Career options for Art Students / Illustrators!

hey everyone dave record here and welcome back to the channel so today i want to talk about something that's pretty important once again that is career options for students or anyone looking to learn art kind of what to do with it you know that is a super scary idea that we all kind of have to figure out at one point and it's something that i never really knew when i was a student and kind of knowing what options were available to me would have helped me a lot and kind of at least put me at ease a little bit i'm trying to figure out where i may want to take the art that i actually do i do want to say this video is sponsored by wacom a brand that i adore and have used for over 17 years i've used both intuos and cintiq and is what i use exclusively with all my art from basically 2003 to today so i'm super happy to be working with them to bring a little bit more information to everybody out there and hopefully you know get everyone's skills a little more leveled up while we're all kind of spending a lot of this time at home and trying to work on our craft especially coming into the new school year so let's hop on over to a little sketch i was working on about a week or two ago i just want to talk about some options that could be available for all of us all right so before we get started i hope everybody likes the new audio quality we finally got the new microphone and mixer hooked up so the audio quality on the channel should be far better than it was before so on the background what we're going to be watching while we have this discussion today is just a sketch i did recently it ended up being a sketch in a painting that i actually didn't really like the outcome of so we kind of scrapped it just kind of didn't go anywhere but i still like kind of seeing this beginning process and i know a lot of other people kind of enjoy that process as well it's how i sometimes formulate ideas you know and sometimes the idea just doesn't work or hits the brick wall and that's okay to just kind of shelve it start over as long as we keep drawing painting generating ideas it is totally fine to kind of you know know when to bail out of a piece and starting something new so the big topic today is a career path for students and students can be anyone from either going to art school or just learning from home you know with tutorials on websites you know these last four or five months have been crazy for everybody and i think one of the best things that we can do is kind of focus in on our skills and learn as much as we can right now especially with a lot of the kind of academic school years starting back up you know how can we really spend this time at home to kind of focus in on our skills progress our painting our art everything how can we get ahead of you know a lot of other people also trying to do work right now and so as far as pass go one of the big things that has changed so much over the last 15 20 years you know i'm kind of starting to date myself at this point but i remember when i first kind of went to school the options for illustrators was a lot of you know you're either going to do editorial illustration or maybe children's book edit illustration all right i don't know maybe you're doing fine art painting there wasn't like a lot laid out on what we could possibly do and a lot of that actually started to change while i was at school and now the options for students or kids getting into art right now is unbelievable to me it feels like the best time ever to get into art to have a career in art and i really hope we can kind of change what so many people think about it you know i think so many think that you know you're going to be an artist and there's not a lot of work in art and i think it is the complete opposite especially these days there are so many options i can only speak on my own experience you know i went to school for illustration i went to wrangling college of art and design i graduated with a bfa in illustration in 2004 and so as an illustrator things really started to kind of open up through that time there was kind of a lot more introduction of concept art within video games in the movie industry you know concept art in the movies you know had been around uh quite uh quite a long time was really kind of this explosion of concept art and you know it's how big that it starts to get you know concept.org had opened up and game production had gotten a lot larger and so they needed more concept artists and that kind of thing you know everyone knows kind of what it grew into today so a couple solid things especially that we can do while we're at a home and kind of progressing our work as a lot of people are kind of updating or you know upgrading what hardware they're using at home and there's actually a couple great options especially that wacom is offering right now first off they introduced the wacom 16 which is actually a fantastic option for a really really solid price being able to have kind of a smaller model you know at a cheaper entry point is great so the barrier of entry to get into some of these tablets is so much better than it used to be and for me i love working on the monitor itself i found my kind of detailing improved i felt like that kind of tangible aspect of getting you know you know my face closer to it and my pen on the screen brought me back to feeling like you know when i used to draw on paper or anything like that so i really feel like i could dive into that nitty gritty of the painting so i definitely recommend checking out that option really really fantastic so that's one big thing i want to bring up first career options as far as you know pre-production design within movies and games and that could be like concept bar or illustration and when it comes into concept art and this is you know what i have the most experience with really embodies so many different things of what you could be tackling in a studio you have a lot of different jobs you're reflecting the writers and designers kind of vision to get the entire studio on the same page you are creating you know a palette and a mood for the entire production you're also giving specific assets to the modelers or environment team of what to build you know you could also be tackling some of the marketing illustration that might go on the website to advertise the game some studios find it easier to release concept art and some of that stuff before they actually have assets made to help promote and so you cover so much ground and when it comes for that career path too i think there's different ways you can go and something i tell a lot of students is that really focus in on what you're passionate about and i get questions a lot like do i need props environments and concept work i mean in character work sorry and really you could have them all i think if they're all very strong you could have them all you know but you always have to worry about you know being judged on what is your weakest piece because you want consistency in a portfolio and that's super important so either you know really focus in something like you know characters or if you just want to do environments try to you know land that as a path for you to be an environment artist you know they're so desired in so many game studios and you know for movies so that is a fantastic