Society of Illustrators 2010 Educators Symposium

Summary of the Illustration Educators Symposium

New York City

October 8-10, 2010

Concept Art

Artists from Pixar’s Animation Studios showed their concept art for Toy Story 3. The process by which they create characters, sets, props, lighting, colour palettes is all done with pencils and paints by illustrators. The process for hiring artists is the artist’s sketchbook filled with diverse, creative work!

E-Commerce and Illustration

This session was a panel consisting of Molly Crabapple, Daniel Burwen and Pablo Pablofino. This discussion looked at the current and future growth of the on-line market:

Digital illustration allows for easy re-purposing of work, and no worries about resolution and image quality as are present with print. According to the views of this panel, disposable print objects will cease to exist and print will only exist as “paper fetish objects”. The news happens too quickly for editorial illustrators to keep up.

In the huge growth area of online gaming illustrators can create myriad of objects, design the look, the props, the sets, the characters, etc. There is a real opportunity for illustrators here. 2^nd life has user generated content. World of Warcraft is controlled by the game creator. Eve is a game created in Iceland that has an internal economy, an economy so well managed, the Icelandic government consulted with it’s creators to see if there was something in it that could help boost the decimated Icelandic economy.

With the growing popularity of E-books mass market paperback books will disappear. According to these panelists hard covers will increase in quality and have smaller print runs. The payment structure for the artist changes, ie. author/artist receives 70% through the apple i-store vs. approximately 8% from a print house book.

Take a look at Alice for the i-pad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw

There will be two types of Illustrators-the illustrator/concept artist who is anonymous and the illustrator who is a big time brand.

Comics will see a renaissance of visual storytelling. Comic=film when you add motion to it in an e-book. The business model of the rare expensive object coupled with the free object. See Daniel Burwen’s graphic novel built from the ground up for the i-pad (a first!) here.

Research: The future of Illustration

Alan Male http://www.directoryofillustration.com/ArtistPortfolioThumbs.aspx?AID=579

presented his niche of illustration whereby the artist does the research on an as yet unimagined item, event, animal etc. and illustrates it for the world. Some of his examples were a prehistoric animal only seen in fossil form, or a historic battle, a cell process etc.

Online Education

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/an-online-vs-face-to-face-throwdown/

There is a real push towards online education. The San Francisco Academy of Art http://online.academyart.edu/schools/illustration offers its entire curriculum online as well as in a studio. The online education student expects 1:1 attention whereas the studio student expects 1:25. Delivery methods: synchronous or asynchronous. The software “Elluminate Live” http://www.elluminate.com/Products/Elluminate_Learning_Suite/?id=72/

or “Angel” for interactive live visual course delivery and feedback. (As well as moodle and dindin).

Google sketchup –visualization software for students. http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/product/gsu.html

Illustration Next

Illustration is no longer only for “print”

http://www.drawger.com/

Hanoch Piven (illustration from found objects)

Buttons

Shoes

Tupperware

Surface design

Skateboards

Illustrated games

Murals

Type

Self generated-publish your own e-book

Meegenius (online books for children- http://www.meegenius.com/ )

Aaron Meshon http://www.aaronmeshon.com/en/ makes stuff, collects royalties, and ensures he retains the licensing, a key to making money on this stuff.

Virtual Goods Market

The online gaming market brings in $1.6 billion each year. One family spent 35K. EA, Disney and Facebook games ie. Farmville. The business model is built on you get the free version to start with and then if you want more out of your experience, that is when you pay.

E-books are projected to overtake paperbacks by end of 2011, as projected by Amazon. This raises new issues of copyright, security and royalties. If a book is animated, do you need film rights?

Summary

There was a fantastic exchange of ideas this past weekend. If there are conclusions to be made, the future looks very bright indeed for illustrators. The convergence of digital media, animation and illustration will create challenges, but that is what a brave new world requires!