invoices

Invoices

I finally sent out my invoices for the last month – I’ve been needing to do this for ages and haven’t got round to it.

It’s not been a very lucrative month (or two) since I took some time of for George’s birth and I haven’t been pushing for more work and suggesting ideas. Also, a couple of the magazines I work for have asked for less work recently.

Things do go up and down like this and luckily I’ve got a couple of other aspects to my work – the stock image libraries, (shutterstock currently brings in about $100 per month which doesn’t amount to much, but science photo library delivers a cheque of £2-3,000 every three months).

Now that I’ve upped the spending on my google adwords account, I’ll hopefully get some animation and illustration work in.

I really shouldn’t be worrying because it looks as though the documentary is doing well, and this lull gives me a chance to work on the next documentary which is great fun (http://documentaryfilmmaking.blogspot.com)


Poster

Not such good news on the anatomy poster. They now want me to make it more traditional… I wanted to do something different with the poster, and thought I had a way of making it original while still providing more information than most images on the same subject… I really liked the funky look, and the preliminary images I sent went down well. However, it seems it’s just a bit too funky! I need to reign it back in.

I think they do really want something a little different, but I understand it’s difficult when you’re about to commit to printing thousands of copies of a new piece of artwork and it’s completely different from everything else on the market which you KNOW already sells well. It’s a risk, and there’s a tendency to get a bit nervous and try to move back towards the traditional approach you know works. When you’re suddenly faced with the risk you’re taking, it gets more difficult to stick to your guns.

Hopefully we can still do something brave with it.

It’s taking a bit longer than I’d expected for the Christmas rush to kick off – that’s good because it lets me do some more work on the documentary and add create some stock video clips (see http://documentaryfilmmaking.blogspot.com/2007/11/nicole-kidman-daniel-craig-and-hugh.html#links )

I also updated my website: http://www.darkin.demon.co.uk/


Digital video is using the next couple issue to re-run previous articles in a sort of “best of” issue for reasons which will become clear later.


PC plus want a feature on creating video for 3d glasses – which will be interesting as long as I can get two identical webcams.



Poster
I’ve been asked to make some changes to the anatomy poster which has to look more “educational” – taking the background back a little (which I think is a shame – I liked the bold colours) and reducing the text (which it needed). Here’s the result – a little more subdued:

To Do List
I think I’m slipping behind a little in following up my actual paying work! I’ve been doing video editing and animation over the last few days and it’s very concentrated work, so I never surface for long enough to clear my backlog of messages

Do my invoices – I’m sure there’s some work I haven’t invoiced for
contact Digital Video, Computer Arts, PC Plus and Imagine FX – there are a lot of commissions being done right now, and I need to tie them all down so I know what I’m doing for the next month. Then I’ll feel a bit more secure.
Empty my inbox – which is full of silly little jobs.
Contact the guy I’m doing some 3D (stereoscopic) images for – these are works I had to stop when George was born and need to pick up again.
Clear my inbox
Tidy my office

It all sounds pretty mundane and it is, but keeping on top of these things is a part of being a freelance and if you don’t do it, you pretty soon end up in chaos. I never budget for the time taken on admin. Perhaps I should, but then I’d have to work out how much of it I do and how long it takes – which in itself would be more admin.

I’m aware it’s going to be tax return time again soon. There are several files full of un-sorted recipts I’ll have to tackle eventually. Not looking forward to that, but at least the tax bill itself is accounted for. I’ve got money from the book I re-wrote earlier in the year to pay for that. (http://www.amazon.com/New-Digital-Video-Manual/dp/1847320457/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195726368&sr=1-2 ) .

Just looking at the entry on amazon – my name isn’t on the cover or the author list… well, it’s not published until 2008 apparently, so hopefully it will be there by then.

Looking up the url for that book on amazon, I typed my name into their search engine and it came up with 16 books in which I’m credited for illustrations!

It’s strange how as a writer or illustrator, you can become completely disconnected from the publication of your work. I hardly ever see my work in print and sometimes (especially when working with stock libraries) I only know my work has been used when I get a cheque.

Wading through glue
Work feels like wading through glue today – there always seems to be something stopping me making any progress… probably because George cried all night and I’m a little tired. I feel like I’m working in slow motion.

Lost the whole day yesterday doing filming – so I want to feel I’ve achieved something today other than the little bit of video editing I’ve done.

Added to that, I’m on a finishing off day – deadline for the ImagineFX review and interview. This is a really short review and a really short interview with an artist that uses the software (mudbox – a 3d sculpting package). Easy enough you’d think, but it’s the interview that always slows things down. Somehow artists never seem to be able to get back to me before the deadline… it’s partially my fault for not working far enough ahead, but somehow the job always seems to expand to fill just a little more time than you have to do it.
Got booked for another review for Computer Arts while I was away yesterday. It’s again only a short review, but it’s a big professional product – Toonboom – an animation package, and I’m going to have to work hard to understand the concepts enough to review it in the time I can allot to such a small piece.

All of this adds to the feeling of wading through glue.

Anatomy Poster
You don’t think when you become an artist that you’re going to need to know how to find the Olfactory bulb or the Corpus Callosum. However, you do need to be able to become an expert in everything…

I’ve got the OK over the basic layout of the anatomy poster – great because it’s a little unusual. I’ve now got to finish labeling up the various body parts. The brain is a real pig – none of the reference images I can find give the same names for the parts on my model. Also, many of the parts are different shapes on my model to the reference images.

I’m still fairly confident about the model as it’s based largely on scans and purports to be very accurate. There’s still a whole mess of stuff in the middle of the brain that I’m having difficulty identifying.

Added to this, Photoshop isn’t really cut out for labeling – I’ve now got hundreds of layers to my pic - all with titles I don’t understand… it’s turning into a real mess.

