Dying of exposure

Ideas! Why, that bloody bleating goat Temple has ideas. MacCann has ideas too. Every jackass going the roads thinks he has ideas. -- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I don't know that Terri Libenson will get a lot of laffs from the general public for today's Pajama Diaries, which may be too much of an "insider" point of view, but other artists will be applauding.

Artists are like lottery winners or famous actors and athletes: There's no shortage of people with great ideas about what they ought to do.

For that matter, they're like people who own pickup trucks. If you are worried that some of your friends might move and not tell you, get yourself a pickup truck. Nobody you've ever met will ever move again without you finding out.

Similarly, musicians get to attend a lot of weddings, as do photographers. And, if you know anything about sewing, plumbing or automobile repair, you won't have to worry about pining away on the weekends.

So there's an element of "poor pitiful me" in the artists' lament. But, then again, if 20 people are all drowning, that fact doesn't mean they can't each feel pretty lousy about it.

Besides, the person with the pickup truck is, for the most part, only being asked to give up time that would have been spent in rest or recreation. Artists are being asked to do what they do for a living, only for free.

And, since most artists don't work Mon-Fri 9 to 5, they're being asked to do what they do for a living for free while they should be doing it, well, for a living.

I've only been marginally guilty of this. Several years ago, I made a wisecrack on-line and one of the people in the group, a hobby artist whose actual job was something else, drew up a cartoon of it and sent it to me. When I became editor of a small twice-weekly paper, I approached him to do occasional cartoons for a price that I was humiliated to offer but was what we paid our community columnists.

I made it clear that the pay embarrassed me, but he agreed and, over the nearly two years I was there, he did perhaps as many as eight to 10 cartoons based on ideas I'd send him. His stuff was good, our readers really enjoyed them, and, if I hadn't been so ashamed of my budget, I'd have commissioned more of them.

But that's a different case. My father, too, was an amateur cartoonist who was one click from being able to go pro. So he did our cards each Christmas and was always happy to do cartoons for the Lions Club bulletin and other special occasions. It was fun for him and I'm quite sure that, if he had needed to go pro, he'd have done so. It wasn't something he needed.

It's like knowing a talented amateur singer who would be thrilled to sing "Ave Maria" at your wedding, to which she was going to be invited anyway.

When you have a commercially viable idea, however, you don't want to work with an amateur, even a very talented amateur.

And if you're trying to recruit a pro, you need to come up with a plan that goes beyond "Wouldn't it be cool?"  and fergawdsake don't ever say it will be "good exposure."

If the artist is worth working with, you'll be told that "people die of exposure."

You need a solid, practical business plan, not based on how much you like the idea but on what you can do -- not "hope to do" but "can do" -- to make other people like it that much, too.

When I started working with artists, I was forced to paraphrase the fellow in Terri's cartoon: "I don't have much of a budget, but this could lead to bigger jobs in the future."

The difference was, I was already very well-connected in the business and I pretty much knew where future sales would be coming from. I was only wrong once, and I still feel bad about it -- it was the only project I did with that particular artist, so I really feel she got stiffed. The others have come out okay, and one did much better than expected, which I guess balances out the one that flopped.

The bottom line is this: If you want to work with an artist, you'll want one who is experienced, reliable and doesn't have a lot of stardust in her eyes. Your most important task then will be to persuade her that you, too, are experienced, reliable and don't have a lot of stardust in your eyes.

We're all creative. We've all got ideas. What you need to do is put some of those creative ideas to work on a practical business plan, and make sure that however you write it up, it involves the magic phrase: "Pay to the order of."

It's part of how you translate ideas into reality.

It's also simply a part of growing up:

At 19, I told a Pulitzer-Prize winning poet that, while I didn't get paid for my work on the campus humor magazine, it was a chance to see my name in print.

He replied, "When I want to see my name in print, I look in the phone book."

 

Comments

[Chris Smigliano]

Yeah..I'm one who applauded this strip..Get sick of people heaping praise for my work yet not considering it worth paying for.. Just had a "client" this past week.. guy wanted a Gift pic, good large size,(11x15) in full color, an entire laundry list of details, from what type of clothing, terrier dogs, a certain model of motor scooter, and little quips and signs all lettered up all over the drawing, and that's not even HALF of what he wanted. AND he wanted it done up FAST, before the weekend. How much was he willing to actually pay? Fifty Bucks, TOPS. I told him a FAIR estimate would be at LEAST $150. Haven't heard from him since. Let him find some cheap street caricaturist at the local mall If he finds that more acommodating.

[Cheri]

As an artist, I struggle with the requests to help with friends' homes. Though not a "designer" I have a good eye for room colors, furnishings, arrangement of collections, etc. My house is a work of art, on many levels and admired by my friends (I am so not modest!).

So now a friend has a new house and has mentioned repeatedly me helping her with the above. If she wasn't a friend, I'd be quick to quote an hourly rate for such help. What to do? Any thoughts?

I don't want to damage our friendship but I need to earn a living.

[Mike Peterson]

"Well, that's such a big job that I'd have to charge you if I were going to do it myself, but here are some magazines that'll give you some good ideas."

[Mat]

The top comic reminds me of The Oatmeal's comic on how a web design goes straight to hell:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell