I've just discovered a new freelancer website and so far it's actually quite promising. It's easy to navigate, and it's free to use - so it ticks both of the boxes of immediate importance.
Now, will anyone visit my link?
I will Turn You Into A Zombie for $50
Friday, 1 June 2012
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Advert To English Translation Guide
Well, I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last posting, but there you go. Sometimes people get busy, even a starving artist like me. Although, speaking of starving, I have actually been making a concerted effort to eat something every single day, I'm a bit compulsive when it comes to sticking with proven successes though and since I discovered about a week ago that I could cook baked potatoes, that is what I have been having each and every night. Sometimes with beans, sometimes with canned spaghetti, sometimes with bacon, sometimes with cheese. Heck, I'm practically Heston Blumenthal over here with all of my culinary wizardry.
In between these feats of kitchen prowess, I have been both working on illustrations for a children's book and, as per normal, hunting for more work. Always important to try and plan ahead for when the job comes to an end.
After spending as long as I do looking at "illustrator wanted" type adverts, you begin to see patterns emerging. The same turns of phrase here and there. If you're new to the hunting game, you may just take everything you read at face value, so in the spirit of generosity and bon ami, I'm going to save you some time by translating 15 of the most commonly used idioms I have encountered in my travels.
In between these feats of kitchen prowess, I have been both working on illustrations for a children's book and, as per normal, hunting for more work. Always important to try and plan ahead for when the job comes to an end.
After spending as long as I do looking at "illustrator wanted" type adverts, you begin to see patterns emerging. The same turns of phrase here and there. If you're new to the hunting game, you may just take everything you read at face value, so in the spirit of generosity and bon ami, I'm going to save you some time by translating 15 of the most commonly used idioms I have encountered in my travels.
1)
“Quite simple job” means “I’m not planning on
paying much money for this”
2)
“It shouldn’t take long” means “I’m not planning
on paying much money for this”
3)
“looking for a budding artist” means “I’m not
planning on paying much money for this”
4)
“will create great exposure for you” means “I’m
not planning on paying much money for this”
5)
“perfect for an art student” means “I’m not
planning on paying much money for this”
6)
“looking for someone who has talent and is
looking to break out” means…yeah, you get the idea…
7)
“OPPORTUNITY!” means “You’re going to LOVE not
getting paid for this!”
8)
“this is a labour of love” means “I’m working
for free, so you will be too!”
9)
“Looking for inspiring artists” means “I don’t
know the difference between inspiring and aspiring AND I’m not planning on
paying much money for this.”
10)
“Let’s make a name for ourselves” means “I want
to be famous, anyone want to help me for free?”
11)
“Helloooooo” means “I’m whimsically insane! Hahahahahahahahaaaaaa!!”
12)
“xoxoxox” means “Lock up your bunnies....”
13)
“we have LOTS of long term potential and growth”
means “but right now, we can’t afford to pay you.”
14)
“We could make something really magical and
change our lives.” See number 10.
15)
“Make some extra $$$” or “GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO
MAKE EXTRA CASH!!!” means “Some way, somehow, we are going to rip you off.”
I may do more on another occasion, should the need arise. But right now, I must journey ever onwards through the tangled forests of potential employment, hunting out life giving fruit in amongst the thorns and poison berries...wow...now I'm a cross between Heston Blumenthal and Bear Grylls!
If either of them were also illustrators.
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Hot Rocks!
I'm not much of a news follower, it tends to be rather too depressing for my liking, one can't remain upbeat and optimistic like me if fear mongers are trying to scare the pants off you. Saying that though, occasionally a news story captures the public's attention so widely that it filters through the social networking grid and reaches my ears. The only reason I manage to find out anything about anything is by slowly piecing together clues via Tweets and statuses. So, what's captured the public's attention on so wide a scale? Well, it's actually vanity and arrogance this week.
Perhaps, like Chinese whispers, the story has altered somewhat since it originally started but I thought it seemed to be so amusing a tale I would give it a little air time on my blog.
The news piece centres around a...well, I'm assuming it's a woman, there are pictures of it in a bra... for arguments sake let's say it's a woman. Ok, the story centres around a woman who is apparently bemoaning the fact that she's so ridiculously pretty, life is actually proving to be difficult for her. She faces prejudice and discrimination on a daily basis because of her striking looks and everybody either hates her or wants to go out with her. Following her public exclamation of being so beautiful it hurts, the general consensus was one of "Are you having a laugh?" Some people laid into her looks and others laid into her arrogance. Is it just adding fuel to the fire if I commented on her looks? Attractiveness is subjective perhaps, therefore everyone is entitled to an opinion and I for one think she looks pretty hard faced.
It was argued, and quite rightly too, that if you're really so hampered by your appearance, why include so many pictures of yourself in the article? I mean, really obviously posed pictures too, like her casual "holiday in Aspen" picture.
She's also been criticised for on the one hand complaining about people treating her like nothing more than a piece of totty and then on the other hand including pictures like this:
Is it wrong to shoot down someone for being weird looking if they've stood on their soap box and told the world that they're gorgeous? Surely not? I'd certainly expect it if I had the brass necked cheek to proclaim to all and sundry that I'm good looking, I certainly don't think I am, occasionally perhaps if I've really made an effort, but not with any kind of long term handsomeness that would warrant an announcement in The Times. Or in the case of this slab of unappealing arrogance, The Daily...something or other. One of those cheap tawdry rags, you know the kind I mean.
She even had the gall to do a follow up article, I have now learned that she in fact has close links with the newspaper factory which is probably why they let her write in it twice. In her follow up article she had a right tantrum about everyone being a big meany and saying she wasn't pretty, when she quite clearly was pretty, and anyone who said otherwise was just ridiculously jealous of her prettiness. So there!
Then she threw in a few more pictures of herself to labour the point that she wasn't just a bimbo who posed on hillsides and in lingerie and she was actually quite a hardy three dimensional all round action heroine.
But the public weren't convinced by her attempts at trying to be "interesting". They'd already made their mind up about this shallow and self obsessed individual and were busily Twittering and face booking and all of the other social media type of outlets that I'm probably blissfully unaware of. Eventually of course, enough people were talking about it that I caught wind of it, and it certainly amused me that there was someone so arrogantly self assured about their appearance they'd actually put an article in the paper about it. Have they never heard of modesty for goodness sakes? What country are we living in now?
Well anyway, I heard that she's planning on doing a third and final follow up article once she's finished moving house to escape from the tide of abuse she's unleashed upon herself. Unfortunately since most of the venom is online she's having to move quite a distance away.
How will we cope without the most beautiful woman in the world?
Somehow, I think, we'll get by.
Perhaps, like Chinese whispers, the story has altered somewhat since it originally started but I thought it seemed to be so amusing a tale I would give it a little air time on my blog.
The news piece centres around a...well, I'm assuming it's a woman, there are pictures of it in a bra... for arguments sake let's say it's a woman. Ok, the story centres around a woman who is apparently bemoaning the fact that she's so ridiculously pretty, life is actually proving to be difficult for her. She faces prejudice and discrimination on a daily basis because of her striking looks and everybody either hates her or wants to go out with her. Following her public exclamation of being so beautiful it hurts, the general consensus was one of "Are you having a laugh?" Some people laid into her looks and others laid into her arrogance. Is it just adding fuel to the fire if I commented on her looks? Attractiveness is subjective perhaps, therefore everyone is entitled to an opinion and I for one think she looks pretty hard faced.
It was argued, and quite rightly too, that if you're really so hampered by your appearance, why include so many pictures of yourself in the article? I mean, really obviously posed pictures too, like her casual "holiday in Aspen" picture.
 |
| It's probably not even Aspen, it's probably Wales. |
She's also been criticised for on the one hand complaining about people treating her like nothing more than a piece of totty and then on the other hand including pictures like this:
 |
| Talk about mixed messages. |
She even had the gall to do a follow up article, I have now learned that she in fact has close links with the newspaper factory which is probably why they let her write in it twice. In her follow up article she had a right tantrum about everyone being a big meany and saying she wasn't pretty, when she quite clearly was pretty, and anyone who said otherwise was just ridiculously jealous of her prettiness. So there!
Then she threw in a few more pictures of herself to labour the point that she wasn't just a bimbo who posed on hillsides and in lingerie and she was actually quite a hardy three dimensional all round action heroine.
But the public weren't convinced by her attempts at trying to be "interesting". They'd already made their mind up about this shallow and self obsessed individual and were busily Twittering and face booking and all of the other social media type of outlets that I'm probably blissfully unaware of. Eventually of course, enough people were talking about it that I caught wind of it, and it certainly amused me that there was someone so arrogantly self assured about their appearance they'd actually put an article in the paper about it. Have they never heard of modesty for goodness sakes? What country are we living in now?
Well anyway, I heard that she's planning on doing a third and final follow up article once she's finished moving house to escape from the tide of abuse she's unleashed upon herself. Unfortunately since most of the venom is online she's having to move quite a distance away.
How will we cope without the most beautiful woman in the world?
Somehow, I think, we'll get by.
Friday, 30 March 2012
Shazam!!
Where do you get the term "sick as a dog" from? Are canines typically more susceptible to germs than humans, are they poorly more often? Maybe one dog cold is the equivalent of seven human colds? *ponders*
I was beginning to think I might be Bruce Willis from "Unbreakable". It had been so long since I last succumbed to a common cold - or any other malady for that matter - I thought I had at last developed some kind of super power. But alas, it was not to be. Starting on Tuesday and slowly kicking me into touch over the course of the last couple of days, a cold has set in. What began as aches and pains and a general feeling of "some thing's not right here" evolved into dizziness and nausea before finally coming to rest as cough, sore throat and blocked nose.
I'm not a happy bunny.
Partly because I now have to continue with the mundaneness of household existence whilst suffering the eleventh plague of Egypt (yeah - colds and flu, they didn't put it into the final draft), but mainly because I have to do this suffering with the knowledge that I don't have any superpowers.
Boy, I'd love to have some kind of supernatural ability. There are just so many to choose from, when people ask me, what kind of superpower would you have (and with the circle of friends I've got, this question comes up more often than you'd think)? I'm often over whelmed by the dilemma of having so many options, so many potential choices each with their own merits. I couldn't just stick with one, surely? Most superheroes can do more than one thing, if you're stuck doing one thing you end up with a very two dimensional ultimately boring character.
What superpowers would I have then? Mental check-list superpower breakdown!
Super strength, ok that's a nifty little item. Popularised by the boy scout of course, I'm not Superman's biggest fan. He's my father's superhero, not that that's the reason I think he's lame of course. He's lame for a veritable host of reasons, but it's not my dad's fault, he got into comics when he was a kid and comics were pants, he didn't have a lot of options, but he were grateful!!
With the super strength, on the plus side you'd feel very self assured in every wretched hive of scum and villainy you wandered into, and you might even find yourself secretly hoping someone will start a fight with you just so you can show off and paste them through a brick wall. Of course that will inevitably end up with a whole pile of dead civilians and you'll have no recourse but to turn yourself over to the police and....no... sorry, I meant, pretend it never happened and high tail it to Oa.
Ok, so super strength is out. What about super speed. As a man with a powerful love of The Flash, this is definitely one of my favourite abilities, but the real world practical applications of being the fastest man alive? Um...might be a little tricky. What with sonic booms at street level, hurricane slip streams, not paying attention and accidentally carving a path clean through the middle of a fat man...super speed would be fraught with issues. And even if I somehow managed to use my power to travel through time, would I really want to meddle with history? What kind of temporal universe are we living in? To put it simply, am I Kyle Reese or Marty McFly, that's the real question here.
So with the comic book glamour of strength and speed cast at the way side of practical reality, what else is there, well...lots. More than can comfortably fit into anything approaching an easy to ready blog post. Once the flood gates of graphic novels and superhero literature have been opened it can sometimes be quite a task to close them again. However, there are some powers that have, in my careful consideration, definitely merited real world, practical approval.
The power of invisibility!
Whatever your answer to that question is, says a lot about who you are as a person. You think about that.
Being invisible at will would be awesome, wouldn't it? Being able to vanish in a crowd, hide from people you don't feel like talking to, get into movies for free. There's plenty of things you could get away with if no one could see you, it's not the most glamorous of powers I'll give you that, it doesn't woosh or bang or boom or do anything spectacular. That's why they tend to give it to characters that don't really merit much importance but don't want to be left out.
In order for a superpower to be realistically applicable in every day life, it's going to need to be visually unassuming. Otherwise mysterious government types and the press will be all over you like a rash. Super speedsters will be shackled into enormous hamster wheels, forced to provide the nation's power until they die! Probably.
The ability to stop and start time, now that would be a great one. Unassuming again so it fits the bill nicely in terms of discretion, the whole universe will be put on pause except for you, all the benefits of super speed without any of the showiness. You could be amazing in a fight, you could have fantastic reflexes, you could nip to the toilet mid-way through a movie and not miss anything and of course, you could sleep in every single morning and never be late for work. Gosh, the practical applications of being able to stop time are phenomenally vast, and if you're careful about things you could get away with it indefinitely.
I've often mulled over the idea of telepathy and telekinesis. They're both very cool powers, telepathy is much more unassuming than telekinesis though, so for real world applications that renders the ability to move stuff with your mind out of the running.
Telepathy, well it would definitely have to be fully under your control, you don't want to go around hearing everyone's thoughts 24/7, you'd go insane! But, now and again when you really want to get to the truth of a matter, it would be marvellous to be able to find out what someone's really thinking. However, this does pose the awful dilemma of what do you do if you hear something you really shouldn't have heard, it's the same moral problem of reading someone's diary and finding out some juicy gossip, you can't reveal you know it without also revealing how you found out about it and then it's hello mysterious government types again. (Yeah, MI5 really hate their diaries being read.)
Even on a small scale, prying into the thoughts of close friends and family could be a terrible thing to do, we've all had our off days when we've silently wanted our nearest and dearest to just be quiet and go away - how awful would everyone feel if those thoughts were public? Hum...scrap telepathy then, ignorance is bliss.
How about the power to communicate with machines, a la Mika in Heroes? If you had the power to put your hand onto the screen of an ATM and command it to give you money, you'd never have to work again! Plus there's no moral dilemma because that was already addressed in the series when the kid explains that he didn't steal the money because it was...I dunno, floating around somewhere. I can't remember what the exact excuse was but in my mind it was something along the lines of the Superman 3 wage scam that Richard Pryor's character Gus pulls. We can fine tune the ethics once we get hold of the power. Wouldn't it be funny to be able to vanish money from badly behaved rich people's bank accounts! You could be some kind of futuristic Robin Hood!
So, in brief, other powers we don't want include:
What we do want are nice subtle powers that will make our lives really awesome but won't cause us to get locked up in Area 51.
So that's a yes to invisibility, temporal control and communicating with machines.
I'm sure if I gave it some thought I could think of dozens and dozens of other ideas, but right now all I really want is just the power to fight the common cold. Is that too much to ask?
I was beginning to think I might be Bruce Willis from "Unbreakable". It had been so long since I last succumbed to a common cold - or any other malady for that matter - I thought I had at last developed some kind of super power. But alas, it was not to be. Starting on Tuesday and slowly kicking me into touch over the course of the last couple of days, a cold has set in. What began as aches and pains and a general feeling of "some thing's not right here" evolved into dizziness and nausea before finally coming to rest as cough, sore throat and blocked nose.
I'm not a happy bunny.
Partly because I now have to continue with the mundaneness of household existence whilst suffering the eleventh plague of Egypt (yeah - colds and flu, they didn't put it into the final draft), but mainly because I have to do this suffering with the knowledge that I don't have any superpowers.
Boy, I'd love to have some kind of supernatural ability. There are just so many to choose from, when people ask me, what kind of superpower would you have (and with the circle of friends I've got, this question comes up more often than you'd think)? I'm often over whelmed by the dilemma of having so many options, so many potential choices each with their own merits. I couldn't just stick with one, surely? Most superheroes can do more than one thing, if you're stuck doing one thing you end up with a very two dimensional ultimately boring character.
 |
| Sorry Ben, but, you're kind've lame...please don't hit me. |
Super strength, ok that's a nifty little item. Popularised by the boy scout of course, I'm not Superman's biggest fan. He's my father's superhero, not that that's the reason I think he's lame of course. He's lame for a veritable host of reasons, but it's not my dad's fault, he got into comics when he was a kid and comics were pants, he didn't have a lot of options, but he were grateful!!
With the super strength, on the plus side you'd feel very self assured in every wretched hive of scum and villainy you wandered into, and you might even find yourself secretly hoping someone will start a fight with you just so you can show off and paste them through a brick wall. Of course that will inevitably end up with a whole pile of dead civilians and you'll have no recourse but to turn yourself over to the police and....no... sorry, I meant, pretend it never happened and high tail it to Oa.
 |
| I will kill again... |
Ok, so super strength is out. What about super speed. As a man with a powerful love of The Flash, this is definitely one of my favourite abilities, but the real world practical applications of being the fastest man alive? Um...might be a little tricky. What with sonic booms at street level, hurricane slip streams, not paying attention and accidentally carving a path clean through the middle of a fat man...super speed would be fraught with issues. And even if I somehow managed to use my power to travel through time, would I really want to meddle with history? What kind of temporal universe are we living in? To put it simply, am I Kyle Reese or Marty McFly, that's the real question here.
 | ||
| Doc...are you absolutely certain I have to be naked to time travel? |
So with the comic book glamour of strength and speed cast at the way side of practical reality, what else is there, well...lots. More than can comfortably fit into anything approaching an easy to ready blog post. Once the flood gates of graphic novels and superhero literature have been opened it can sometimes be quite a task to close them again. However, there are some powers that have, in my careful consideration, definitely merited real world, practical approval.
The power of invisibility!
You're invisible, what's the first thing you'd do?
Whatever your answer to that question is, says a lot about who you are as a person. You think about that.
Being invisible at will would be awesome, wouldn't it? Being able to vanish in a crowd, hide from people you don't feel like talking to, get into movies for free. There's plenty of things you could get away with if no one could see you, it's not the most glamorous of powers I'll give you that, it doesn't woosh or bang or boom or do anything spectacular. That's why they tend to give it to characters that don't really merit much importance but don't want to be left out.
 |
| You may fancy her, but her power's still a bit rubbish. |
In order for a superpower to be realistically applicable in every day life, it's going to need to be visually unassuming. Otherwise mysterious government types and the press will be all over you like a rash. Super speedsters will be shackled into enormous hamster wheels, forced to provide the nation's power until they die! Probably.
The ability to stop and start time, now that would be a great one. Unassuming again so it fits the bill nicely in terms of discretion, the whole universe will be put on pause except for you, all the benefits of super speed without any of the showiness. You could be amazing in a fight, you could have fantastic reflexes, you could nip to the toilet mid-way through a movie and not miss anything and of course, you could sleep in every single morning and never be late for work. Gosh, the practical applications of being able to stop time are phenomenally vast, and if you're careful about things you could get away with it indefinitely.
I've often mulled over the idea of telepathy and telekinesis. They're both very cool powers, telepathy is much more unassuming than telekinesis though, so for real world applications that renders the ability to move stuff with your mind out of the running.
Telepathy, well it would definitely have to be fully under your control, you don't want to go around hearing everyone's thoughts 24/7, you'd go insane! But, now and again when you really want to get to the truth of a matter, it would be marvellous to be able to find out what someone's really thinking. However, this does pose the awful dilemma of what do you do if you hear something you really shouldn't have heard, it's the same moral problem of reading someone's diary and finding out some juicy gossip, you can't reveal you know it without also revealing how you found out about it and then it's hello mysterious government types again. (Yeah, MI5 really hate their diaries being read.)
Even on a small scale, prying into the thoughts of close friends and family could be a terrible thing to do, we've all had our off days when we've silently wanted our nearest and dearest to just be quiet and go away - how awful would everyone feel if those thoughts were public? Hum...scrap telepathy then, ignorance is bliss.
How about the power to communicate with machines, a la Mika in Heroes? If you had the power to put your hand onto the screen of an ATM and command it to give you money, you'd never have to work again! Plus there's no moral dilemma because that was already addressed in the series when the kid explains that he didn't steal the money because it was...I dunno, floating around somewhere. I can't remember what the exact excuse was but in my mind it was something along the lines of the Superman 3 wage scam that Richard Pryor's character Gus pulls. We can fine tune the ethics once we get hold of the power. Wouldn't it be funny to be able to vanish money from badly behaved rich people's bank accounts! You could be some kind of futuristic Robin Hood!
So, in brief, other powers we don't want include:
- Laser vision (Practical applications?)
- X-ray vision (possible long term health implications - see Drawn Together)
- Freezing breath (discreet uses would be limited to beverage chilling, and no one wants to be the fridge!)
- Banshee shriek (very limited potential and not in the least bit subtle)
- Turning into rock (stupid.)
- Flight (too many radars, other air users, satellites, too cold, not enough air.)
- Communicating with marine life (too depressing.)
- Stretching like a rubber band (Yeah, 'cause THAT'S cool...)
- Becoming encased in flames (very, very dangerous and far too obvious unless you work in a crematorium, and even then, they have their limits.)
What we do want are nice subtle powers that will make our lives really awesome but won't cause us to get locked up in Area 51.
So that's a yes to invisibility, temporal control and communicating with machines.
I'm sure if I gave it some thought I could think of dozens and dozens of other ideas, but right now all I really want is just the power to fight the common cold. Is that too much to ask?
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
The Satisfaction of A Job Well Done
Ah, bliss. I've ticked off another job from my noticeboard, I'm dividing my time now between making relevant amendments to the job I've got in progress (as and when the client requires it) and also the same-old, same-old work hunting type of thing I normally do.
The job I've just completed was for HeatCool, which is a Chicago based air conditioning company. You don't really get that over here, air conditioning. I mean, obviously it must exist, I'm sure I've been in some shops and felt blasts of cold air that weren't coming from the front entrance. It's just not as prevalent over in this country as it is in the states.
It's almost like a strange reverse world, or at least it was when I was over there. I was in a hot southern state and everywhere was fitted with a/c units, you'd walk past the open doorway of a shop and be suddenly struck by an Arctic blast, it was bliss, temporarily providing respite in the blazing heat of the American day. It's exactly the same in England, but in reverse! In this country you walk past an open shop doorway and they blast heat out at you, compelling you to stand still and attempt to thaw out your bones for long enough to perhaps be tempted inside. In America you actually catch yourself saying, "shut the door quickly, you'll let the heat in!"
Well, I'm glad that HeatCool like their new advertising postcard, I certainly enjoyed putting it together. Although it was a long and interesting road, I've saved all the variations of it so I can watch it evolve. I shan't bore you with the minutia of each variation in between the first draft and the final draft but suffice to say, it changed a lot from beginning to end.
The brief initially was "pop-art" themed, hence why the first draft is very much in the pop art style. As I worked with the client and made amendments based on their requests the overall image changed somewhat until it ended with the final draft you see above. I think they're both equally pleasing in their own way and now I know more about air conditioning units, pop art, Roy Liechtenstein and the city of Chicago.
The job I've just completed was for HeatCool, which is a Chicago based air conditioning company. You don't really get that over here, air conditioning. I mean, obviously it must exist, I'm sure I've been in some shops and felt blasts of cold air that weren't coming from the front entrance. It's just not as prevalent over in this country as it is in the states.
It's almost like a strange reverse world, or at least it was when I was over there. I was in a hot southern state and everywhere was fitted with a/c units, you'd walk past the open doorway of a shop and be suddenly struck by an Arctic blast, it was bliss, temporarily providing respite in the blazing heat of the American day. It's exactly the same in England, but in reverse! In this country you walk past an open shop doorway and they blast heat out at you, compelling you to stand still and attempt to thaw out your bones for long enough to perhaps be tempted inside. In America you actually catch yourself saying, "shut the door quickly, you'll let the heat in!"
