Q: So I really want to pursue my passion for caricature and cartooning. I want to give it a go but Sunday is my only day off so live gigs are hard to come by. I look on E Lance and Solo Gig but seems like a lot of professionals are on there. So my questions are, should I capture what is going on in local news and submit my work to the A.D. Of the local papers, without contacting them first? Undercut everyone on E Lance? And last, I need to create a portfolio and needed to know what to include. Should it be online, on disc or hard copy?

A: I’m not very familiar specifically with E Lance and Solo Gig, but in general online resources for finding freelance work and workers like that are still fledgling and are not very productive. Most of the stories I’ve heard from those who have gotten some work from these sources is that the clients they are put in touch with are looking for work done very cheap or for nothing. Those who go to these sites looking for freelance work are often new to hiring freelancers or, more often, one of those “I’ve got a million dollar idea and only need an artist/writer/programmer to do it” types that want to pay by splitting the phantom profits with the freelancer or, worse yet, working for “exposure”. Maybe these types of resources will eventually become a great resource for the working professional, but right now they aren’t quite there.

That said, for someone trying to break into the business it might be a good place to start. You can always say “no” to someone looking for your skills to do a job if you don’t feel the time and effort is worth the rewards. However I would not pay a single dime for any of these services… you’ll get better results by doing a little leg work on your own.

As far as doing live gigs, by which I assume you mean live caricature, being only available Sundays is a major problem. Do you work evenings every day?? Because most events and parties that look for caricatures as entertainment happen in the evenings. It would be inexpensive to print a single page flyer and send it out to all the members of your local Chamber of Commerce advertising your services for company parties and events.

You mentioned sending your work “cold” to the art directors of local papers… by that I assume you mean editorial cartoons based on local politics and news. Certainly you should do that if you have the inclination… editorial cartoons targeting local topics are something newspapers SHOULD be desperate to get their hands on, but their budgets for that kind of thing are pretty small. Don’t expect to get paid a lot if your cartoons are picked up by a single paper (it’s getting syndicated that makes you the money) but appearing in your local paper, even the suburban type small community papers, can get your name out there and net you work in other areas locally. In fact, suburban newspapers are a relatively untapped source of publication for an ambitious cartoonist with local ties. Most suburban papers are printed by a single company that does a dozen or more different local editions. Doing cartoons that are about local city topics can get you in several of them at a pop… grab a copy of your local small paper and look up the publisher.

Finally, I’d concentrate on a digital, online portfolio. The days of schlepping around a leather bound portfolio are long over. It’s easy, cheap and quick to put together a simple portfolio online where you can change the content 24/7 within seconds at your leisure. Your business card with the URL of your online portfolio becomes your portfolio itself, and anyone can see your work at any time.

Check out these past posts for more info on portfolios and breaking into the freelance cartooning/illustration business:

Getting started doing freelance illustration

Modern Portfolios

Marketing yourself as a freelancer

Thanks to Billy Melago for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

For the freelance illustrator there are two tasks that are absolutely essential for being successful:

1. Finding new clients
2. Keeping the clients once you’ve found them

The first one is all about marketing yourself, doing appealing work and targeting the right clients with your promotional efforts, and is universally considered the hardest part of being a freelancer: Finding the work.

The second one is at least as important as the first, however. Once you find a client, doing ongoing work for them is one of the cornerstones of building a successful (and stable) freelance business. One cannot rely on a constant influx of new clients providing enough work to stay busy. You need a core group of clients who give you steady or semi-steady work that you can count on to be your “rock” while you continue to pursue new work. When you find a client who gives you constant work… they are worth their weight in gold and you should do everything you can to keep that relationship strong and healthy.

I’m fortunate to have a few of those types. MAD is of course one, but I also do a fair amount of work every year for Scholastic and National Geographic World publications. Penthouse is proving to be a client that gives me a handful of jobs a year, and I have been doing a lot of work for Ray Griggs and his various movie and TV projects.

I was asked in a comment last week to explain about these “workplace posters” I am always posting the artwork for on The MAD Blog. Those jobs all come from one client, and this client is one of those long term, constant work types that are so important to a freelancer’s success. The client is The Marlin Company, and they produce communication materials for industries and employers all around the U.S. They make both print and electronic display units that a company would put up in their employee areas and provide a subscription based service that sends monthly content for those displays. The content consists of posters, placards and electronic animations that promote teamwork, safety, stress management and other important employer messages to the subscriber’s work force. The content is tailored to the specific display unit and some target certain industries like health care or manufacturing, but most are universal messages that any business wants their employees to understand. The poster art  I do is part of their “humor” line and usually depicts some zany scene or situation that enforces the message that goes along with it. The final printed poster is 17″ x 21″ with my image being 17″ x 17″ and text at the bottom. I basically do one a month for them, and have been doing so for about 8 years or so… although to be honest I can’t recall exactly when I did my first one. It was a physical painting and not digital, so that was a while ago. I estimate I’ve done over 100 poster images for them.

