The Writing Process

articles, Books, interviews, publishing, Uncategorized, Writing

Lately I’ve been on Linked-In and Good Reads a lot, learning from other writers about what they have been going through in their publishing journeys. Usually there are discussions about how to find readers, build blogs and how useless it is to go after people who pirate your book unless you have hard evidence.

Anyhow, I saw a post from fellow author CR Hodges, inviting authors on a “My Writing Process” blog hop to share what is going on in their writing life. Below are questions and answers for this blog hop on what is going on at this stage of my author career.

I should also mention that CR Hodges is a fairly versatile writer with books on the US civil war, sci-fi stuff and lots of short stories. Stop by his site if you get a chance!

Every writer has a different path and next week I’ll be posting details of the writing process of acclaimed Demon Hunter Saga author, Cynthia Vespias!

JF Garrard’s Writing Process

What am I working on?

At the moment I am finalizing proofreading for my first novel, The Undead Sorceress before sending it to my formatter in Australia.

This is the first book in a series called International House of Vampires which has vampires, magic users, robots and people all rolled up in the cast of characters. I wrote this book because I love fantasy, sci-fi and horror books, but didn’t see much diversity in them. There is a female lead and characters of different ethnicities as well as LGBT. This book has a theme about filial obligations and how far one is willing to go for family.

The second book, Dark Evolution is 50% done, but I am a bit stuck as I keep rewriting it and then getting distracted by other things. All I can say is that there are mermaids in this and it has an environmental theme to it.

My non-fiction works are in various stages as well. The Literary Elephant is a book I started as a guide for beginning Indie publishers. I’ve learned a lot on my self-publishing journey and there is no need for people to reinvent the wheel every time! I hate books that wave a stick in a general direction, so this book will have links and lots of advice on how to implement action steps!

How to Make a Munchkin is a book about modern tools of baby making and the pressure on women to have babies. This was written after I had a “natural” miscarriage which took over a month and I was really scared for a long time. None of my medical books on pregnancy really described what happens during miscarriages, so I hope this will help others realize that they are not alone if they have issues and not to be too worried if they have to go through the same miscarriage event.

I need to update some statistics before sending it to my editor. As well, I have a family doctor and a nurse lined up who are very interested in reading this and will contribute to the forward of this book.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I’m actually entering The Undead Sorceress into a novel competition for the “Visionary Fiction” category. This work is different because mixes up fantasy, horror, sci-fi and contains a global cast. My background is in Nuclear Medicine, so I tend to incorporate some science into my stories. As well, growing up with concept of Taoism, I inadvertently wrote a lot of that into the book since Taoist philosophies explain the concepts of magic and vampires so nicely.

For my non-fiction work, I try to incorporate useful information in a simple manner. Many times I read self-help books that are not very helpful and that pisses me off. So I do my best to offer valuable advice and realistic outlooks on situations.

Why do I write what I do?

I’ve always wanted to write and still remember the day when I had to choose between Science or English. My parents were against English as they thought I would starve to death as a writer and convinced me that Science had more opportunities. I loved Science very much too, so I headed down that road and now work in the Healthcare Sector.

One day, I discovered a fellow hospital administrator self-published a book and this sparked my interest in writing again. Self-publishing? What is that?! I thought that the life of writer was becoming depressed over rejection and then dying early, usually by starving or suicide.

Inspired that someone made a book, I started writing again and it was done fairly quickly as I had a story in the back of my mind for the last ten years. It was the idea of how I would sacrifice my life for my grandmother as she suffered different setbacks over the years (fish bone poisoning, stroke, etc.) The Asian notion of filiality is self-sacrifice for the older generation as they sacrificed themselves for the younger generation while raising them.

Generally, I write because I like sharing different truths in fiction and non-fiction. It is a way of disseminating knowledge and contributing to society via this “artform”.

How does my writing process work?

I think too much. I overthink. I hypothesize a lot because I have spent too many years with the scientific method. I am not a healthy writer because I also procrastinate and tend to overdose on chocolate.

Generally, I like reading anything and everything from newspapers to books to magazines. I also like watching lots of films; doesn’t matter what language as long as there is a good story. Also I like travelling, visiting museums, art galleries and random places. I absorb a lot of different cultures and things just spark as I figure out if I want to write a story featuring a certain element I’ve seen or not.

