Skip Rope

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Gym Rat

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Clubs

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See You Again

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Fresh Bulb

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In The Sky

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Wrenching Conversation

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Bottle Belly

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Plaid

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The Big Sell 02

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     I love these guys. But it’s time for some of them to find some new homes. So I’m making them part of this week’s addition to The Big Sell. 

bernieart.etsy.com

Drive Like Rubber

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Looking

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Alley Phunt

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Po-Dunk

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Lighter Than

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Swordfishery

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The Big Sell Starts Very Small

I get a lot of free career counseling from my artist friends. 

They're right of course. It's long past the time when I should have been making my stuff available to actually "buy". 

So today I'm starting small, with five original paintings…because small is manageable. 

I'm starting by making my sales exclusive to the USA because I don't want to deal with international postage just yet.

And I'm starting on Etsy, because it's so easy. 

The Big Sell starts small, but it starts now. 

Here's my Etsy site. Enjoy. 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BernieArt?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Feathers

     All of these little drawings…why?

     Well, as I mentioned in my last post, my animation career has an end date, though nobody (especially me) knows that date exactly. 

     It's like I'm running on a foggy road and somewhere up ahead is the edge of a cliff. This is called (bluntly) "The end of your animation career" or more optimistically, "retirement". 

     I've got a bit of a 401k and maybe there will be a small morsel of Social Security, but my safety net is much flimsier than my grandparents ever was, and I'm probably going to live a lot longer. 

     That's the bad news. 

     The good news is that I love to draw and tell stories, and this is a fortunate thing. Like a lot of skills, it takes decades to develop, but once you've got that skill you get to keep it forever! And it's not physically hard, so…---and pay attention here because this is the crucial point--- You. Can. Do. It. When. You're. Old. 

     And I can figure it out. 

     This isn't extreme entrepreneurship, where I'm trying to invent a whole new billion dollar industry with my amazing breakthrough technology.  

     It's a well worn path where a lot of animation artists have gone (and grown old) before.

1) Bill Peet was a great illustrator and children's book author. But in his younger years he was, of all things, a Disney storyboard artist. 

2) Walt Kelly created the masterpiece comic strip Pogo, but you can see his screen credits on Disney movies like Pinoccio, Fantasia, and Dumbo. 

3) Theodore Seuss Geisel ("Dr. Seuss") never won a single award for his children's books, but he scooped up two oscars by taking a few mid-career detours into animated movies. 

     And on and on. I think you get my point. 

     Sure, the glory days of printing on paper are behind us, but there are new (and quite possibly better) ways to distribute art and ideas out into the world. They just need to be figured out, which is entirely do-able.

     You just need to put in the work.

*****************

     Let's go back to that metaphor of running towards a cliff on a foggy road:

     The classic model of retirement is this:  while you are running toward the edge of that cliff, you are also spending time and money to build yourself an airplane or a hang glider or something (a parachute?) that allows you to avoid hitting the rocks below with a giant "splat". 

   Or sometimes...you can build yourself a pair of wings. 

Aging Out (of the SoCal television business)

     In a more perfect world, artists like me would  become more valuable as we get older. But in this world… younger artists are thought to have all of the fresh ideas, and they are certainly less expensive. 

     I've become okay with this. Really.

     I know that I sure didn't have a problem with it when I was a young artist! 

     In the early 90s. When the big studios pushed an old guy out the door, it meant that I got to come in and sit in his chair. 

     But if you live by the young-hire, you also die by the young-hire. It's all Karma, the Circle of Life, and All Good Things Must Come To An End [sad trombone]. 

     If I had made other choices, there might have been different options. 

     I never created, or wanted to create, an animated TV show of my own. I mean, I was certainly capable of creating one…and I was *probably* capable of selling one to a big studio. But I don't think I'd be capable of sitting through a single notes session with a studio executive. If I ever found myself in that situation, I'm afraid I'd leap across the conference room table and strangle them to death with my bare hands. 

     So my "graceful exit" strategy has to be a little different from my friends who are (still! even though they know better!) trying to sell their own show. 

     There are options for a drawing artist like me: 

     Some people teach. Some switch to fine art, children's books, or comics. Some switch careers entirely, and they happily live out the rest of their lives without drawing a single thing. 

     And some crazy bastards take a stab at this ever-changing internet thing. These intrepid souls try to build an online audience, painstakingly gathering eyeballs one at a time by posting loads of original drawings, interesting stories, or both. 

     Is this a viable career path?

     Honestly, it's so early in this game that nobody really knows. 

     But let's make it easy on ourselves and just assume that the future will work itself out if you're an artist who's willing to put in the work. 

     The first step is to see if you have it inside of you. To see if you can really create that much original content. 

     A good test of your abilities might be to see if you can create five original drawings a week for a year. 

     And then you might want to stretch it out to three years…

   

"Like" Fatigue and Ghosts

Public Evolution Of A Style