alex you and i go way back to risd freshman year and we'll get into that in a minute but you've been working now as a freelance illustrator for several years you've done work for clients like adobe apple google mtv new york times baskin robbins and we'll get a chance to look at a lot of work from those clients in a minute but let's go way back to risky freshman year i believe i was your first drawing teacher in the fall semester so you have to tell everybody our how we met story yeah i mean you're literally the second class i believe i had like one teacher and then the next day was you so it's like second day of risd i had you and also met one of my best friends in this class and yeah i remember exactly what you said the first day you said you're allowed to play music i hate opera music you can but don't don't ever play that and i don't want to listen to broadway music and also if you're late if you're one minute late i'm gonna i'm not gonna even critique you so you're like you're notorious for being tough but it was tough love and it was like um you yeah a lot of people knew you by name because they're like oh you gotta clear out what anyways i'm not i'm not yeah i'm not gonna try to like not trying to raise you up or anything knock you down a bit well and actually we ended up working together at risd because you were my teaching assistant for a summer class and also a freshman drawing class and i remember you were the student you said to me being your class is like having stockhold syndrome yeah that's a that's pretty i put it in as my my quote on my yearbook so i would say that's accurate what did you say i mean if i put it as my quote it's definitely accurate to me i was like i was like i'm like she was so mean to me but no you were actually really nice it was just it was tough love like the whole clown cry me a river you know you're like apparently bob ross was apparently really tough because he was like like an army marine and then he started doing painting and everybody just thinks of him as like really nice you're like the same thing like people are probably like oh claire is just so nice and they're like you didn't know her back in college she was so tough anyway you ended up majoring in illustration at risd and let's talk a little bit about your senior year did you know at that point that you wanted to do freelance illustration um senior year was like kind of definitely this like weird period where i didn't i wanted to do freelance and i had um a teacher chris zelly who told me and he's like you have to be really proactive to be a freelancer and he kind of was actually a little bit open he's like i don't know if you you could do it and i honestly didn't really pursue it like go for it at first i actually went for like a salary kind of job being an in-house illustrator but then um i decided like later on after you know i started getting some requests for clients that i i decided to make that leap into freelance but it was definitely like a little scary and i was not really planning on doing it what do you think is the hardest thing about starting a freelance career i mean obviously it's like getting clients it's like how do you like go right to you know starting freelance and just kind of like okay i hope people come to me and like you know get that attention and uh and it's also just like and honestly it's like the budget like some people are like oh i saved five thousand dollars i can start doing freelance you're like five thousand dollars is going to burn through quickly and like a lot of people it takes like years to feel like they got like a financial grasp on it not to scare anybody away it's just like it is ton of it definitely kind of has its hustle to it for sure and freelance is not something you can just start you have to build it gradually over time and for a lot of people it takes several years to build that client list and to get that trust all right so what did you do right after graduation did you move to new york city i know you're in new york city now yeah so actually it was um it was senior year i like had no money i had 600 in my bank account i was still living just right off campus and um my girlfriend at the time like moved to portland because she started working at leica and i was kind of like left with six hundred dollars in my bank account and not knowing what i was doing with my life so i decided to actually get a i applied for a job and i got an internship at this like little company called marco polo um which was like a children's app company and they i didn't i didn't actually realize it was an internship until i got hired i thought it was like a real job but they like paid me like minimum wage and i was like really it was like 10 bucks an hour in new york city and like not being able to afford food and it was like real it was like not a fun experience and not financially until they finally hired me um and then i was actually like the salary man i was like oh i got an actual paycheck and that's how i was able to save money from that i was able to save money and build up so that when i did want to make my week to freelance i at least did have some money saved up to you know not worry dara is saying did you wet your pants a lot or a little going freelance full-time unexpectedly uh i i was fortunate like um i had um like i said i had some i did have some budget but it did i didn't have some nights where i was like oh my god did i make the right choice like you kind of feel it's like you don't have a safety net and that's what's scary it's like you feel like your whole life you have like that safety net or sorry when you have a job you have that safety net you're like at least like as long as i go to my nine to five and i don't get fired i'm gonna like still get a paycheck coming in but it's this is like you don't know when your job's gonna come when your next job is coming in and you have little bills of like of like health insurance which is like five hundred and thirty seven dollars and then rent which is like a thousand one hundred dollars and then like taxes and all this other stuff and you're just like oh my god like i have to like save money for taxes and that likes some i had some restless lights in the beginning it was definitely very very stressful and i know social media actually played a pretty significant role for you at the beginning of your career and i'll tell you five years ago i was like ah social media whatever but i feel like now it really is getting people bona fide work and for you there is a big moment because you actually did this illustration which changed your whole instagram presence tell us what happened with this illustrator um so i was like i was hitting like a thousand followers and i was like oh you know what i'm really getting into this i'm like oh i just want to get like a bunch i was at a time when i just wanted to get followers so i was like okay let's think like let's actively think about like what makes gets you followers and i was like i i i know you people like this picture i don't but it's for this reason i was like it's like okay i know like cute things and like cats and like you know getting like um big eyes that are very visible on small icons because you're in the explore tab and like all this other stuff um and then juxtaposing that with like you know this jelly eye with like these and and then essentially i like took like another person's picture of a cat and drew it and then i said in the comments and this is what actually got me like a bunch of this is what happened is like i said does anybody know whose cat this is and everybody was tagged that photographer who's like this korean cat lady who's like got a million some followers and then she's because everybody's tagging her she saw it she reposted it which brought traffic back to my instagram page from her million followers and then