Ideas are scribbled into notebooks and as I’ve learned in the past, I shouldn’t write ideas onto receipts or napkins as I tend to lose them. Eventually, after I’m inspired by enough ideas, I will have a skeleton of a story – I know the beginning, middle and the end. Then I have to fill in this story with people, events, conflict, incentives and plot.

As I write and eat lots of chocolate, the characters will take on a life of their own and unpredictable things will happen. I’ve discovered I can’t have a super rigid outline, as half the time I won’t follow it! I like books with realistic people so I spend a lot of time thinking about how a character will react to a situation.

While writing I am absorbed and I get very grouchy when interrupted as I’m in “the zone”. I used to paint, so writing to me is seeing scenes in my head and then creating a piece of art with words.

Eventually after a manuscript is finished, I edit and ask my Viking husband, along with any willing friend to edit. Then I edit again. After these rounds of edits, I’ll find my editor and pass on the manuscript to them. More rounds of editing. The final step is then proof reading before sending manuscript to formatter.

To give you an idea of timelines – I wrote The Undead Sorceress in three months (thought about it for 10 years!), then it took over a year to edit. Editing takes a long time and is also when what you write gets torn to pieces as people may not understand what you are trying to say. So you rewrite and rewrite until it is good! Then illustration work, formatting, cover design, etc took many months as well. From start to finish, it’s been a two year process.

My last piece of advice is to not worry about what is right or wrong as everyone is different! Just write and get started!

Upgrading website!

art, branding, marketing, publishing, Uncategorized, Writing

Now that National Novel Writing Month and my Kickstarter are both done, I wanted to work a on new goal – to revamp my website! I had looked around for a few weeks while procrastinating during my writing sessions and found a few awesome sites which offer free WordPress themes. Well, there are actually hundreds of sites which offer free themes, but most of them look the same, quite frankly. The premium stuff (fully set up site, video tutorials, tech support) is not free, it’s about $50 USD (depends on theme) which isn’t too bad.

WordPress has revolutionized the way websites are built as it’s really website building for dummies who don’t know code (aka – me!). You install templates and you keep adding “widgets” to customize the site. Widgets are all those things on the side of websites and at the bottom which display social media icons, posts, calenders, etc.

After a few months of building a basic WordPress website, I felt ready to set up a more complicated site. Of course, my Viking husband laments that I’m not coding much and things could be more beautiful, but I can live with using a standard theme.

These are the two sites I found which offered great free themes with nice designs and lots of widget options:

http://yithemes.com/
http://smthemes.com/

This website uses “Alium” from SM Themes. My first choice was Memento from YI Themes, but the preview wasn’t working properly and the free one looked too limited. Second choice was Diablo (yes, like the game name), but the words on the demo site were too dark.

It was exciting to learn how to use sliders (the moving thing at the top of the site) as I always wondered how people did that! The only thing I haven’t learned how to do is build a nice portfolio gallery with pop up words. I found a few widgets for displaying pictures, but the problem with me is that I have too many words describing the artwork. Oh well, I’ll figure out how to display things more nicely over time.

Let me know what you think of this new site!

Check out my kickstarter article on Authors Helping Authors!

articles, Books, kickstarter, publishing, Writing

It’s been about two weeks since the Kickstarter ended and I still haven’t recovered. In hindsight, doing National Novel Writing month at the same time was not a good idea as combining the two took up way too much energy!

I learned that a campaign was actually a 3 phase thing: beginning, middle and end. During each phase, I worked madly to build and keep up momentum of the campaign going. It’s a really hard thing to do as you will find out that lots of people really don’t give a crap and will tell you to your face. So you learn to develop a thick skin because for every nice person, there is also a super nasty one who will hate you because you are in front of their faces.

Lessons learned, tips and resources were written into an article called “Tips for Running a Crowd Funding Campaign” and submitted to a site called “Authors Helping Authors“. Lots of excellent resources here for people who are interested in writing and publishing!

A book as a product is more difficult to sell on Kickstarter. Innovative thing-a-ma-bobs are easier to sell because they are quirky and general. Books are aimed mainly at readers and there are so many of them listed under publishing that it is mind boggling. I could barely find my own kickstarter campaign when it was running under the category of “publishing” and had better luck looking for it under “Toronto” projects.

Will I run another Kickstarter in the future? Well, it depends on how well the book sells in general. People that have a lot of readers and press tend to do very well with their Kickstarter projects. Also, for a third or fourth book, authors tend to give the first two away, which makes better incentives as well. I should never, say never to anything, as I might become involved in other projects. Who knows what the future will bring?!

