. FOCUS ON YOUR STORY: A query is a professional cover letter. Don't make strange comments to the agent you're querying. And don't be rude or mean or demeaning to someone you're asking to consider you for a business partner. Even if they pass.

6. COMP TITLES: Comp titles will not make or break your query! You do not have to include comp titles at all unless an agent has asked for them in their submission guidelines. If you do have to include them, or would like to, you'll be surprised how comp titles start coming to you when you read and keep track of books within your genre. You can also compare your writing to that of another author. Even a feeling another book gave you, a movie, show, or even a song. It's perfectly okay to say your MS is written in a similar voice as X, Y, and Z.

7. ONLY USE THE NAMES OF THREE CHARACTERS: Only using the names of three characters tops will help agents keep up with what your story is about more easily. These are usually your MC, your antagonist, and your romantic lead. This helps you figure out Tip #8!

8. CHOOSE ONE STORYLINE: How do you condense a novel that's 35,000-120,000 words down to one page? UGH! So hard sometimes! The biggest thing is to focus on your turning points. Set the stage with your MC, who they are, and what they want. Then describe the turning point that sends your MC down their path and mission. And then describe the challenges your MC faces to get their mission done. And finally, describe the consequences your MC will face if they fail. And what they'll get if they're victorious.

9. IT'S OKAY TO DESCRIBE YOUR WORLD FIRST: A lot of people will tell you to start with your main character. But there are times when you NEED to describe your world first so that the rest of your query to make sense. That's OKAY!

10. LOOK AT YOUR QUERY LAYOUT: It might not be something you've thought about before, but the readability of your query in terms of how daunting it looks can make a difference in the way it's read! Try keeping each paragraph only a few sentences long, and breaking long paragraphs up, so that they're easy to follow for agents who are very much overloaded.

11. FOLLOW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES INCLUDING QUERY MANAGER SECTIONS: If you're sending a query through Query Manager, you might notice that some agents also ask miscellaneous questions! Adding a couple of sentences into these sections (even if you are querying as an illustrator) might go a long way if an agent decides that they're interested in learning more about you and your work. These are areas outside of your standard query that you can use to talk more about yourself and your work!

12. KEEP TRACK OF WHO YOU'VE QUERIED: In the age of Query Manager, if an agent is on the program, they can easily tell when someone has sent in the same submission already. Using a spreadsheet, folders, or even notes to keep track of what agents you query, what the status of each query is, and what agencies you're querying at once, can help aviod any mishaps.

13. ILLUSTRATORS: If you're querying a picture book, be sure to have your dummy for that project ready to go. In terms of your portfolio, don't miss out on getting feedback from friends and other industry professionals before you query to make sure you're putting your best work in your sample. And make sure that your sample shows inclusivity. For graphic novels, it's always great to have a few spreads of sample work to show. And even though illustrators don't have to do a general query as much, writing a paragraph or a few in your submission through email or Query Manager, will help agents get to know you.

14. USE YOUR QUERY TO REALIZE YOU MAY NOT BE READY TO QUERY: If you're finding you can't make your query concise enough any way you turn it, it's time to relook at your manuscript. And it's a good thing to do this before your start to query!

Querying can be one of the most challenging and stressful things for writers since it's such an important factor to achieving representation from an agent. We hope that this blog post has given you the confidence to refine your query for #LatinxPitch and beyond!

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Updated August 17, 2022. If you are pursuing traditional publishing, your road to signing with an agent will likely begin by writing a query letter. But what should you include in your query letter? Read on for all kinds of query letter help!

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Ultimate Commission Guide for Artists (+ Free resources) with Artistree

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🎓 Commission Guide【 Part 02 】How to Calculate your Prices + Pricing advice

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Light Box Expo: Finding Work As An Artist In The Entertainment Industry

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Light Box Expo: Finding Work As An Artist In The Entertainment Industry

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Fireside Chat: Finding Work as an Artist in the Entertainment Industry

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How To Boost Your Career With Self-Publishing

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Best practices for designers and stores to make the most out of TeePublic

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Online Printing Services - The Best Price & Quality

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High quality online printing services at the best prices, FREE templates and 24hr professional service. Get your instant online quote today!

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Clear Solutions Displays for Small Business

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Clear Solutions Displays for Small Business

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We noticed a need for simple stands to display jewelry cards. Keeping an eye on Pinterest and trending searches for displays online is one of the ways we can keep up to date with the workable solution ...

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Display Racks, Stands & Holders for Cards, Books, Brochures, Media & More!

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We noticed a need for simple stands to display jewelry cards. Keeping an eye on Pinterest and trending searches for displays online is one of the ways we can keep up to date with the workable solution ...

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Surtex - The Marketplace for Original Art & Design

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Transform your passion for exceptional design into new possibilities at SURTEX®, the premiere surface design and art licensing marketplace for more than 35 years. Known as a veritable who's-who of industry trend-setters seeking first access to today's best original art, this is where artists and agency representatives meet buyers from the biggest retail brands and discover out-of-the-box opportunities around the world.

At SURTEX, companies source unique designs, patterns and prints for commercial use in every category imaginable, from home textiles and giftware to décor, apparel, and more.

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About The Show SURTEX® is the premier surface design and art licensing marketplace--where designers, retailers, and manufacturers source original art to create the next best-selling products. Why Attend? Discover emerging trends in surface & textile design and discuss licensing and buying options with the creators of today's most exciting original work.

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Typographic Hierarchy in Graphic Design - Zeka Design

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What is Typographic Hierarchy in Graphic Design and how to use to make your graphic design projects look incredible?

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Concept Design and Illustration, the official artworks of Airi Pan

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Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. Use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.

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Optimize Your Resume and Boost Interview Chances - Jobscan

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Jobscan is built from algorithms used in top Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Optimize your resume keywords and get more interviews.

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My name is Melissa, and I'm the one in the photo who's not Captain America (alas). I'm a publishing professional with a master's degree in publishing and almost a decade's worth of editorial experience. Throughout my career, I've edited comic books and law books and everything in between. Click around to take a look at some endorsements below or my experience , rates , services , past projects , and contact information through the links above. If you think I can help you out, hit me up! I'm always happy to discuss new projects.

"I worked with Melissa for several years as a freelance comics editor, working extensively with creators who published work through Image Comics. As such, all roads to final production and print led through Melissa, who always did her job swiftly and with great energy, and with the greatest attention to detail, ensuring not only that projects went to print on time but that they were the absolute best they could be. I can wholeheartedly recommend Melissa for any copy editing, proofreading, and content-focused editorial work. She shows great passion, talent, and commitment to everything she does."

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-Sebastian Girner, Comic Writer & Editor

(Black Science, Deadly Class, Scales & Scoundrels)

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My name is Melissa, and I'm the one in the photo who's not Captain America (alas). I'm a publishing professional with a master's degree in publishing and almost a decade's worth of editorial experience. Throughout my career, I've edited comic books and law books and everything in between.

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Resume Worded - Free instant feedback on your resume and LinkedIn profile

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Resume Worded - Free instant feedback on your resume and LinkedIn profile

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Our online resume and LinkedIn grader instantly scores your resume and LinkedIn profile and gives you detailed feedback on how to get more opportunities and interviews.