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By Timothy Piotrowski, March 5, 2010 11:13 am

I think one of the hardest things a freelancer has to do is figure out how to represent themselves. I used to have issues with that all the time. Because I didn’t want a job to pass me by because they looked and said, not quite what I want.

I also use think everything about me had to say WOW! Look at my bell and whistles. I hear this from other artists, on why they don’t have a website yet, or business cards, or more. Have to find the right image, the right design, the right WOW factor.

Well I’ve come to realize, functional serves more then WOW. Functional reaches more people then WOW. Also, functional is easier to get to then WOW. Wow will happen in time.

The first step is getting to a functional point where if you run into someone, you can give them a business card. So instead of making a WOW business card, make a functional one. No one is going to take your WOW business card and frame it, unless each one is an original work of art. (There is your WOW, factor now how long is that going to take you?)

You don’t need a website like Actor Jim Carrey. His site fits who he is as an actor. He also has the money for it (course if this is the kind of thing you do for a living, that’s different).

I wouldn’t say my site is WOW. It’s functional for what it needs to be, an extension of me, a tool to help sell me as an artists. To often, trying to be a freelancer in the past, I got caught up in trying to be WOW. Frustrated, I never really got my act together. You read in books about being a freelancer, getting noticed, and all that. More of the WOW.

But in many ways, WOW can come from just being functional and professional. It can come from being what it needs to be. After all, I want people to hire me to illustrate. Not design business cards, postcards or websites. So my WOW, as it should be is the art on my cards and site.

By taking a step back, and realizing that I just wanted to get my name out there and get work, made it easier. Pick the images, get the materials, and go.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, February 22, 2010 8:59 am

I’ve spent the last 4 weeks basically in non-stop work. And that won’t really stop for another few weeks, and I’m fine with that. The more I work the more my passion for drawing grows, the more I want to do. The more I do, the faster and better I get, allowing me to do even more.

Recently, I’ve had conversations with people that say they want to do something, but just can’t find the time, or don’t have the energy. Frankly, I find that to be an excuse. A fellow cartoonist, Melody Often, once told me about how she lived in a van for many months when she first moved to LA. She had a drawing desk, a light, a CD player, and a battery hooked up to run those. And she drew all the time. That’s pretty amazing. So when someone says they don’t have enough room to work, I just think it’s an excuse.

My friend Marc, tries to spend all his time painting and creating. I find that inspiring. We send each other screen shots of what we are working on, for feedback. Because we are both passionate about doing the best work we can, so we use each other (and other people) as checks. Sometimes you are just to close to see objectively, so having someone else give input helps a lot.

I’m a doer. Unless I’m actually doing something, I generally don’t talk about the things I want to do. I’ve got lots of ideas. But I only talk about that which I’m actually working on, and only in limited amounts. I’m a firm believer in putting the energy into doing the work, not talking about the work.

Passion allows me to accomplish a lot. I think it’s a real mark if a person is serious about being a creative type. At this point, even though it would be nice not to have deadlines, I can’t see myself not drawing. This morning, I finished the last details on a project, and then sent the final files off to the client. I said I would give myself an hour to read, before I get started on the next job, but that lasted on 20 minutes, before I started writing this. I really can’t just walk away from the drawing board (so to speak, since I work digitally).

Passion for what you do, is an amazing force.

Oh and here is the final version of that sketch of the guy breaking out of the ropes from my last post. Enjoy.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, January 17, 2010 5:59 am

Lately I’ve been saying to myself, “If you want to be a cartoonist, you need to draw cartoons”. Not that I don’t draw cartoons, just that I need to pick up the pace at which I do. It’s certainly not for a lack of ideas. Currently, I have 4 ideas for graphic novels that I’ve written notes and parts about, and have outlined the story. They are much more then “I have an idea about a comic about space worms!” (Great, now I have 5 graphic novels I want to do…).I would love to take Kool Aid Gets Fired and do a longer version of it. Currently I’m working with someone on a comic for a submission for Zuda Comics.