Reflections On My First Radio Interview

Books, branding, interviews, publishing, radio, Uncategorized, Writing

Until I met my husband, I never listened much to the radio. His family are huge fans of CBC radio and grew up with this station always on in the house. My family has Chinese television on all the time instead.

Looking for different ways of promoting my Kickstarter campaign, I stumbled across Dr. Wright, a crowd funding guru who has a web tv and radio website. She offered to do a quick interview with me for her radio podcast and I jumped at the chance. There was no equipment to set up, which was nice and all I had to do was call into her LA radio station. She had mentioned a few questions in her email so I wrote up answers for those, but in general I wasn’t sure what to expect!

It was a good experience overall as I learned a lot about what I didn’t know. Such as how to answer questions properly when the host improvises. I was really nervous, so that did not help things as I stumbled across my words like a drunken sailor. In general now I know that I have to think harder about what messages I want to convey for my book, including themes, unique characteristics, cultural matters, etc. My friend was surprised at all this. “You wrote the damn thing, you should know everything!” He admonished.

Writing is such a solitary, introverted activity that it feels odd to suddenly switch on an extrovert personality in order to explain what the heck you created. As well, growing up in an Asian culture, tooting your horn is a bad thing and you never want to draw attention to yourself because you will appear to be a narcissist. So generally, I find talking about my work and myself in a positive light hard to do as I grew up learning to do the opposite. My husband says I’m the worst salesperson in the world as he listens to me degrade myself after receiving any good comments on my work. He’s trying to train me to say “thank you” and not continue on to say anything bad afterwards, but it’s going to take a lot of effort on my part.

Here is the interview for those still interested, hopefully I’ll do better next time!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wrightplacepodcast/2013/11/15/dr-wright-speaks-with-jf-garrard

Making your own virtual mixed tape to share

art, family, Money, music, publishing, Uncategorized, Writing

While reading tons of articles on how to make a successful kickstarter, I stumbled across a link for 8tracks. Someone mentioned that this was an awesome way to share your music with the world. 8tracks is a site where you can upload your music and make a virtual mixed tape to share with the world! Or like in the old days, you can use it to woo a beloved. Uploading and listening is free!

Be warned, I was extremely frustrated with the uploading process and it turns out you can only upload 2 composer tracks per mix. Also, it will reject any tracks with no identification data, such as .wma rips from a cd. Although I listen to tons of Final Fantasy background music, because they were by the same composer, I could only share 2 songs in my mix.

Overall, it was fun to make something to share, so I put together music I listened to when I wrote The Undead Sorceress. It’s all instrumental music because it helps me with writing. When I listen to songs with people singing I start typing what they’re singing instead, so it’s terrible for my writing process. The tracks are from Ashes of Time (movie), Game of Thrones (tv), Rurouni Kenshin (anime) and Final Fantasy (game).

Some of the music (Rurouni Kenshin) is a bit tense because these tracks were inspirational for writing sword fighting scenes. I remember making a cd for someone with these tracks for her family’s restaurant thinking it sounded very Asian, but she said her customers would choke on the food because the music was so nerve wracking.

Please have a listen, click on album cover below and enjoy!

(Instructions – click link and press “play arrow”! http://8tracks.com/jfgarrard/undead-sorceress-mix)

The Undead Sorceress Mix List (31 min)

1. Ashes of Time, Yo Yo Ma, Ashes of Time Redux (movie)
2. Main Title, Ramin Djawadi, Game of Thrones (tv)
3. Liberi Fatali, Nobuo Uematsu, Finaly Fantasy VIII (game)
4. Hitenmitsurugiryu – Amakakeruryu No Hirameki, Noriyuki Asakura, Rurouni Kenshin (anime)
5. The Will, Samurai X Rurouni Kenshin movie, Taku Iwasaki (anime)
6. The Last Wolf Suite – Shishio Makoto No Kumikyoku, Noriyuki Asakura, Rurouni Kenshin (anime)
7. Blue Fields, Shinko Ogata, Final Fantasy VIII (game)
8. In Memories: A Boy Meets the Man, Samurai X Rurouni Kenshin movie, Taku Iwasaki (anime)

Conversing with a Manga Artist Part 2

art, asian, Books, publishing, Uncategorized, women, Writing

This is Part 2 of a conversation with Eri-Chan, a super talented manga artist from the Philippines…Part 1 of our Q &A is here.

