Marshall: I'm ready to go.

Let's go Stan. [chuckle] The draftsmen podcast, with you.

Stan: Stan.

Marshall: And me.

Stan: Ma - Why am I -

Marshall: Why am I saying that?

That was -

Stan: Hey, guys

Welcome back to the Draftsmen Podcast where we talk about art stuff and we teach you about

art stuff and you ask us questions about art stuff.

Marshall: All that.

Stan: And we are artists and teachers and, yeah.

Marshall: Yeah.

Here we are again.

Stan: Yep. This is another episode.

Marshall: Let's do.

[intro-music]

Marshall: What do you want to talk about today Stan?

Stan: Well, we are going to talk about making money as an artist.

Marshall: "Making money as an artist".

Stan: Yes.

But first, Marshall...

Marshall: Yeah.

Stan: Hold on.

Marshall: Okay. I was jumping - Stan: I haven't seen you in a week.

Marshall: Oh, yeah.

Stan: Tell me what you've been up to?

Marshall: That is a hard question.

My mind is so on the present that you are trying to point it back to the past.

Stan: Okay. What are you going to be doing in like two months, because that is what this episode

is going to come out?

Marshall: I've been getting prepared for classes.

You might think, "why would he get prepared for classes when he's teaching classes he's

taught over and over?"

Because, every new group is a new experience and I get my head into the notes and into

the slides and then what we are going to watch.

And so, in fact, I enjoy that part of teaching more than any other part, is preparing the curriculum.

Stan: Really? interesting

Marshall: Yeah.

Marshall: Because I get to do it alone, it's creative, I get to move the sessions around

to say, "Oh, what if we did this one before that one?"

It's fun.

Stan: Nice.

Marshall: Yeah, that is what I'm doing.

Stan: That is cool.

Marshall: How about you?

Stan: I've been -

Marshall: This is how you make your living too.

Stan: Shit shit, hold on, wwhat I'm I doing? Oh!

I've been getting ready to launch Proko 2.0.

That's it's a new social network/online arts school kind I'll be launching.

Marshall: And this is the big thing you have been preparing for a few years.

Stan: We have been working on it for several years, yeah.

Marshall: Can you give us a brief explanation of how Proko 2.0 is different from the previous version?

Stan: Yes.

There will be a lot more community features.

You will be able to post your assignments directly under the lesson itself, request critiques.

people will be able to critique it, you are going to get points for everything you do

and possibly even maybe buy stuff with those points.

There is going to be a classroom area where you can keep track of what you are working on.

You could see what other people in that class are doing.

There will be a newsfeed.

Eventually, not in the first version, eventually we are going to launch challenges and competitions.

Marshall: Yeah.

Stan: Yeah.

It is just going to be more of an actual art school and less of a library because right

now I think Proko.com is kind of just like a library of videos.

It is not an art school but, yeah.

Marshall: So, this is going to level up the user experience to be more for the user.

Stan: Yes.

Oh! And a big part of this is I am going to be allowing other instructors to start posting their content.

So, it will become a larger marketplace of art education not just my stuff and the stuff

that Proko produces but other instructors can make their own stuff and post it.

They will be approved though, I'm not going to open up to everybody.

I guess if you are an art instructor with a lot of experience and know how to make videos

and you want to participate, email me.

Marshall: Great.

Stan: Yeah.

Marshall: Three cheers in advance for Proko 2.0.

Stan: Thank you.

Making money as an artist.

Marshall: Making money as an artist.

Oh, boy! That is a big topic.

Stan: It is huge.

Marshall: Yeah.

Stan: But I got nothing to say. No, I'm just kidding.

I've got a lot to say.

Marshall: So this is just specifically, how to make money.

So, if we're going to deal with this, I think we pull our view back and get a whole big context.

Stan: Yeah.

Marshall: And that is, "how do I actually make money with my art?"

Stan: Most people either freelance or get a job -

Marshall: Those have been the two big categories. Stan: - at a studio or something.

In my time that was all there was.

You got hired by a company to work regularly and you had a paycheck and you got insurance

benefits and you had to go to the work every day or what I did.

I never had a job like that.

I was always a freelancer.

Stan: You teach at a college.

Marshall: Yes.

But I've only been a part-time teacher.

Stan: Okay.

Marshall: Then on the online school in 2010 to 2012 or so, I was always a freelancer.

So, the schools are very much like freelancing.

Teach one night a week, two nights a week and you might not be teaching there next semester.

Stan: Oh, really?

Well, okay.

Marshall: Yeah.

So, freelancing was all I knew.

And freelancing was a hassle because every time you do a job, now you have got to go

out and get another job.

And so, the amount of time spent in showing portfolio and marketing, it is very much like

what actors have to do except that actors have it far worse.