I have a host of smaller one off comics that I’ve scripted out. An idea for an ongoing comic that can be done in sections, because each section stands alone.

So, yeah ideas, I got. I have the desire and ambition, what I am building is discipline to sit here and work. Hence my new mantra. I wake up and I tell myself that. And I try and keep it in mind during the day. It’s easy to get distracted in this day and age. Internet gives the illusion of human interaction. Video games give the illusion of accomplishment (When it’s always just stick and carrot). TV lets you take your mind off the hook. Even our phones are a distraction.

The fact is, I’m never going to be the cartoonist I want to be if I don’t develop the discipline to work on comics, all the time, not just when the fire is hot. I am developing making the fire hot as much as I can.

You can apply that mantra to anything you want in life. If you want to lose weight, you need to do things to lose weight, if you want to be muscular, you must work out work and build your muscles.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, January 7, 2010 5:02 pm

My last post, I wrote about using social networks to find work, like Twitter. One of the people I follow, twitted about Chris Sotomayor doing twits about coloring comics, something I am trying to get more work in. So I followed him, and he had some great things to say.

And then as a treat to his new followers, decided to do a live broadcast of him coloring a page for a comic. So about 10 of us logged in and got to watch and listen to him explain his process, and why he was doing what he was doing, in terms of color, lighting, and reader focus.

We got to ask questions and talk it was a great spur of the moment thing.

I’ve heard some artists say they avoid twitter and facebook. And I understand why, it’s way to easy to get sucked in and find you spent 5 hours bouncing around these social networks, chatting and such. I sometimes do it myself. The trick is to limit it. Discipline in how often you check them. I tend to try and make checking them a reward for doing X amount of work.

So, when used right, they can lead to some great things.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, December 19, 2009 9:55 am

Each year I make my own Christmas cards and print them out. So here are the three cards for this year.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, December 15, 2009 11:47 am

An important aspect of being an artist, is being organized, and often it’s a subject that seldom gets talked about. I’m a big supporter of being organized, and when it becomes a habit, it can really save you. Example: several months ago, I was working an onsite temp job, and had lots of down time. During one of those down times, I wrote down a bunch of notes and script for a follow up to Kool Aid Gets Fired, to be included in the reprint.

I did some sketches, and then had to put it away to focus on paying work, and now I can get back to it. I thought I had handwritten them out, as I generally do, and hadn’t gotten around to typing out. But looking through all my current project journals, I couldn’t find them. Oh here is a sketch from the new work.

So I looked in the folder on my computer, and low and behold it was there! I had typed it out, in fact, there were no hand written notes, because it’s not a lengthy project.

Because I had gotten into the habit of putting things where they belong, when my memory came up with something different then reality, I wasn’t left having to redo work.

I credit my organization habits to working corporate publishing. You really have to be organized when you are the person handling all the files, for several books all being made at the same time. You either get organized, or end up being frustrated and hating your job.

But even without working at a big Publisher, or some other company, you can be organized.

I’ve got one folder I keep the files for my various comics in. Broken down by Client or project. Everything for that goes in the main folder, and gets organized inside. Black and white art, finished pages, layouts, reference art and more.

However you decide to organize yourself, the main thing is to be consistent. Each project will require it’s own categories. Certainly I don’t have a folder for LegalDocuments for my own work, like I do for a big client, like Marvel.

But I am consistent in putting the files where they belong. And not inventing a new category, or using temp folders, which end up never being deleted. It gets to the point where it becomes automatic, and so when I go searching, I generally find things right where they need to be.

You can be like this with your business side of being a professional artist. I have a folder for all my stuff pertaining to being a freelancer. Samples, resumes, art of business and postcards. Invoices, contracts (Which get printed out, a little note written on them for what, and then filed).

Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work. The biggest work is just figuring out your needs. Once you get that, the rest is just follow through. And your needs may change over time, or you many think of a better way of doing things.