If I were to commission you for a manga, what kind of information do you need? A script of some sort, I imagine?

A script is okay, but a novel-like format works better for me. I love reading novels, and as such, I tend to get a better image of the scenes in my head compared to script-like stories. 🙂

What is your favourite manga? Why?

I don’t have a certain top favourite (since I have lots of favourite manga and anime), but for the shoujo-type manga, I fell in love with NANA, Card Captor Sakura, Kareshi Kanoujo no Jijou, and Zettai Kareshi. For the shounen, I’ll always love Naruto and Death Note, and am currently getting hooked with Shingeki no Kyoujin. I also liked horror and suspense manga like Goth and Jisatsu Circle.

I don’t really like manga and anime for the art style or what~ usually; its impact on me while reading it is what I look into. Did this manga tickle the imagination in a way that either I relate so much to it, or that it leaves my brain thinking about it for a few days or even weeks? I guess I love series that leaves my mind in a deep thinking state after I read it.

What is your dream job? Well, you are already living it – or perhaps better way to put it – dream commission?

I’ve always wanted to work on published love story or horror/suspense manga. I’m also working on my own title, a comedic love story, and I may be releasing it by next year. (im currently writing the story J) Other than that, I still want to pursue my studies and go for a multimedia art school (once I get me enough funds for it) so I can learn all sorts of stuff to become a professional all-around artist and illustrator. 😀

Have you ever turned down a commission?

Oh yes, a lot of times. And it breaks my heart to turn down offers of illustrating beautiful stories just because the client wants a rock-bottom price for the art, I mean, I would definitely love to draw for them, but of course, I have bills to pay too, right? Aside from that, there are a lot of stories that didn’t suit my style, (like shonen stories, sci-fi, action, sports), and I always try my best to be honest with my clients if I know that my art style isn’t gonna be the best one suitable for their kind of story. I don’t want to accept a request if know that I can’t do my best on it.

For people who want to become manga artists, what tools would they need? Do you use tablets or certain software? What tips do you give in general? (Eek! I know one is to backup stuff as there was a huge issue when her computer died…damn electronics!)

Yes, having backups of your files would be one of the most important ones, if you’re going for drawing manga digitally (especially after what I’ve been through with my pc when it broke down on me since I do everything on my PC~ haha..😀 I use a graphics tablet, and Paint Tool SAI + Photoshop CS3 for drawing. I can’t give that much advice for traditional mediums in manga, since I do stuff digitally, but I do believe that investing time to study the art and everything about it that you use will be very helpful in the long run. . Also, take in mind that there will always, and always be people in the industry that are better than you, but don’t let that get you down. Lastly, always be open to new ideas, like what my artist friends are always telling me.

I’m still starting up, and I’m looking forward to learning more as well.

This conversation continues onto Part 3…

Conversing with a Manga Artist Part 1

art, Books, Money, publishing, Uncategorized, women, Writing

Originally I contacted Eri-chan because I wanted some manga style portraits and was collecting quotes. I narrowed it down to a few artists and chose her because her style looked the most professional out of all the portfolios I looked at. Her art can be seen here at https://eribloodberry.blogspot.com or http://www.erikatsuona.deviantart.com .

Eri-chan is from the Philippines and she is a young independent manga artist. She currently has several projects on the go at once so she is a busy woman! She is also very brave as she is involved with cosplay activities which I often want to do, but I feel too old…

Hi Eri-Chan, thank you first of all helping me out with my project. It’s been a blast and a lot of fun. So can you tell me a bit about your background and how you became a manga artist? What inspired you to become one?

Thanks, Jean~ I had fun drawing your characters as well. You have such a very nice imagination to come up with such interesting and diverse characters. 😀

About your question, I was originally in college, taking up Hotel and Restaurant Management. I felt that it wasn’t for me, and that it’s just not what I wanted to do. I’ve been living alone since I was 12 (so that makes it 8 years ago), and been paying for my studies since then, and happiness means everything to me. So I dropped school and worked as a call center agent as I tried to rebuild my first love, which is anime and manga art. When I’ve got the beginning equipment I needed to start as an artist, I left my (really toxic) job and stayed home to draw all day for people who found my art fascinating for their projects. It was something I really liked doing, although I tend to get picky with the projects’ genre, since my style most likely suit shojo and love stories. I never really imagined myself doing this when I was a little girl, I mostly thought of myself as someone who might be a businesswoman in the future, but I guess it’s just that this was what I loved doing, and I love seeing my completed works.