that so i woke up to like eight thousand likes and because i had eight thousand likes from just waking up the next morning i like i became trending as like number one on the art page of instagram which then gave me about like three thousand or four 000 followers within about a week's time and that's like just like it just like bumped me up from that i was like oh wow like just the single picture i was like i could maybe keep doing this but i also kind of felt like i was selling my soul i was like i don't want it i don't want to do another one but it's cute it's not i don't know a lot of people that like my cat picture it did lead to bonafide clients this was not just a bunch of likes it actually became something with visible results so what started happening in terms of those visible results well i know one client that like really liked it was that got me a job which is um the really famous company uh no brow no bra press which um if people in the illustration community really know and they really respect that publishing house and they said specifically they they hired me because they really loved my cat and they wanted to make a book just like on my cat alone and people are like wow that's like not only like a children's book place wants to like make a book just on that like concept of your illustration but they it's like no brow of all places um but yeah it's it's um there were some jobs like because of these followers i was getting in i was getting like you know people like followers from like art directors and people and i would get emails being like hey i really like your artwork um and i would love to hire you for a project and that's kind of how instagram works in most cases nephtali says this is for alex how many places can illustrators work in i'm studying speech pathology but i want to combine it with illustration that's a great question can't wait what is what is speech pathology can can you type that i don't know you can't type it maybe nephtali you can explain in the comments what speech pathology is but i think the basic question is can you do a freelance career and something else at the same time or do you really have to go 100 in no no most people actually do combine it with other things uh i wouldn't say it's like necessarily speech pathology but that's really awesome and i actually think people who are more further apart and can combine those two they make the most interesting art in general because they have such diverse knowledge and things but um most people i know actually they could do like full-time as like say a graphic designer for like a publishing house and then they do freelance on the sides like specifically new york times or sorry um editorial so they might work for like new york times or something because that you know you can just work you know in the evenings and you know get your reputation as a freelancer through that way alex let's take a look at this animated illustration because you do a lot of pieces that are almost like short film so i'll just play this while we're talking about it can you just tell us what's your process like what software do you use to make this well it does i mean it's not this is not a good example of like software because this is actually my first like animation i ever made for a client this is like my first client ever which is baskin robbins and they asked me to make like looping animations and i didn't know how to necessarily do that so i did everything in like illustrator and photoshop and then when they wanted and it was like i spent like day and night trying to complete it but if i did it nowadays i could probably do it within like a few hours but it was like then i was like spending day and night trying to get it done and then they were like okay can we like have some changes on it i was like changes like what that's like a thing like they're like and i was like oh no like this is gonna be like so bad i i told them i was like i honestly don't know how to change it and they were like well we'll just have to do it in-house then we were hoping you could do it it's like oh no but that's like it's like first job it's like whatever neil is asking i'm still in high school should i worry about this stuff indus instagram still kind of scares me well like what advice would you give if you're a young art school student and you want to build your instagram presence is that really important or do people need to not worry about that well when you're in high school no i actually think it's probably best not to i think specifically in high school it's just like that's it's it's like a very rough time in general and i just think like trying to rely on you especially in high school like from my experience it's like you're kind of more relying on your self-identity with other people and you're just kind of like i want to get likes i want to probably get follows and just kind of like you might rely too much on it and honestly it's like you you're also probably expected to have a style and we can talk about this later but really in high school and college you shouldn't have it's good to not have a style evolved quite yet instead that should be something that maybe you can hopefully come on later in life um through your experience because you might pigeonhole yourself to have if you have a style early on and you might be like well this is what i have to do and i can't explore anything else this is what i do so i think it's good to just like you know just do you for the time being and then maybe later on build it up but so let's take a look at here's another animation from baskin robbins can you tell us where they put this was this their website or where did this actually go because that context is so important for illustration so they want they gave me some prompts and they were like and there was like some of them was like yeah like a cloud throwing up sprinkles or like i don't remember the other ones like a neon light with prayer hands or something and this one was like an ice cream cone twerking so i was like oh i'm picking that one and then that was like one of the ones where they like asked for a change and i didn't know how to change it so they did that in and the actual advertisement i don't think i linked it because it honestly disturbs me but they animated where the ice cream cone was not very like like just a happy twerk it was like a vicious like staring into your souls like yeah you like jiggling the butt really bouncing them he's like yeah this is great right and you're just like oh god no what and people in the comments on youtube was like this is a thing of nightmares like everybody's comment was like i hate this so much and i was like no it was like it was it was super funny but i took it out of i think i took it off it might be on there but um i think i took it off my website because i was like yeah it's probably it's a little too intense we'll just say well i'm curious do you get a lot of response in terms of when you have an illustration published or do you just sort of do the illustration and it goes off into the magazine and that's sort of the end you get feedback from the audience uh what do you when you say feedback from the audience do you mean like somebody sees it in the newspaper and they come to me or is is that what you mean uh rarely it does happen some people do like send me an email being like i've had a few nice emails like some really random people being like i just read this article and i just wanted to say i really love your illustration and that's it that's all i just wanted to say and i'm like oh well that's really nice um but i do like i do get a fluctuation like i get like people that might like come on to my instagram and follow me or they might be other art directors i might save my website because they saw my work from another client though that's how like that's how you kind of