For example, when I finish a page for a comic, I make a RGB jpg of the page, at 200 and 72 DPI, so if I have to show someone, it’s ready to go. If I take screen shots to send a visual along with a question, I keep those in a folder along with these low rez images. Why? Those are not files I will need to keep, so once the project is over, I can delete the folder, without losing anything important, and get back some space.

All those lo rez files and screen shots can start to take up space.

After all, which is more work, taking a few seconds to save a file to the right spot, or trying to remember the script and notes to a comic you wrote 3 months ago, and haven’t looked at more then once in that time?

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By Timothy Piotrowski, December 8, 2009 3:11 pm

So, having finished the comic for Marvel, and delivered the pages and having them accepted, I find myself with some free time. I will shortly be working on a 10-12 page story about Kool Aids son, for the reprint of Kool Aid Gets Fired, but while working on the Marvel project, I thought it would be interesting to take one of the character sketches I did for my DnD game, and turn it into a full color illustration.

Then my friend Marc, posted he was going to write about his progression on one of his works, so I’m coping his idea somewhat, and I’ll post how this illustration is coming along. This is an attempt to learn something new and to try something I haven’t tried before.

When I get started back on the Kool Aids son story, I will post progress here as well.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, November 24, 2009 4:53 pm

My friends Brian and Andy have a horror blog called CampBlood. Last week, in a last minute plea, they asked if I could help demo how to make a turkey meatloaf in the shape of a head.

Of course I could.

Here it is.

Enjoy.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, November 10, 2009 10:51 am

This morning I wavered back and forth between going to the gym and doing cardio there, or taking advantage of one the last few good weather days, and go biking along the river. I’m glad that I took the river, because I might not have come along this:

A 20 foot area of the beach had a collection of these rock stacks. I had passed someone farther up, that I first thought was collecting rocks from the banks of the river. I realized that she was in fact, stacking the rocks. I stopped and took several pictures with my iPhone, hoping the came out. I continued on my way, and if she was still there on my way back, I was going to talk to her.

She was still there, stacking rocks. I introduced myself and she told me her name was Bridget Polk.

I talked to her about what she was doing, and why. It started about a month ago, though the idea had been around for a while. A friend had shown her an artist in Sausalito, who stacked rocks as a form of art. Her friend said she probably couldn’t do it, which Bridget took as a challenge to prove she could.

She walks along the river for exercise. Her reward, instead of pancakes, is to stack rocks after wards. The area of rocks I saw, she said she has stacked on Sunday, and was surprised to come back today (Tuesday) and see them still standing, and in fact, other people had come along and added to what she had done.

Bridget finds stacking the rocks fun and a good form of meditation for her. She also feels she has a knack for it, and I agreed, as the stacks she makes don’t look like she picks the easy way to stack them, often with the widest end standing high up in the air, balanced on the point. Her only tools are a sense of balance, and the rubber gloves, with metal tips inside so as to prevent being hurt if a rock falls. She found that out the hard way, when she thought a rock was balanced, turned and the rock fell on her finger.

Her work as drawn attention from people passing by, and several photographers have come and taken pictures of her and her work. When she’s come back later, and finds people looking at her work and talking bout it, she’s tempted to say “I did that!” but instead just listens to what they say, or watches as they add their own touches to the stacks.

At first the idea of other people contributing to what she did, seemed odd, and a fellow stacker (He focuses on driftwood) said that he doesn’t mind if others add to what he did, or knocks them down. Once she saw how people reacted to them, and how it inspired them to try themselves, to contribute rather then knock down, she understood why he would feel that way, and embraces the idea that once she is done, what happens to the stacks, happens.

If you live in New York, and want to try and see these, I found her working along the Greenway, between 125 and 115 street area.

Here are more pictures I took of her rock stacks.

Here is a link to more pictures of her rockstacking.

Besides rocks, she works with balloons, and has also started working in wood. Which you can check out on her site.