My dad used to be an assistant comic book artist during his teenage years. He was my first idol when it comes to art, and he taught me the basics when it comes to drawing. My dad was a kinda boastful guy, and at first I just wanted to prove him that I can do better than him… and suddenly I just got hooked with drawing. I fell in love with seeing what I created, and that wonderful feeling of “Oh god… I made this artwork?!Wow.”, because honestly, up to now, I still can’t believe that I can draw like this. 😀 So yeah, my dad was pretty much mostly the one who inspired me.

I don’t really know how to draw, seriously, but I love anime very much. When I was in my first year in High School, there was this girl classmate of mine who draws anime really, really great and I was so amazed that I asked her to teach me how to draw. She said no in a really disrespectful way, and I got kind of pissed off and frustrated. Back then, I drew like a 5 year old! I know how to draw some forms, but it was like a kid’s drawing compared to this classmate of mine. That summer break, I locked myself in my room with a cheap book on how to draw manga that I bought, and practiced day and night while watching animes. I guess that was the time that I started to learn and improve. I was driven by frustration and the will to draw better that that girl who embarrassed me. When classes started again, she was very surprised by the improvement. I continued drawing during classes and my spare time (eventually got better than that girl, haha), until the only thing that’s driving me to draw is my love for what I’m doing itself, and my love for the characters that I draw. 🙂

Is it difficult to be a freelancer? I mean, lots of people dream about being their own boss! Although most of the time I saw my husband filling creating lots of paperwork (taxes, invoices, etc) when he was freelancing…

Yeah, it’s pretty difficult, especially when people don’t really acknowledge that you actually work. In my case, my relatives think that I’m just playing around. I’m still young, after all. The most difficult part for me, I guess, is when clients undervalue your art for something cheap and “just a drawing”. I put my heart to what I do, and it really hurts me when people don’t give enough credit to the work. It’s like being stabbed face-to-face.

Another thing is marketing yourself. There are LOADS of great artists in the Philippines, and most are being overshadowed by the popular mainstream ones. Finding a place where you can find clients who may be interested to have you illustrate their story is a bit of a problem, especially for a young, starting up artist like me.If we put up a blog or site, exposure is a bit slow. So we tend to go to freelancing sites like Fiverr, of which even though it kinda lowers the value of the artworks, the exposure to possible clients is good.

Do you usually draw manga for Asian countries? Or is there demand in other countries? Also, do the publications do well?

Most of my clients are from America, Europe and Australia. 🙂 There are just so many talented writers there, and they all want to see their works fleshed out in a Japanese-style manga. I don’t have many Asian clients at the moment, and here in the Philippines, the manga industry and publications is just starting up. Most of the few manga being published are cheesy love stories, so I guess it might take a little more time and market tests before other genres make it big here.

Continues onto Part 2…

Where to find high quality & free stock art

art, Books, Money, publishing, Uncategorized, Writing

During school, the best activities were art activities for me as I’m a very visual person. Like all nerds, I loved school projects and having the excuse to design things. Fast forward, now I find myself needing stock art to put on the blog or just designing things for fun. Some of the sites even lets you use the art for commercial use (business cards, book covers, cds, etc) but there are limitations, so read the license carefully if you are heading down that road.

The best sites I’ve found for amazing quality clipart are listed below. They are sponsored by companies who hope that you will eventually buy some stock art from them and I’ve done that before. It’s astounding what is available for use, they are truly beautiful graphics which would take me hours to do myself!

How to download & use files:

1) When you click on any site, either use the categories to find what you want or do a search.

2) Usually they want you to open a free account, which is the price of admission.

3) Pick what file format you want (jpeg or eps) and save to your folder on your computer.

4) Open in your graphics program or put into any office software program for use (eg. microsoft office)

Pixelbay – high quality photos and stock art

Stock exchange – another site for high quality photos and stock art

Free Vector art and graphics archive – gorgeous vector art for every project possible and divided into categories! I didn’t realize that you can download pre-made infographics which look really slick.

Vector Open Stock – only click in the middle area if you want free vectors. It gets confusing when top and bottom bars appear and they link to other sites.