auction that is available it's competitive but you know a lot of a lot of jobs are competitive and if we work hard and really focus towards it it's definitely a completely reasonable goal for so many people to hit and it is a fantastic career you know amazing opportunity between meeting people and connections and what you learn i can't recommend that pathway enough and if you're looking for something that is not actually a cintiq and you want to go with a tablet don't feel like they won't actually do what you need to do me myself i used an intuos tablet for 12 years through my entire career and it worked perfectly the only reason i actually swapped off it was because i upgraded to a cintiq i used an intuos tablet for 12 years and it worked perfect the entire time never broke never slowed down it was a workhorse it was amazing it was actually something that i actually like about the intuos tablets over a cintiq sometimes i felt like my kind of loose gesture drawings and be able to kind of be away from the monitor a bit allowed a little bit more of loose sketching which i actually thought was really really fantastic and you definitely get used to using a tablet with your kind of hand down and looking at the monitor it's something you adapt to super fast so i would definitely check out one of those those are a super great option i got my intuos tablet when i was a junior at art school when i really wanted to start getting into digital art and it completely changed how my portfolio look the work that i was creating just to have a tablet at my computer that was reliable and solid like one of these it really changed so much for everything about i think how my career path through the end of college went you know i really cannot recommend it enough really really fantastic so another past so many artists have these days is also comic book and graphic novel work you know there's so many small kind of indie comics you don't have to really go for you know the big leagues you don't have to get in with you know marvel or dc although they are fantastic options you know the popularity of comic cons and people supporting you know independent comic work and all those artists as a fantastic option and something you totally focus on and with so many cons going on once cons start back up again there's tons of places for people to look at your portfolio give you feedback tons of different you know companies and labels they want to look at your work they're always hiring really a really amazing amazing option one other option you could look at after school is really just kind of that life of a freelance artist slash illustrator and that's when it comes into a lot of print work doing work for games workshop or privateer press a lot of art and illustration work that's just going to get printed in books there's so many stuff you know wizards of the coast between dungeons and dragons manuals magic the gathering there are so many different print publications that you can apply to and slowly get work with so that is a fantastic option and can keep you busy indefinitely if you're getting good with one of these companies they're amazing so another option you actually see a lot of rc's days and not go directly for the clients but actually showing their content and present their content online whether it be through youtube through twitch you'll start streaming your art through twitch to bring in some income build up a fan base you know bring up a fan base through your social medias and then as you grow as an artist you know you can be making money making commissions through people you know it'll have like just your other people hitting you up for commission work and that could keep you uh his money coming in and that could just turn into his own career on its own and like already there's so many fantastic options that you know i get excited just knowing that there's so many options for people you know i think i just go back to times in high school where i felt really scared about what i could actually do with this stuff the idea that i might not ever be able to have a living often and so to know that there are so many avenues for so many people and students really gives me a sigh of relief because there is a lot out there and going back to about print and work there's a lot still a lot of work with children's book illustration i went to school with quite a few artists including my roommate who that was their ultimate goal they just want to be children's book illustrators which is a really a really amazing gig and building up portfolios just for for children's book stuff really really awesome and that goes into a bunch of book illustration like book illustration covers you know there's a insane amount of work for that type of stuff really really fantastic so a lot of all these careers and everything really comes down to what you love and what you want to build your portfolio around there's a lot of fantastic options i just want to give everyone an idea that there are a lot of options because i think that's super super important you know to know that there's different avenues for you to go down and then you don't have to just focus on one try covering a whole spread you know try to do comic graphic work while also applying to some other publications while applying the studios for concept artwork and you can tackle so many different ones and just know that there are companies and companies and people looking to buy work and commission work for marketing work is constant there's they always need more and more artwork done so just keep working keep being inspired and i hope at least some of these topics really helped everyone kind of tackle some ideas or at least give them a little sigh of relief or a little more sense of focus on what they might want to shoot for as far as a career goes because turning your art into a career is one of the most fulfilling things that i have ever done i never take it for granted i feel lucky and fortunate that we've been able to have a career for so long creating art and you guys supporting me is unbelievable and i want to help and support and guide as many other artists as i can but thank you so much and definitely check out both the intuos tablets and the wacom 16 really really amazing like i said i have used wacom primarily as my exclusive tablet everything for about 16 17 years really really worth it they are solid solid workhorse of a machine all right thank you guys so much for watching and you know what put some comments down below i love to talk about different paths that people have seen open up to them and you know sometimes i get stuck in kind of the same options maybe there's a whole bunch that i don't even know about i would love to learn about some new options that people have made work for them there's so many different things thank you all so much and i'll see you in the next video i think we're gonna be recording a drawing with dave very very soon possibly this week so thank you so much i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Dave Greco

Views: 112,890

Keywords: wacom, wacom tablet, art career, dave greco, drawing with dave, digital art, wacom cintiq, intuos tablet, wacom 16, wacom 22, intuos, digital art wacom, wacom review, drawing tutorial, painting tutorial

Id: Y25dsbq25gA

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020