I just saw a post by Fantasio (German artist and illustrator) with impressions on Exotique 5 book and some thoughts on art community/market. While I agree with his points I’ve found some things are missing. Art is a VERY subjective thing. Your success as a commercial artist highly depends on market trends, what sells and what doesn’t. Sometimes I see lame artwork that founds it’s way to covers and promoted like hell. Why it’s happen? Well, when you step into a business, forget about art (i.e. creativity, freedom of expression, quality etc.), there is no room for that. You can draw simple color dots or cut abstract holes in paper – as long as it sells, why bother?
To succeed you’ve to analyze the market and do your best to ride it’s trends overwise you’ll paint for years and get nothing in return.
Almost daily I see tons of cool stuff and remind myself to blog about it later. Which of course is rarely happens. Now you can follow me on Twitter.
Recently I’ve stumbled onto topic on cgc forums on developing original IP online in public. I believe it was inspired by the recent deal with Disney acquiring Marvel. If you look at the entertainment industry you’ll see how heavily it rely on various IPs. So why not to develop a new world from scratch openly in public [that was the message of the thread]?
The first issue that pop-ups immideately is copyright and possible idea/concept theft. The hard truth is that most of ideas has zero value until implemented. It’s a long, very long road between rough idea and finished product you can hold in your hands or enjoy other way. A lot of people fall into this trap thinking of their ideas as game-changers and thus highly securing them. You will be amazed how your precious concepts, business plans or ideas would be smashed down. I remember I was sending unpublished dark elf ladies designs to appropriate toy doll company and their response was a cold-shower for me. Literally it was like, go f*ck your elfs. By the way, it was Yona, a character from Steam Fantasy project. I’ve got the same experience with my fellow buddies in game development when I proposed a new business model and game pitch that costs me a few months of designing and writing. So basically you learn that world around you isn’t that friendly to your ideas.
Next, how ’bout moving online and share your treasures with the rest of the world? Hell, it’s scary! What if people wouldn’t like your work? What if you’ll be ignored? What if…? A lot of fear right? This fear is a sort of inner buffer that prevents you from external communication. It’s both good and bad thing. It’s good because it buffers you from wasting time on various online resources. And it’s bad because you can possibly miss something or someone. Personally I prefer to talk about my projects but not too much, so it won’t generate much noise yet someone could see it.
You can read more on this topic by following the thread but basically everything leads to one question – what benefits you can get from this IP developing model?
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