expand in the freelance world is like you work on really cool projects and people go like oh i just saw this project on my feed from and that was you and i follow you and blah blah blah would you say that in the illustration world everybody knows each other the little clubhouse type of thing or is it bigger than that because i do think that in a lot of art circles it does feel like this little clubhouse where everybody hangs out yeah it can it's kind of both it's like it's kind of clubhouse where it's like yeah you but here's the thing is that they're very open if you want to talk to like a freelance illustrator and somebody that you really admire i'm gonna say like there's a good chance that they'll like if you give them a genuine question and want to talk to you like they'll spend the time and talk to you and you'll and then just you can form a connection like that um but it is like i we we do kind of like yeah you kind of you know a lot of each other and that's just kind of the natural situation of working in freelance like sometimes you go like oh i really admire this one illustrator that might be a generation older than me and they have like their own like almost like it's like their own group of like illustrators that they have but it's like in the end it's like you you kind of create your own group from your own generation and era and you still group and you can you hang out and you still network and you still talk to everybody um from like from all around it's it's really nice though uh well how do you meet the art directors do you send them a cold call email do tell like how does that actually happen because i think that's the part of the process that people truly just don't know how to go about i mean i know that there is that book isn't it called like children society writers markets something like that and there's like art directors in there but oh i literally have a book i don't know if you can see it in there but i do have a book that's called price that i think that's actually just for pricing but it's talking about like freelance work but um no i actually so i did gave somebody a portfolio review and i said like and i showed her how you can find like a client's email and do a cold email within and it only takes about three minutes to find all the information it's like pro stocking you like essentially for example you can go on to like the new york times website find an illustr an illustration you like from one of the articles find that artist name go on their instagram the person on instagram will most likely say oh here's an article or illustration a different article thank you art director at blah blah blah blah so they literally said that our director's name you find that art director and you do another google search with that person find their website you find their email and it's like essentially it's like you can create an excel worksheet it's like sheet and then you just like essentially do like cold emails where you say like i saw like hey blah blah blah blah like hi john doe like i saw your work like uh with this one artist and i really love both of like i love like how you collaborated i'd love to like also work with you one day blah blah blah and then send them an email and you can send out like mass emails so a lot of freelancers do that where they send out mass emails and they get their collection of art directors emails um and essentially like yeah if you find like say if you find one format for like new york times and be like oh this is like how their email is format formatted as long as you find know that format you can apply it to everybody so you'll be like oh so it's john.joe at the new york times and go oh then it must be jane doe at new york and you can essentially just you just do that you just go like oh now that they may not give their new york times like you know but i can now use that format and just you know just be logical about it and now i know their email because it's all the same so yeah it's like it's like being smart about like stalking and giving gender i've done the exact same thing with journalists because you just have to find one person's email and then you reformat everybody else and you're good yeah you did it for like you did some stuff for huffington post i believe right it was i did well i used to blog for huffington post but lately i've been stalking a lot of journalists and you you can find stuff if you are smart about it and like i said it takes like three minutes to just find an art director's like you guys can try go on to like the go on to like whatever publication you like go and just like find an illustration you like find that illustrator go to their instagram or twitter find who they find an illustration that you know that tags that art director find the art director reverse stalk them find their website it's just like it's actually really easy um so you can yeah you just can build an excel worksheet that just has like 400 people like 400 contacts and be like here's their email here's a phone number how you like recognize their work and then you can type up your your cold emails and send it out to them and just be polite and genuine you know all right let's take a look at this really quick clip which is from something you did for mtv so is this the same technique as you did when you were doing the baskin-robbins illustration or have you now switched to different software oh no that's totally yeah that one's so the basketball is like all photoshop and it's like technically cell animation but um that of the one from mtv is all cgi and i use a program called cinema 4d and essentially it was because i was using it for a product with google and i ended up having to use it so i had to learn it within a few weeks and and then after google i was like super into cgi for a quick bet that i decided to like do a whole animation for mtv i had i didn't know how they were i wanted me to do a 15-second ad and i had no idea how to do a 15-second ad i was like i don't really like animate like large things i just kind of do like fun little gifs so let's just figure this out i don't know i'll just do it in cgi i've never really done a big cgi thing like this so i hope they like it and they did wait a second did you teach yourself cinema 4d or did you know that from school no no i never learned it from school i just taught it took me like i saw i had to when i got my big fruit like when i worked at marco polo i quit because i got a really big job for google and it was like a massive residency job um and they said i this is where you have to say like what a scope is in a project but essentially i didn't tell them that i would be doing the cgi and they just assumed i would so they didn't put in the budget so then when they were like come to the cgi part they were like oh alex they're gonna do cgi right and i was like i i don't know how to do cgi i just paint and they're like oh we thought you'd work with cgi so then i had to be like uh you know what i i can just like figure it out so i don't i got the program it took me like two weeks and um to like figure it out it's like a little bit more difficult than photoshop but it's cinema 4d is like a really intuitive cgi program and then like they imported into a program called unreal engine which is for you know making games and stuff like that and they made an interactive vr simulation with my cgi work but because yeah that i had to learn on the job for google i was like i don't i'm yeah i can do this and it definitely doesn't look good it doesn't look good like the final result i'm like oh man that looks like that's some rough cgi that's like bad but you know well alex that reminds me of the time that they asked me to teach a class at risd on linear perspective and i agreed but i had never done linear perspective before so i was like okay i guess i've got some summer homework