Which is, most of their lives are going to auditions and going to auditions and going

to auditions and it is something like nine out of a ten or ninety-nine out of a hundred

that say no to you.

So, you spend all this time going to auditions hoping to get that one job that is going to pay that well.

And that happened with me showing my portfolio to get one job.

But, as time went on, if I did a good job for that client, the client would then hire

me again and hire me again and then it would become references to other art directors where

it was - it started a snowball in a way.

But I will tell you, as difficult as freelancing was, there was some great things about it.

In retrospect, I wouldn't have wanted to do it any other way.

I got to work at home, I got to work on my own hours.

Even though the hours were dictated by the deadline, I was in the comfort of my own home

and I liked that.

Stan: Yeah.

I did too.

I mean, I started my own business Proko, I was Proko, and most of the existence of Proko

has been in my house.

Now we have a studio but I really enjoyed being my own boss and or still enjoy it but

I enjoyed just getting up and walking to the next room and starting my day and then going

to the kitchen if I need to get an ice tea.

I like the freedom, personally.

So, if I had to choose between getting a job or being a freelancer, I would choose being

a freelancer all the time.

Marshall: Yeah.

The hardest thing about freelancing is getting it started.

Getting it so you got enough income to keep it going.

But not everybody feels this way, a number of people like to separate their home life

from their work life.

And so, there is where the issue of jobs comes in.

I know that right now we are not talking about how to make money, but we are pulling the

camera back to look at the categories here.

Freelance is one, where I had about a hundred art directors that I worked for over that

20-some year period.

And getting a job where your company hires you and you are responsible to them is another category.

And the good thing about it is that you don't have to constantly market, you don't have

to seek work, the work is there for you.

You also get benefits typically, instead of having to pay your own health insurance.

Stan: Yeah.

Marshall: The downside of it is that there can be an illusion with companies that they

will have any loyalty to you.

Stan: Yeah, job security.

Marshall: One fact of life is that companies have zero loyalty to you.

When it comes down to the point where they have got to let you go, they let you go.

And there is all sorts of stories.

The animation industry is rife with those stories.

But there is other industries too where they let everybody go and it wasn't those people's

fault, it was the company's fault but the people who get the fallout are the employees.

And then the market is saturated with all the people who do that kind of thing and everyone

is scrambling to get jobs again.

So, you can expect nothing out of a company.

In fact, here is the wisdom of - Christian and I had lunch with a man who has been successful

in the game industry and in film and in a number of industries and he said,

"Everybodyis a freelancer now."

When you are working for a company, you are lucky if that company lasts for six years.

And they are going to let you go, so you have to look at this, 'I'm going to get somebody

to hire me' as a temporary situation.

What happens when that ends?

And then, where do I go from there?"

Those are two categories; freelance and a steady job.

Stan: And freelance.

Marshall: And freelance, yeah.

Stan: And freelance and a steady job.

Marshall: Yeah.

There is a third category now though, which is going directly to your fans.

Stan: Oh, yeah.

Marshall: Which is what you have done.

Stan: Yes.

So, you are starting your own business.

Marshall: You are not really a freelancer and you are not working for someone else but

you have got thousands of fans - million.

I have a more overlap with freelance than I do with my own job, but, um.

Marshall: This is the golden area.

This is the area that I would -

Stan: Yes.

Seth Godin talks about that.

I forgot what book, Linchpin or Tribes, but he talks about how everyone now should be

trying to be their own -

Marshall: Brand?

Stan: Their own brand, yeah.

Job security is not a thing.

Marshall: Stan, how did you make money as an artist?

Stan: There were many ways.

Marshall: Elaborate.

Stan: Let us see, one way that I know a lot of artists, you do this, is that they teach.

And I think this is actually a really good way to enter the professional art world is

by teaching first because it gets you better.

We talked about this a lot, you teach in order to learn.

And it also, it is a job.

You get to make money.

You might get stuck in that forever though, right?

Is that the pitfall of teaching?

Marshall: That's the pitfall of teaching.

Stan: Yeah.

Marshall: Is that for teaching, as somebody said, has killed more artists careers than cocaine has.

Stan: Really?

Than cocaine?

[chuckle] Wow!

Marshall: Because once you start doing it and then you are becoming a dependent on that

for your income, you are going to find out as life goes on you are hardly going to have

time for the other thing.

Stan: Yeah.

Well, I mean, it is an option still.

Teaching and I mean, I got out of it I didn't do that forever.

So, it is possible to teach for a period of time and then when you are done with that

and you are ready to move on you can move on if you are good with controlling your life.

So, I did that for a while.

I think that, yeah, that was my first real job in art was teaching how to draw and paint.

While I was teaching though, I did commissions for people.

I got into a gallery that represented me and I sold paintings through that.