Commissioning Art

art, Books, branding, publishing, Uncategorized, Writing

The whole idea of commissioning art for me began when I started spying on other people’s Kickstarter pages. The ones that did fairly well with supporters all had incredible artwork. The artwork was what grabbed you on the kickstarter page, and then the text. People are very visual and if the book cover/art sucks, you start wondering about the quality of the book.

I had started speaking to a number of Canadian artists I knew over the last 2 years. But scheduling was a problem as my contacts had a full time jobs and art was something they did on the side. So I started to search globally – writing to people I found with portfolios on deviantart.com and researching other websites for online freelance services such as elance.com, fiverr.com, freelancer.com, odesk.com and 99designs.com.

In the end of my long search and “testing” many people on their styles/workflow, I found some fantastic artists which I hope to maintain relationships with on a long term basis as I continue to write more books. There are links to their great portfolios at the end of this post. Over the next few weeks I’ll be putting up the artwork I’ve commissioned for The International House of Vampires series on this website along with a Q & A with each artist so you can learn more about them as they are all fabulous people!

I commissioned a pic of Mommy and Daddy! ($10 USD) Off Fiverr.com where things start at $5. You can even get a fake girl/boy friend to post on your social media pages for a week there!

The Steps to Commissioning Artwork:

1) Think about what you want to commission – it could be for a gift, book, game, etc. It’s important that you spend time developing a vision as this is something you are hiring to bring to life. If you are not clear what you want, believe me, the artist will have a hard time delivering the goods.

2) Write down specs – you know what you want, but now you have to communicate it to someone. I try to provide as many details as possible. If the artist doesn’t read this – they aren’t very good with clients then!

* Intro sentence about what the art is about, what it’s for
* Do you want to own the copyright for future reproduction or is this a one-off that will never be reproduced? Usually the artist retains all copyrights unless you ask for it to be transferred, usually for a price ($ depends on artist).
* The style you want. Western realistic? Manga? Cartoon?
* Find some references of stuff you like. The idea is to let the artist know what kind of style, color palette and “feeling” you want to invoke in the art.
* Describe each person if any. How old are they? Height? Facial features, clothing, etc as if they are real people to the artist.
* Find specific references for things such as poses, fashion style, faces, etc.
* What’s in the background? Do you want nothing or a specific environment?
* Hope that they understand and don’t freak out if the first piece isn’t what you imagined – sometimes it take a few tries before the artist can draw what you had in mind!

3) Search for an artist – Like I mentioned earlier, there are many websites for you to do your search. Look through their portfolios and see if they have done similar work to what you want for another client.

It is not fun looking for artists as you will be overwhelmed by the different styles and prices available for people. A person may be super cheap at $5/piece, but can they deliver your vision? Another person’s art looks fantastic, but they want $1200/piece. Can you afford this?

For your book you may have a picture or style in mind already, but you have to search hard for the right people to make your dreams come true. Don’t settle for something your gut tells you is not right…this is not very scientific advice, I’m afraid, but gut feel is super important!

4) Make contact – Depending on which site, you will either have to fill in a form for a third party or you can email the artist directly with specs. The artist will send you a quote based on that. If you go through a third party (website service) usually there is some sort of guarantee so you can get your money back if something goes wrong. Sometimes to get better prices you may be asked to pay direct. There is always a bit of risk with dealing with a new person, but usually if the artist has a decent website and looks legit, I would take this risk to save some money.

Keep in mind of a budget of what you can afford. Commissioned art can range from $0 (bartering for future favors) to $2000 USD in my experience, for one piece of art. Sometimes the price varies depending on how many people in each piece or if you want a nice background. Read the fine print of what the artist is willing to do!

5) Evaluate options – Each artist will quote you different prices. To help with making the decision, I go through their portfolios once again to determine if it’s worth both of our time to go through with making a deal. Sometimes you can barter, but it depends on the artist. I’ve learned that you do get what you pay for; don’t cheap out so much that you can’t hire a decent artist! Otherwise, what’s the point?!

6) Make a deal with one, send payment and send out sorries to the rest – It’s only decent to let other people know that you hired someone.

7) Finalizing the Artwork – Usually the artist will send you some drafts to look at to ask for your opinion. There should be some back and forth but this depends on the price as well. For artists that don’t earn much or if you drive them crazy, they will sometimes ask for more money per change. But usually you can ask for at least one to two changes before finalizing.