so you're not the only one like that all right a little question from dara who says how many tech skills did you enter the market with and how many did you have to learn to stay relevant and hireable great question hmm um how many tech skills did you enter well for example it's just like so there's a thing called a pipeline and essentially a pipeline is like when a company a studio hires you they like want to know that you can essentially work like a gear in a cop like a cog in like a clockwork and so that's like a pipeline you have to be able to know like a certain program to pass on to the next person for the next step so for example like photoshop is industry standard and that's like a program that i might use um and that's like what is expected to know but cinema 4d is like i just taught my i just because i kept doing it people i guess some clients were kind of impressed that i could combine it and they like did kind of like to hire me to be able to do both in some ways um most of the time i think people like like me for my painting stuff though um in photoshop and then they just kind of go like we'll figure out how to make it in some sort of way just like we just want like your style in it we'll just figure out how to be animated we don't know how we'll be done but we'll figure it out which is i'm like okay good luck on that i don't know how to do it either so but that's always that's always what they say they just like they just wanna figure they just want to make it look like my illustration and then we'll figure out how to animate it dark bulb is saying what resources did you have to learn cgi yeah i mean did you take like an online class did you just look at youtube how did you actually learn the software yeah just youtube videos those ones where it's like some guy speaking russian and he's just like you just kind of it's like eight minutes long and it has like a hunt like half of its dislikes because the audio is really bad and you're just like sitting there going like yeah this is just how i learn it's that's why i said fortunately the program's very intuitive it's like it's like oh cube oh there's literally a button for cube i made a cube oh cool oh i can make a light there's a button for light and i guess i can just grab it and move it around um actually claire's husband's taught maya and maya is like a it's another cgi program that's used with like it's also industry standard but it's more for character animation and it is difficult so i when i had his class i thought that all cgi was like that and i was like this is terrible and then i learned cinema 4d and i was like oh wait this is like really easy it's like not it's not actually that bad so that's why i was shocked when i saw you doing all this i'm like i thought you told me you were not into cgi and it's like a total 360. yeah your husband your husband made me not like cgi what can i say he was he i was just like this is everybody who does my it's like one of the more difficult programs to learn so that's what and it was like not something to go in like without any knowledge about it so i was like oh this is rough i don't know how to do this at all and then it's like cinema 4d is just like like i said it's like click of the buttons and you're just like oh look at now it's rendered it's beautiful raphael is saying have you ever turned down a job yeah yeah um so it's very common i have to turn down jobs because it might be so for example um for jobs that are like on day rates you can't take another job because they're essentially saying i'm giving you my service for that day and they might be like hey can we put you on a hold like a booking hold and essentially i give them that promise i won't take another job for that amount of time uh that they have me on hold even though the job so it might be hold for like a month but the job might be for only a week long i have to say like i won't take any job within that month because you might need me and then essentially that's the thing is that all these jobs always come at the same time it's like the annoying thing they all come at the same day it's like five jobs like all within that same week they all come and they're just like we need we want to hire you blah blah blah and then i'm just like i can't i i just took this i put myself on a month-long hold so there's like a thing called first holds and second holds where essentially first holds is like your first promise and then second holds is like it's like if i don't get this this one then i can negotiate with them you'll be my second choice essentially um but yeah it's it's it definitely turned on lots of jobs and some really good ones like i turned on facebook and nike for like some some of them and i was just like oh no like especially when i was starting off i was like oh no that's like the biggest jobs i'll ever have that i don't ever get and i was like okay nowadays a lot of freelancers tell me that oftentimes it's feast or famine so how do you deal with that the lack of predictability is so hard i mean how have you managed that yeah that's like that's um uh luckily coronavirus coming around and taxes are delayed until you get a good job and then yeah it's just like you're just kind of like for a long period of time it's like being on the edge you're just like oh man like i don't know if i can pay my month's rent this month and then it took but that's the thing it's like that was in the beginning now i feel a lot better now um but it definitely took a while i will say that i'm not a very good example because as i said i'm not very proactive and trying to get clients i kind of just re i'm pretty bad in the sense i let them come to me but people who are very proactive can like do quite well and they can like if they're as long as you do like cold emails and you know stuff like that you know sending their pdfs to work or like google slide links of your your work to clients and be like i'd love to work with you let me know if there's a job here's my availability you know so that's it's a little different for other people though tom is asking how complicated is taxes social security health insurance contracts and accounting issues as a freelancer do you do all of that yourself no i actually can't because um my family there's like my family has some things where it's like we we our taxes are just too complicated because of some things that you know property and some stocks so essentially like i just can't do it myself um but yeah you good thing is like you should write everything off that you can otherwise you know you're gonna be getting like a giant you're gonna realize you're gonna be also like owing a lot you can write off a lot of things as long as it's legal you know be good about it don't yeah that's a little bit important it's important to say i have some friends who are just like oh i just write off everything and i'm just like is that like but can you do that they're like nobody checks as long as you don't get audited and i was like okay my family plays on the safe side we they're like no write things off but like no as long as it's like appropriate to the government yeah of course well let's talk about these logistics because i'll tell you whenever i do lectures i have to hunt people down to get paid like these people that hire you they do not keep track like i actually emailed somebody this week i said listen it's been three months i have not been paid so like oh we just need an invoice and i'm like it didn't occur to you to tell me that three months ago i mean what do you do with that when you have these clients that are just a big pain in terms of getting paid yeah well you can um i haven't done this but i did hear uh one thing that you can do so on your because you do send your invoices out and then what you can say is a thing called net 30 and essentially net 30 means is that you have to