Pass the sauce, boss!

Boy, it’s been a tough year. Good, but tough. The funny thing though is that the recession actually seemed to help a bit.

The Illustration space in India is generally tough. This is because illustration is typically considered a freelancer’s gig. The thing with freelancers is that unless you land someone really professional, you run the risk of delay, drop in quality and all things of that sort. As one of the first pure illustration firms in the country, we have a huge job ahead of us, the biggest of which is fighting the perception that we are freelancers. Building a business in this space from ground up has taught us a bunch of lessons.

Lesson 1: The Brief is Everything
Commissioning an illustration is actually quite difficult. For starters there are different types of illustrations. There are interpretive illustrations where we have the freedom to interpret an editorial or an advertising concept visually. Here we are given plenty of freedom, and these jobs are fun. The downside though is that sometimes the end result is too far from an expectation already solidified. Illustration being what it is, we end up bleeding money.

Then there are representative illustrations like our medical, information and 3d visualisations. Here we barter freedom for stability in revenue. Since the brief is crystal clear there is no margin of difference in expectations. However, this then ain’t no Jackson Pollock gig, dig?

Ditto for revisions. The more revisions to the illustration, the more we bleed. So the writing on the wall for the new year is to plan a format for briefs even for interpretive illustration.

Lesson 2: Good Illustrators are scarce
I swear it. We run into a whole lot of great graphic artists, but a good illustrator is a rare breed. We lost some weight during the past year mostly because people prefer photography to illustration, but also because of a lack of really good illustration talent in the market. The new year we’re going to scout like never before. In fact if all goes well, we are considering building an Illustration Representation Firm. There are plenty abroad, but very few in the country. I’ve only heard of online or institutional models.

Lesson 3: Love Thine Community
We’ve learnt that a little love goes a long way. We believe that to find good talent we have to play our part in building good talent too. Our illustration techniques are posted as tutorials on our websites, and we use and promote opensource graphic tools. We believe that these offer true power to the artist. Last year we spent sometime lecturing at the local art college in Bangalore. The next year, if our operations touch an even keel, and we’re able to steady ourselves a bit, we are considering a series of seminars on opensource graphics tools. Bookmark our blog on opensource for details.

Lesson 4: Join the ranks of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and Chanakya
Sure, we’re smart aren’t we? No? Ok then. But you have to admit, we’re in for a beating if we don’t plan ahead. Consider this… The market for illustration in India has atrophied badly. Cheaply available art, indifference to quality, abundantly available stock art has pretty much dried up what could be a wonderfully exuberant market like the ones in Amercia or Europe. Not only do we have to fight the perception that we come cheap, we also have the problem that most people think illustrations and illustrators come in only one flavour. We took our first steps towards structuring a scalable business by introducing clear categories and pointing out the differences in effort, technique and illustrator background. I think the market is too small to appreciate this categorisation structure yet. But when we can scale up a bit and build a marketing team, these categorisations will allow for pinpointed and targeted results. Also on the plans is to diversify a bit through specialities. We took a bold step by kick-starting Motif8. Motif8 creates information graphics. Basically breaking down complex ‘process’ information visually. The new year should see some activity there.

Lesson 5: Support a cause, because you give a shit
We have a CSR program too. Except in my case it needs a new acronym because I don’t have a corporate bone in my body. (Better ones zan you haf tried mein freund!) We have been steadily contributing to the Open clip art initiative. It’s such a great idea. The plan is to make high quality vector clip art available for anyone who needs it, free of charge, and no questions asked. Why should illustration be available only to those that can afford it? By making illustration freely available we can help writers illustrate their books, teachers their charts, the suits their presentations, the teenyboppers their valentines cards… the list is awesomely endless. Averaging at roughly $75 per illustration, our C(ugh!)SR constribution last year was about $4875 or roughly Rs.2,43,750. (Yes, I’m grinning and all.) See some of the work collected here…

The coming year we’ve decided to focus on educative clip art. As a mark of our participation in the Indian Government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhyan program we will begin building a repository of high quality vector art freely available for publishers, schools and just about anyone who needs it. Our reference point will be the NCERT syllabus. So far we have built up a substantial amount of illustrations for NCERT’s recommended value education syllabi. The next year will be science. If our fund raising initiative goes well, a portal allowing structured search and download of educational clip art should be ready be end of 2010. Want to help? Get in touch.