So how do you retain these kinds of clients? The first step is of course to do a great job on the artwork and on meeting any deadlines they have. Communication as always is key, so staying in touch and keeping them informed of your progress is important… but of course that is something you do for all clients and all jobs. You just don’t know when that first call from a new client might evolve into steady, on going work, so you need to do every job like it will be the first of many. It also is important to make the client feel like you appreciate their business, so the occasional thank you note or holiday card is a great way to convey this message.

It will become apparent quickly when a client falls into that “steady source of work” category, and that’s when you need to go the extra mile for them. When I have a client like that, I will make sure they are taken care of ahead of other work if that becomes necessary. I won’t blow a deadline for another client, but I will pull an all-nighter if my “gold” client calls with an emergency piece or something with a shorter deadline without batting an eye. I certainly will never turn down a job from a client like that no matter what the cost in effort may be.

The reason these kinds of clients are so hard to find and retain is that is is rare for anything to continue in the long term in the publishing world. Some things are out of your control, and no matter how good of a job you do changes will take place that will change everything. This often involves an art director losing their job or moving on, and a new art director taking over who has different ideas and tastes. I used to do a lot of work for a company called Business and Legal Reports, but when the art director I worked with left I never got another call from them. I know a lot of illustrators who would do a steady gig like a spot illustration for a column for some magazine for years and then lose that work when a new art director takes over the publication. You can’t get worked up over that kind of thing… it’s life and it will happen. All you can do is a great job and let the chips fall where they may… it’s always been my philosophy that when you work hard and put great effort and heart into what you do, good things will happen eventually. The world of business has a lot of cut throat to it, but the good will outweigh the bad if you just don’t give up and keep giving it your all.

Here are a bunch of my favorite Marlin Co. posters I’ve done over the years:

I do a few illustrations a year for Penthouse, which I have no qualms about doing so long as I am not asked to do anything pornographic. This is something they understand and only give me a call when they need a humorous illustration for an article that isn’t too “blue”. They are really great to work with.

The September issue has a full page illustration I did for a humorous article about why guys have “sex on the brain” i.e. it’s all some guys think about. Initially the art director wanted me to do an image of a guy with his brain coming out of his skull, and all the bumps on the surface forming intertwining bodies and female forms. That was a little borderline for me. While I followed through on that in a sketch, I also suggested something a little more classic looking… the same open skull but with tiny female figures popping out all over. Here are the sketches:

Sketch based on original idea

A different approach…

The art director liked the look of my second sketch. I thought the cartoony treatment of the naked female figures sans nipples or other realistic anatomical details gave them a “Barbie” doll look that was tasteful in this context. Here is the final art:

Click for a closer look…

I’m sort of taking this week off from the “Sketch o’the Week” after spending quite a bit more time than usual on that series of ink wash sketches over the last two plus months. This week’s sketch is actually the rough sketch for a small project. It’s a trading card that is part of a series being used in an ad campaign for a company. Once the campaign is launched I’ll post the finished art here, and tell you about the project and the rarefied company I am keeping in doing one of these cards… some of the artists they have doing art for this series are legends.

I’ve been advertising on and off in Serbin Communication’s Directory of Illustration for about 15 years now, and while the results aren’t exactly staggering I usually get enough new jobs from my ad to pay for it. The real value of it comes from not picking up new jobs per se but new clients from whom I get ongoing work. I still believe the best way to market yourself as a freelancer is a combination of an internet presence, direct mailing and ads like this that get distributed to tens of thousands of buyers of illustration.

The toughest part for me is always putting the page together and finding work that shows a range of subject matter and techniques. This one runs the gamut from my line and color style (Brett Farve illo originally for the Minneapolis Star Tribune) to my new colored line style (guys fighting and guy eating hot wings for breakfast, both for Penthouse) my digital painting style (the Gates vs. Crowley/ Obama referee image done for MAD), a straight up cartoon (Piranha done for the Minnesota Twins) and just for fun I tossed in several of my LOST ink-wash caricatures… I admit did a little digital touching up on some of them as the scans were a bit washed out and some of the detail was being lost (pun intended).

We’ll see how effective the ad is this year.

Busy, busy, busy with several projects, so too busy to post anything substantial. Here’s a quick concept illustration for a simplified, “cartoonified” old fashioned sailing ship for an animation project I did recently…

I’m currently slinging real paint (!!) doing a pair of originals for personal projects, then it’s back on to several other jobs in progress, including something for MAD #504.