be paid within those 30 days after receiving that invoice otherwise they'll take you put on essentially a fee as like an artist you can be like oh no you owe me more money because you you delayed it uh i haven't done it i don't know people who have done i have heard of people that said that they put on like a net 30 thing unless it's like i don't know five percent fee or whatever i don't know but then they um essentially what you do yeah i've had some clients where they don't pay me for like four months um i'm not gonna say their names but uh let's just say one of them was famous in the news just in march because because they were notorious for bon appetit so yeah i've already just said the name but they're they're right the magazine was really nice it's not their fault i like the art director just want to say that she sees us and be like no no you're great hemi vanilla is saying i'm an illustrator but i don't know how to sell my style so how do you do that alex how do you have to find people that publish illustrations that look like yours do you just do cold calls and hope somebody bites how do you sell your style sell your style i so i mean i guess like as an illustrator you think of your some people think of themselves as like a brand and don't don't get intimidated by that word brand is like it's not like super corporate and but it's like brand is just like kind of like yeah like having that style and like an art director might want to hire you because they know that what you're gonna produce is almost like it's like they can they know what you're gonna make and they're not gonna be unpredictable with like whatever you're gonna make and uh and a lot of times that they want to hire you for their style um i don't know what like what do you mean by like selling it though like how do you how to sell your style because this like sounds like like are you just saying like oh have a cool style and then you'll get clients like what is what do you mean by that like i i would say i mean hammy you can tell us in the chat but i would say how do you know who to approach because there's so many magazines and publications out there you have to whittle it down and so do you look at the illustrations and say the new yorker and say oh they like this type of stuff i think i'm gonna make that or do you have your own style and then try to match the magazine to yourself like because a lot of magazines have a certain look for their illustrations yeah i personally would say to a degree just make your own work and then try to find something that more matches to it like you don't really want to like try to put yourself into a situation where you're just trying to like you'll be like oh everybody's like really into gradients right now i'm gonna i guess i should make things that are like gradients and that's like a trend right now and it's like you should not do that art directors don't actually care as much for that like it's like a little percentage that they might like be like oh yeah it looks cool maybe because it's like in style right now but for the most part it's like they really like originality and they do like people who are like very confident what they do and might be not as they might not have seen it before um so i just think like you just shouldn't try to follow exactly like what other people are trying to do and thinking like oh this is what the client wants so i guess i'm just going to try to like make my art look like with the client but then that's what i said like but you know to a degree don't also just like be total opposite and be like oh they really seem to like corporate friendly children's books but i like to draw creepy like creepy monster creatures that are like from what's a scary story to tell in the dark kind of stuff it's like you know have a degree of like knowing like what your client is into naftali is saying do you need to do digital to work in freelance or can you get by with just doing traditional oh yeah you can just do traditional of course nobody honestly like you can find like people doing like for example illustration people think oh if you if you don't have an experienced illustration you might be like oh illustration is just like flap design that you see in magazines or children book or it's like working for dreamworks but honestly it's like illustration is like everything it's like you can do sculpture and photograph it and then you know give it to clients or you know installations it's actually very broad so it's like i would say that traditional there's a lot of it is a lot more probably time consuming work in some ways and maybe making edits might be a bit of a pain but there's a lot of illustrators that do traditional medium i'd say pretty half and half honestly it's like yeah digital or or uh traditional all right well let's talk a little bit about your actual process alex so we're going to actually show this clip of your pinterest board so tell us how this plays into your process yeah um definitely like if i'm for example if i'm having like kind of a slow period okay first i'll just say that like it's good to just have like something to have as inspiration and references and i just love pinterest because you can like once you find something that you like it will just know based on what you liked that it will give you a pretty good if you click on that picture it'll give you like a pretty good like accurate of like other pictures that you might like and so you can really just kind of go down like the the what's it called like the house alice just going down the hole robin rabbit hole thank you i said i almost said alice in wonderland hole because i don't know why but um yeah you can like essentially just like go down the rabbit hole and just keep collecting more and more and more of like art that you like feel that it's really working and you like and then from that you can take that and then be like oh i'm not feeling really inspired i'm not really making art i like to just go down and just like start looking at it and just getting inspired by what i like and then from there just like taking things like oh i like this idea and this and i like this idea and this and it's especially helpful it's editorial because ideas are constantly recycled so if i'm like struggling with the concept i might just go to my pinterest board and be like just kind of like work that brain a bit and be like oh i kind of like how this maybe i can combine this with this oh yeah that's like an idea because we always get stuck and we always just get kind of like we kind of put ourselves on repeat of like what we're trying to we're just like get stuck on the same idea so it's sometimes hard to break away and sometimes just looking at other people's art can help you break away from ideas for sure i mean i think that we all sometimes need to reset every now and then and i think you actually told me that texture is a really big part of your process now and actually that goes back to freshman year because i gave you a project on texture so where's the connection there you're all about texture it's not one project you're all you're all texture it was like uh i mean personally like cgi i love texture because it's like you can you can essentially like get the feel and because you understand things like specularity and all this other stuff you can like learn to apply and where it is and it's like oh this now looks like can turn from sandpaper to fuzz to like and it's just like people really like textural things we like to see artwork that can you can just kind of like touch or taste or smell and it just like really gets you involved into the artwork so um yeah i just think it's good in general like when you're following artwork it's just good to like not just follow like oh i like doing concept character artwork i just only gonna follow what i think of as like concept character