Well, I'm glad that HeatCool like their new advertising postcard, I certainly enjoyed putting it together. Although it was a long and interesting road, I've saved all the variations of it so I can watch it evolve. I shan't bore you with the minutia of each variation in between the first draft and the final draft but suffice to say, it changed a lot from beginning to end.
 |
| First Draft |
 |
| Final Draft |
The brief initially was "pop-art" themed, hence why the first draft is very much in the pop art style. As I worked with the client and made amendments based on their requests the overall image changed somewhat until it ended with the final draft you see above. I think they're both equally pleasing in their own way and now I know more about air conditioning units, pop art, Roy Liechtenstein and the city of Chicago.
Monday, 26 March 2012
Sleepy Artist
Very tired.
Before I retire for the evening I thought I ought to perhaps blog a little something short and sweet. A picture's worth a thousand words of course, but I want it to have something to do with art or artistic principles. I'll make a meme, I decided, that contains the word "perspective" whilst simultaneously conveying an important message. Job done.
Before I retire for the evening I thought I ought to perhaps blog a little something short and sweet. A picture's worth a thousand words of course, but I want it to have something to do with art or artistic principles. I'll make a meme, I decided, that contains the word "perspective" whilst simultaneously conveying an important message. Job done.
Sunday, 25 March 2012
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Continuing with the old hunter gatherer analogy, I have been out harvesting the fruits of the interwebs searching for succulent morsels. Whilst in this occupation, I have found a few really dodgy looking vegetables...
Exhibit A - The Good Grief
“I have a model diagram and I need someone to design a diagram which looks like the model which Ill give to you.”
- So...are we all clear on that then?
Exhibit B - The Bad Grammar
“A illustrator and drawist needed”
Exhibit C - The Ugly Job Offer
“I have twenty illustrations that I need done for a fantas adventure novel.
There will also be a small amount of involved, as the final output will be for an iPad e-book.
Full color.
8.5" x 11".
Thank you kindly.”
There will also be a small amount of involved, as the final output will be for an iPad e-book.
Full color.
8.5" x 11".
Thank you kindly.”
Ok, definitely a weird grasp of the English language which implies possible communication difficulties ahead so that's ringing a few alarm bells. There's going to be "a small amount of involved" which really, could be anything. Assuming the poor verbal skills doesn't have you running for the hills, you may ask what’s your budget for these twenty full colour 8 by 11 fantasy illustrations?
“Budget: $30-$250”
Say what?! That’s a maximum of about £158 for the whole thing, less the percentage fee for using this website, that’ll leave about £140-ish which works out as £7 per illustration. SEVEN POUNDS for a whole illustration, assuming each fantasy illustration takes, what, five hours to do (sketching, inking and colouring...plus redrafts because you just know this guy is going to want redrafts)? That means he wants someone to work for £1.40 an hour, and that’s ONLY if you pay the maximum budgeted amount. And they say slavery has been abolished!
But you know what’s really, really bloody awful. Worse than the fact this guy is asking people to work for an abysmally small amount. The worst thing is, not only have 26 people actually bid on this god-awful job and agreed to work for this pittance but one of them has bid $30 and said they can complete it in 3 days. THIRTY dollars, that's how much they've valued their time at.
Maybe they’re really fast, maybe they can do all twenty illustrations in, I dunno, less than 3 and a half hours per image (because that’s what it’s going to take to do 20 in 3 days). So say if it takes them 2 hours per image, that’s 40 hours of their life they’re spending on this project in total. $30, minus website fee, leaves about $27 which translates to around £15, which works out as 75p an image or if it takes them 40 hours, about 37p an hour.THIRTY SEVEN pence an hour!! Now THAT is just plain wrong. What in the heck can you buy these days for 37p? What is she trying to do to us offering to work for 37p an hour?!
*rage choke*
Union!! UNION!!
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