All in all it’s been a pretty good year. We’ve learnt a lot about business and our drawing skills have improved summat. Here’s looking forward to a lovely new year with all it’s bites and then some. Happy holiday season y’all.

I wrote an article for Desi Creative a while ago. It’s on Illustration in Indian Advertising. Take a look.

Pencil Sauce is now on Carbon Made. You really have to love their lickety splick portfolios , No crap. Just artwork. It’s beautiful.

If you’re an artist, illustrator, designer, architect or from any profession that generates eye candy, you should consider getting an account here…

Spotted on desi creative! A checklist of findings detailing certain laws that seem to have been established between the interactions of clients and agencies. These empirical findings from ANA proprietary research are rather indepth. Check this out, filed under ‘Advertiser and Agency Relationship Longevity and Vulnerability’…

• Clients managing service accounts have a greater likelihood of early account mortality than for packaged goods and durables accounts.
• Clients managing highly specialized accounts have a greater likelihood of early account mortality than for packaged goods and durables.
• Clients managing retail accounts have a greater likelihood of early account mortality than for packaged goods and durables.

… etc.

So turns out that this wild west rodeo ride of an industry that I’m servicing actually has some laws after all. Even if they do take some digging up.

Official company blog or not, I can’t help posting this.

Naheed Akhtar’s “Some say I am Sweety”

From Amit Varma’s India Uncut

So, still want to depend on stock image sites?

A month or so ago, an ad-agency client of our’s called on us to work on a project. They were creating a campaign for a youth fashion brand, and wanted to use a high profile actor in their ad.

The project required the stud to be composited into unlikely locations, all of which were to be matte paintings. Now the matte paintings themselves were meant to be painted in Europe through a painter who’d done work on Jackson’s films. We were being commissioned to create the directional sketches that the artist will base the paintings on.

Now we’ve known about matte paintings for a long time, but this was a first, and we hadn’t gotten around to trying our hand at it yet. The client could of course tell that we were dying to give it a shot ourselves. Well, one thing led to another and the project got scrapped. But we couldn’t get this out of our heads. Vibin especially quickly figured that he has a thing for matte paintings.

This was his second attempt…

BEFORE

Original Image

AFTER

Finished Matte Painting

And here’s another. For the next attempt, Vibin had Sanjay build a 3d scene in Blender and output a greyscale render.He then painted the textures and the rest of the scene.

Raw Render

After – The finished painting

So, do I think we’re ready to start offering matte painting on Kablam yet? Nope. Not by a long shot. I’d say we’re far from selling matte painting as an expert service. But then judging by Vibin’s work and his quickly growing expertise, we’re getting there.

What’s missing then? Well Photorealism for starters. It still looks like a digital illustration. Our lighting still needs a lot of work. We’re getting good with textures, but still, no photorealism. Soon. Soon. When we’re ready, you’ll notice! Thats a promise.

See Vibin’s blog for more.

What can I say? I really like his blog… and his views and his stories from life.

One of the nice things about email clients like Thunderbird are the RSS feeds I get straight to my mailbox. This morning I discovered Schoonover from the Lines and Colours blog. Schoonover’s style is a lot like the classic American painters and he was in fact a student of great American illustrator Howard Pyle.

Concept ARt is a great place for illustrators to hang out. My team regularly participates in their DSG’s (Daily SKtech Groups) which is a great way to stay sharp and attached to the pencil.

Here are a couple of my favoritye threads on the forums there…