artwork or like you know dreamworks artwork it's like it's good to broaden yourself and just really branch out even from illustration being like i follow ceramics artists because i love or glass artist or something like that and i just love that the work that they make from that and thinking oh i love how it's like translucent here i wonder if i could apply that here yeah and tell us about this clip which is you actually making your own references for textures in cinema 4d how does this work yeah i mean i yeah i love this i can use it for textures and i definitely love it like for example that golden metallic look it's like i can use that and just be like oh like if i'm trying to draw something i can use things as like reference to figure out how it actually works because it's literally it's literally using the light rays and making it accurate so then i can just essentially be like oh i like how you know this metal looks and i can learn how it like reflects off of like surfaces and oh it's kind of like brown here but it's yellow here and it's like it just really helps in some ways and it just really helped me understand lighting in general and how materials have like substance and be like specularity and things called fresnel and falloff and stuff like that which i guess sounds like gibberish when i say it like that but it's um it does have its benefits and i learned that just taking that i can apply it to my paintings and then i'm like oh wow it just elevated it um yeah well do you ever use photo references or is this all just out of your head no no i use photo i use photo reference most of my stuff is normally out of my head but when i do but when i get into things like i've been drawing a lot of people more recently so i use like references for like not like not like cartoonish people because those are more like geometric shapes i don't really need a reference for that like in that slide but like my most recent stuff like on my instagram it's like more photo or it's like more like realistically looked with stylization and i need to a little bit know about like you know the zagomatic arch was it's like your favorite bone is the zygomatic arch i always remember you saying that um and it's just like little things like that and you like kind of be like how does it actually shape and form again how is the muscles when i like when i like do an angry face what's the what's the like how is it tense up here and stuff like that um yeah that's like definitely i use references for certain things i'm not gonna like i don't know how to draw a shoe i'm gonna like look up how to draw a shoe yeah too that type of stuff too liam is saying which artists and references do you find yourself looking at frequently for inspiration we've looked at your references ceramics and textures but there any particular artists or illustrators that you like looking at oh i think it just like depends on like i go through sometimes phases and then i have like my favorite artists that i just like really like i don't know if there's like anybody that like i can say that i like look at as like the top of my head but there's always like there's always like maybe something i'm like i kind of get drawn to if i idea and then maybe i like i don't know i don't i don't know if there's like anybody i can think of that i'm like i can think of as really as a ref an artist reference i know like i've had some like um he's like a friend of mine cesar polizer he's a cgi artist who does editorial work and i really was digging how he uses like the square format and his composition is like it's very like he can fit everything within this like frame of a square on instagram and it's just like i love his like how he does compositions in that way and it's like very simple and very elegant um and so i was just kind of like oh man i just like want to do things like that like i just like want to try to do something like that um he's like definitely like on top of my head i know another cgi wrist is like jack sacks too he does like he did some really crazy things too and i sometimes like oh i love how it's just like eyeballs stacked up on top of each other or something and yeah he's cool yeah i like both of the guys juliana is saying can you give advice for those who are really just starting out uh that's very broad but uh what type of advice like specifically i guess um like freelancers a nutshell like like in general starting a freelance career what was the most pivotal maybe action or mindset that you took well i guess like one of the things i tell people is like you know one you should want to fail so and this kind of relates to style and stuff like this too it's like one you don't want to try to force yourself to have a style it usually comes naturally through your process and you learn what makes you happy with your process and just kind of goes like this this just feels right and then like over time through this process you develop you might gain a style and then also you don't want to like pigeonhole yourself into like limiting yourself with things and you should just want to like explore and fail at the same time especially when you're starting out um so when you're so you it's good to fail and don't think of artwork as essentially like this grandeur piece that you want to hang up on the fridge but instead think of it as i made this i can almost like don't don't attach your emotions to it just be like i made this i learned this from making this i can push that art piece now to the side and start on a new thing by taking what i learned and now applying it to my new thing and you just keep doing that down the trend it just like keep going down and you just you just gotta like learn to like yes put in your portfolio if you think it's good but don't get like emotionally attached and be like i want to get a tattoo of it i want to hang it up on my wall it's like no just like do it move on and then it will help you like accept failures when things don't look good because people might critique it and if you get emotionally attached you're gonna be like but i love it it's like my thinking i must be a shitty artist or terrible artist and blah blah blah and you gotta just move on from that yeah well let's take a look at a project where we're looking here at the sketches but we also have this work in progress video can you tell us what's going on in here yeah this is like i've been getting into using not just like drawing and painting in photoshop but i use like cgi to combine with it so it's like i painted the face but then i'll use like the shadowing from the cgi clouds and the water because because like you're on a deadline and you know you're also on a limited budget you're not gonna i don't really wanna like paint every wave so i just decided i'm just gonna make it in cgi real easily and then i just took that and then i was like okay and now i can take the lighting passes and be like okay let's use the lighting in the shadows here and just like put it here and same for the clouds and honestly i like the fact there's a few artists that do similar ways of working um like an artist named beef strong he does something similar to that and his it looks really cool it's like you can't tell if it's painted you can't tell if it's cgi but it's just like learning how to take shortcuts is really important in freelance too it's just like you you you want to make it look great but also don't like spend a million years trying to make it when you're only getting paid like 500 bucks or something or 300 bucks well isn't the turnover time for especially newspapers crazy tight i mean new york times isn't it like 48 hours 24 what is it like yeah i've had i've had a job that was like 48 hours but it's usually it's like about maybe a little less than a week maybe it's like five days maybe a week um and they just you're kind of especially me where