8) Copyright transfer – From the beginning I ask for this, so at the end I write up a contract for them to sign to transfer copyright to me. For personal artwork, it’s usually not done. I only started doing this based on an editor friend’s advice as she was worried about long term consequences for me. Most artists will charge you a fee for this (sometimes close to the price of the commissioned piece), it’s usually not free. However, I do think it’s fair for them to have the piece in their portfolio even if I have the copyright as they should keep a copy of the hard work they have done!

9) Show off the art! It took a lot of time and effort to bring a vision to life, so brighten someone else’s day with something fantastic!

Virtual Artist Team for The International House of Vampires series

1) Eumir Carlo P. Fernandez, illustrator (Q & A with him here)

www.theartofeumircarlofernandez.daportfolio.com

www.theartofeumircarlofernandez.blogspot.com

www.twitter.com/elumier

2) Eri-chan (Elisse Mariano), manga artist

https://www.facebook.com/elissemariano

http://www.erikatsuona.deviantart.com

http://www.twitter.com/elissemariano

3) Robert Altbauer, cartographer (Q & A with him here)

www.fantasy-map.net

www.sapiento.deviantart.com

4) foosoo (An Trinh), Illustrator

http://www.antrinh.com/

Conversing with a Digital Illustrator Part 1

art, asian, Books, publishing, Uncategorized, Writing

I cannot tell you how happy I am to have found Eumir. Initially I saw only the chibi/cartoon work he was posting on an ad on one of the sites and they looked hysterical. However, I wasn’t looking for chibi/cartoons at the time. But there was something different in his style compared to all the different drawings I saw, so I decided to look at his fantastic website and blog: www.theartofeumircarlofernandez.daportfolio.com, www.theartofeumircarlofernandez.blogspot.com. The art on the website blew me away! I had written to many artists at that point and a few pieces were already on the go, but I decided to ask him to make me a drawing anyways to see how things would work out.

Although there is a twelve hour time difference because I live in Canada and he lives in the Philippines, we still manage to somehow catch each other on facebook and email. Alarmingly, he seems to like the concept of bearded men as I complain about the red tuff on my Viking husband, but oh well…if you can’t beat ‘em you join ‘em I guess!

Hi Eumir, thank you first of all for having me as a client as a first place. I feel honored and privileged to be able to use your services. So can you tell me where you went to do your training and what did you learn from there?

I studied Bachelor of Fine Arts major in Painting in the University of San Carlos in Cebu, Philippines. But most of the things I learned there are basics. The real training was when I was working in Author Solutions Publishing where I did a lot of self study. The majority of the illustrations requested of the publishing company are for children’s books, but drawing kids and cute cartoon animals didn’t really help me apply the new skills I had acquired. I learned more in a span of one year from all the videos on FZD design cinema and CGMA 100 folds compared to the four years of college. And what I believe is the real learning begins when you’re already out of school.

What kind of jobs did you do after school ended and why did you decide to be a freelancer?

First I didn’t know what to do after school. Then my girlfriend at that time was offered a job for furniture design rendering but couldn’t make it and asked me to show up in her place instead. Though I only worked there for a month it made me realize that I can actually make money through drawing. Then the VFX company called me up where a colleague and MTG friend of mine works and I only stayed there for 2 weeks when the Publishing company contacted me. I accepted the job (at the Publishing company) and spent my two years there 2010-2012. So within those two years while doing self study, I felt like the new skills that I have learned would just be wasted if I stayed drawing children’s books. The company I worked for charged clients $145-$300 per illustration (cartoon style $145, realistic paint style $300). As artists, we did 5-7 per day and our salary was $300/month. So doing 2 drawings in one day already paid for my 1 month salary! So I decided to freelance to make good use of my new skills and earn the right amount money for it.

Well yes and no. Because first of all you have to be good or cheap. And to get good at what you do you have to spend endless hours on the side. I remember having 2-3 hours of sleep just to squeeze out time to practice. And when you do start getting clients they are technically your boss and you follow what they are asking for. And you are a service provider so you have to comply or you will end up with no clients coming back. You do get to be the boss of your time but you have to manage it well or you won’t get anything done. I don’t know about paperwork but I do manage my files well so there will be no confusion.

What kind of things have you been commissioned to draw?

I have been asked to do Book cover Illustrations, Card Game Illustrations, Concept Art, a whole lot of Chibis, Storyboard for a TV series, Press Kit Illustration and Character Design for a music video

Interview continues on in Part 2…