Anime Expo: Self-Publishing, Promoting, and Marketing
At the Anime-expo, I attended two workshops that had grabbed my attention: “deviantART’s How to Be a Successful Online Artist” and “deviantART’s How to Self Publish”. Both sessions provided good tips on both topics, but some ideas were already known before hand because my mentor (Kirk Sivertsen) has already taught me.
In the “How to Be a Successful Artist” session, the six (But I see seven listed…) panelist, ArtisticAunJuli, zeiva, GoblinQueeen, hakubaikou, damphyr, cheeks-74, and Wen-M, of deviantART gave out some glow in the dark item (But I had never received one). Any how let’s get to the juicy part!
If you want to be a successful “Online” artist, you must be committed to do your stuff for “FREE”. Doing things for free is getting exposure and promoting for fame. How do we do that? Easily simple! Every single action you do online, you have the opportunity to stick a trace to yourself. For example, forum signatures, sticking your personal info or website will grant you exposures. Commenting, leaving messages or comments helps promote fame. Also, be weary that the messages you leave will also come back around, a negative message may bring back a negative message to you.
What if my art sucks? This question is quite subjective, but aim for a more positive aspect. If you have no confidence in your art work, think of other ideas that will help you “deliver” your work to your audience. In fact, there will be people out there to appreciate your art, and also those who won’t. Keep that in mind. There will never be a masterpiece that is always appreciated by everyone. Thus as long as you put out the work there, someone will catch on.
What is better: Painter or Photoshop? DeviantART’s Panelists answered this question quite vaguely thus I will answer it for you to the best ideal answer. This question has always been asked. But truly, I can not answer that for you because you are the person who is to answer it. Clarifying: The real question here is: is this tool better than this tool? If I give you an answer, I am giving you my personal opinion. Here are some examples to look at this question better. Which is better: a mechanical pencil or a regular pencil? Which is better: a pen or a calligraphy pen? Which is a better: a laptop or a computer? See the idea? You have to answer yourself which is the better one. Most often I will answer which ever tool gets my work done the way I want it to be.
How can I get better as an Artist? Practice! Practice! Practice! Practice! Traditionally draw from real life. Everything in life! Domestically online there are an infinite amount of tutorials to be found. DeviantART has claimed in accordance to Adobe that their website holds the most tutorial in the world. So if you are looking to draw a certain style, use the search box in DeviantART.
Copyrighting, how is it done? The easy way to copyright a work is to mail two copies of your work to yourself, and do no open it. This allows you to your original copy to attain a government dated material which you can present in court if you have a dispute over your work. Also be careful in copying other people work and then copyrighting it. A simple copy of Mickey Mouse can get you a lot of trouble. Remember to research your materials as well to see how far you can copy other things.
How do we do physical printing and publishing? This part is pretty hardcore. You will have to go through tedious small steps to gain quality of your printed work. For example, the printer’s settings are configured as followed: 300-1200 DPI (dots per inch) which deals in image quality, CMYK or RGB printing which deals in color, Margin, Bleeds, and padding. Then you would have to cut them up, bind them, and attempt to sell them to stores. It is quite expensive too but the results may be rewarding.
If you want to hear the session on audio, I have them on a player here. (Some parts may be jiffy to hear)
Session 1 (38 min and 50 sec):
Session 2 (50 min and 3 sec):
(You can also download the audios [132 mb])
That should cover most of the important aspects of the topic. However some of the fields may have been answered inexplicably. Join the discussion if you want to share your views, comments, or questions.