i feel like some people is like very like pen and ink and they can just kind of quickly draw something it looks like mine it's like painted and i'm kind of just like ah great yes i'll do it but ah like it's like i have this sometimes done i unfortunately have a process where i learned how to make it real quickly so i can pump out work a lot quicker than i used to but um yeah it's you have to learn how to take shortcuts and be quick and efficient with things yeah naftali is saying have you had clients that were hard to work with how do you deal with that yeah definitely i've had uh mainly one client that i've usually actually had all my clients have actually been pretty good i think it's just you know some people kind of as an artist you might kind of it's good to not come off as cold and sterile and just think of things like oh i make you artwork you pay me money don't really think of things as that think of things as almost like you're working with an art director and you're collaborating and it's good to just try to keep a healthy positive atmosphere um so just kind of like just sometimes it's hard yeah it's not easy to sometimes i just want to be like yeah just here you go blah blah blah but if you can just try to like make sure that like what they're doing is appreciated you know that you're happy to make the work i did have one and he was like very nitpicky and just kept lying change after change after change until finally i was like i can't i sorry i can't do this i just like i i felt kind of bad he was like the only one um and honestly you do have to just kind of have a spine and step up if it's like change after change after change you have to be like look at like we be polite look at we we've been doing this for a while i can't really do any more changes i think we should renegotiate and be like if we keep doing this like renegotiate the pricing on this then because it just kind of feels like yeah that's why sometimes in the contract you say i only do three changes and then anything more you put out of b onto yeah leanna is saying how many pieces do you think a beginner illustrator should have before they do cold emails to art directors your work inspires me so much i also combined cgi and illustrations ooh awesome great to know um yeah it's not really i mean obviously you probably want to have more than like three pieces but like um it's not really about the quantity it's not about like i it's more about like knowing that you feel like your portfolio uh just feels strong and and doesn't feel very amateur um i guess it's kind of hard to know when you've made that that leap i think it's like you feel confident in your process and once you feel like you know how your process is and that everything kind of feels like if a client sees your work and they go like i know that this is like an alex keisling work i'm gonna hire him because i know his style and i know i can feel like he can match with the thing and he's not gonna be unpredictable and give me some random other things um but yeah it's not about like maybe necessarily it's like yeah maybe i don't know but if you want a number maybe like more than eight though like you say like eight pieces more than eight pieces i don't know i'm just like saying it's not really about the number it's more about like the quality of work that you're making and then alex how do you actually show them your work do you say go to my website do you give them files how does that actually happen yeah there's actually a few ways depending on the client so if i'm working for a studio it might be that i would if i would just send a cold email i can send a pdf of my work so clients essentially when they see your work they're only going to spend like two seconds maybe one figure about two seconds three seconds at looking at work before they just go and say like yes or no no to it so they'd be like yes no no yes they're gonna get like a big thing of emails from people from like potential artists and they go like yes no yes yes no no no yes you can tell what's good and what's not and you just send like essentially like a pdf of your work with like just like you know just like a thing of your work you don't go explanations and say like oh i did this with this and this just your art pieces make it well graphic design or use google slides or if you're doing like editorial you might send it like a mailchimp which is you guys should look up if you know it's mailchimp is great to like send like a nice you can you can do a nice email that says like hi i saw your work with this person at new york times and then you have a nice picture so they can right when they open that email they see your nice artwork with some nice little better than just like a blank email like a boring email and then they can go like oh that's really awesome oh there's a hyperlink to their their instagram or twitter oh there's a website oh like this is great let's put them on file um so that's like what you would want to do for like sending out to clients pdfs google slides mailchimp yeah matthew is saying i'm a freelance illustrator i also love comic books i'm afraid if i start to draw comics art share it in my social media it would ruin my portfolio do you think diversity is good why would it ruin your portfolio i think they're saying that if you do this type of illustration all of a sudden you start adding comics which is different than your illustration work is that problem i guess i can well and i guess i can relate it to other things because to me like i'm like no no like if you're showing narrative like that's awesome like show like you know add it in but i will say like i understand that feeling of being like oh i have myself kind of like as a brand and set style and then i want to do something kind of different maybe that doesn't fit what everything else i'm doing if you feel like it's really throwing off i you can always put it in a section on your website um but i think it's good to don't don't hold yourself back on it if you want to do something just like yeah go and work on it and if you think that it feels really out of place you can probably still find a place on your website that doesn't feel like it's out of place like you can still maybe make a section for it i don't know if you have a website or something like that but just don't hold yourself back if you want to do it do it flower child says i'm in my last year of art school right now would now be a good time to reach out to art directors or are they looking for graduates oh they don't care about graduates or not that's like that's a misconception that's they honestly um nobody really unless you're working maybe for no not even nobody really cares nobody cares if you have a bachelor's nobody cares if you have a master's it's really about your portfolio of work if you think that your work is like if you look at and go like i think that my work for example if you want to do editorial and you say okay my work it's like it really not stylistically fits editorial but it as a it can fit conceptually with editorial pieces and be like okay like it can tell a story really simply and like it's very readable for you know for people to see and it's very friendly for magazines like then yeah start hitting up and sending things out it's never really too never too soon because if you send it out and they don't get back to you just take it as a grain of salt wait a few more months make more artwork and then send more send more out of it it's very common like everybody won't hear like it's very common you won't hear back that's like just an accepted fact and everybody knows it in freelance when you send out cold emails you're probably not going to hear back so don't take it personally just hold on just wait a little bit longer do it more and then again you're not going to hear back do it again do it again so just just do it persist you know you'll get you'll get a you know they'll find you sister bear is saying how do you keep from getting burnt out from client work yeah um i that's why i said like cgi is really nice so i might do i go through phases where i'm like i just do pure cgi or get really into like cgi and animation and then i get burnt out from that so then i go i'm like oh it burns out from this so then i start painting and then i get burnt out from painting after like a month then i go back to cgi and i found that to be really helpful is like being able to essentially switch between things like there's some artists who are like i only draw i only paint portraits and that's all i do and i go like man i would get burned i would have an existential crisis of like this is what my life is this is all i do so it's like being able to know that you can explore other things one you gain more knowledge and learn how to apply it to both those things i can learn from painting how to apply to cgi and from cgi can plant quiet painting so then from those and then i can also just be like if it burnt out from this i can move on to this and it can keep me going it's kind of like when you farmers you don't just keep planting the same crop you actually move the fields so that new plants can grow so that the field doesn't become you know desaturated from its the nutrients you learn how to move on to new things and keep it going so it keeps it keeps surviving forever dark bulb is saying as an illustrator and soul content producer do you find that past max capacity of gigs is it necessary to branch into side avenues for financial growth wait what is that climb okay sorry i i'm gonna guess do you have to do other things in addition to the freelance stuff like you told me actually that you are now able to survive financially only on freelance but you know some people never get to that point some people have to have another gig yeah i think i'll i don't know if it's most people but yeah i think maybe you could say most people actually rely on another gig like a salary job or you know they'd be like oh i have a job where i can work three days of the week on like you know and getting goods and it's a stable paycheck to keep on float and then they use their freelance work to add that extra money in you know so it's it's very common that's like i know a lot of people that do that that's why i said like they might work for a publishing house to do like graphic design work but then they do like their editorial work on the side or their children's books or something like that which is really that's what really helps yeah i know very few people who live exclusively on freelance and even fewer people that have kids and a family and outside it gets even more complicated once you have so many more financial obligations it's very very hard for a lot honestly i don't think i know many people that are pure freelance that have like wife kids and everything ever living in new york city or something like that i don't know i think a lot of people tend to this is like one of the questions that people have it's like once you get to like be like past like 30 or 40 you know you don't see many like those illusories everybody that's an illustrator is like in their 20s or something or like in their 30s and it's like where do they go and i think like they still won they still are doing freelance but there's a lot of them that also have learned that because they have so much experience they've also become art directors and they're a little bit maybe behind the scenes with some things too and i have a few friends that have now been like they went from freelance to being like now like art directors and one of them is your past student you know and one of my friends so you know who i'm talking about i'm not going to say that alex it's a small world we're not going to say his mr forbes 30 under 30. we're not going to say his name uh raindrops is saying how are you able to develop your style and illustration any tips for beginners like me uh well like i said um don't try to fork folk if you're like in high school uh and even early in college just like don't try to don't think about style necessarily think about exploration and think about what you can learn from abroad from just many things at once um because if you set yourself up style too soon then you're gonna pigeonhole yourself and you're gonna be like this is just what i do for the rest of your life and it sucks that's gonna suck and i know people i know people who i will not say from college that did that and that's all they do and they they never once like went out and tried to do anything else and it's right from freshman year when i first met them so now it's the looks the exact same so honestly but if you're like if you are maybe at a stage where you want to get into client work i would say like focus on trying to get like a process down and what your voice is as an artist and then from there being like oh i love the you know i love printmaking i love the repetition of it or like i love being really loose and it's almost like uh was it john lieberman or no who who am i thinking of there's oh sorry whatever i can't say the artist's name i normally would say it off the top of my head but he does like really loose like pen pen um sketches they're very conceptual you're like am i really into conceptual work or am i really like into like you know drawing dragons and digital painting and you know you might find that you get kind of shifted towards certain things and from their process and you kind of just start to lean into things and it just takes time you just can't force it though and i know claire will say the same thing you can't force style and you shouldn't for style and guys i get it i know why people want to style because that's how people get hired and that's what artists are known for but style should evolve naturally it should not be you wake up one day and say today's the day i'm gonna get my style it definitely does not work like that yeah i recommend you guys go ahead oh i was gonna say oh we're almost over i was gonna say that yeah from my early work i didn't have any style from college so i was gonna say like i'm was not don't worry it's like i have a style now but i didn't have a style back then yeah i mean look back to the charcoal drawings you were doing in my class i mean those are so different than what you do now so don't stress about it guys just let it take its own natural path alex is on instagram so you guys can check him out and he also has a website and all of these links are in the video description below and our prof has a podcast it's available on spotify and also on itunes and after the stream i'm going to be hanging out in the artprof discord in the post live streams channel alex i don't know if you figured out if you got into our server or not i don't know if it's going to happen tonight but i'll try i'll try to get on i'm going to see if okay i couldn't figure out before because i'm not i just didn't understand discord but it seems like i'll see if i can get it we'll see if we can get him on either way i will be in discord those of you guys who further questions you can let me know there the invite link is in the video description subscribe to our youtube channel and join the rpra family and thank you to our top patreon supporters who keep the lights on here at art prof thank you to everybody who came to the discussion who asked questions you guys were great in terms of really picking alex's brain and thank you alex as always you never thought back in 2012 we would be on a stream together did you no well i don't know it's been many years i didn't realize it was that long but i guess like eight years it's been a while we're old now you're you're in the old people club i'm sorry anyway thanks you guys for watching we'll see you next time