I’m trying to do two things at once and neither are getting done. Trying to do my review of Mudbox for Imaginefx… it’s a 3d sculpting package like z-brush, but not as far advanced. However, it’s just been bought by autodesk who make the big two 3d applications, so it’s likely to get a lot of money thrown at it. it will probably develop fast.

I only need to write a 300 word review, but I’m doing my usual technique of writing non-linearly – throwing in paragraphs as they occur to me when working through the program. I can give the article shape later on.

However, at the same time, I’m trying to prepare some animation renders on my other PC so they can be getting on with themselves over the next week or so.

I’ve been told that one of the specialist picture libraries I contribute to is planning to launch a video clip library – great news for me because it means I can sell stock footage in a meaningful way.

I’ve got stock videos on a few sites already – but they don’t make much money right now. The reason is they’re mostly microstock sites (eg. http://www.footage.shutterstock.com/) and you only get a few dollars per sale. I’d rather be doing more specific animations that will be worth more and I can spend more time on.

Also it will give me the opportunity to animate some dinosaurs and spaceships! It also means I can make some more use of the 3d anatomy model I bought for the anatomy poster. the model cost 400 pounds so I'm going to have to make it pay for itself!

Anyway, this library is going to have to get off the ground with a base of animations fast, and for that reason, I want to go through my still image scenes and see if I can create simple, but interesting animations with them very quickly – i.e. just animating the camera to spin around a 3d model for example.

It’s not much fun, but because I’ve already put lots of effort into the models, the animations should look good with little effort.

I’ve now given my PC something to think about – probably enough High definition rendering to last a week or two! I really must figure out how to network the machines into a render farm...

Just got a note from GBeye saying they like the look of my anatomy poster (see below). That’s great because I think it’s a bit unusual. I’ll have to work on that some more tomorrow.

Catch up

I started this blog about 3 days ago and it became obvious almost immediately that it was unfocussed - I'm just working on too many different projects - so I've split the blog into 3 parts:





this one - on my freelance journalism, illustration and animation,





http://documentaryfilmmaking.blogspot.com/ - on (surprisingly) my documentary filmmaking work





and


http://christiandarkin.blogspot.com/ on everything else.





so - here's a digest of the last few days to give you a flavour:





I should probably start by letting you know a couple of the projects I'm working on...





I've got several articles to write for magazines about video making, illustration and general computer creative stuff. I've also just been asked by the Guardian to do a tutorial on the new Premiere Elements and the software arrived in the post this morning...





it looks pretty and seems to be a bit easier to use than the previous version.





I hope they haven't cut it down too much.I'm also a 3d illustrator and I'm just starting work on a Poster of human anatomy for gbeye (http://www.gbeye.com/) I've looked at the vast majority of anatomy posters and they look pretty plain, so I'm going for a pop-art look in the hope of bringing some colour to the thing. it looks pretty good so far...

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Work

put the finishing touches to the guardian article and sent it off - it's a very basic tutorial - most of what I do is for people who already know the basics so this was refreshingly simple. It was quite a small piece to be able to fit everything into though - so I hope it works OK. It'll be published in January in a saturday pull out on video editing.

Expressions of shock from the section editor - delivering copy days or weeks AHEAD of a deadline is virtually unheard of in the publishing industry, but I'm trying to get ahead - knowing that George could throw my schedule out of the window at any moment.

Now starting to label up the anatomy poster - latin names for muscles, organs and bones which all have to be right and spelled correctly (not my strong point)... it's going to be a long dull job and if I get any wrong, I'm going to look pretty stupid because I just know nobody's going to check it before it's printed...

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Having had a couple of weeks off for George's birth, I'm back in the office looking for writing work. As a freelancer, you get used to the rhythms of the business.

Got a call yesterday from Tom at Computer Arts saying could I do a short review of a 3d package (Cinema 4d) - also suggested Premiere Elments because these short reviews are half-pagers so the editor needs 2 to fill a page. also because I've already got Premiere Elements because of yesterday's Guardian article.

Now, because everyone on the magazines wants time off at Christmas, monthly mags always end up doing two issues in the space of one just before, and this means double the workload for everyone - especially the freelancers who end up with extra work because everyone in the office is too busy running round like headless chickens to write any of the issue in-house.

Add to this the fact that just before Christmas, all the software manufacturers go into overdrive trying to launch new versions of anything anyone might buy as a present, so there's lots more out there to cover.Tom's last deadline is the 24th of December (nasty) and he's got another before then too, so he wants to commission everything in the next week....

I also write the software reviews for ImagineFX and they've got the same problem. it looks like they've only got one review for me to do this month, but that has the same deadline (next friday) as the work I've taken on from Tom.

I suspect that the only reason Digital Video magazine haven't called me with the same problem is that they're so tight on their previous issue that nobody's had time to think about the looming Christmas deadlines yet...Rhythms of the business.

Meanwhile I'm going to try to do Toms two reviews today - before going off to Brighton this afternoon where Lisa is attending an Occupational Therapy conference tomorrow and I'm looking after George who will no doubt be screaming all day because he's not getting fed...

Friday November 9, 2007

Artwork on sale
I pop into WHSmiths and see a dinosaur DVD bundled with a magazine type book. It’s got the Natural History museum logo on it and I’d love to be making video with them as a partner, so I’m interested in this publication and buy it.

I open the magazine and find one of my Stock images has been used as a pull-out poster in the middle of the mag. It looks great. A few pages further on they’ve used another of my pics – a much less careful piece of work which they’ve chosen to blow up far too big. It looks rubbish.
The DVD accompanying the book was made in 1993 and looks awful. There’s some live footage shot at the museum, some creaky dialogue and some CG which looks like it came out of a videogame. The 3d glasses provided don’t seem to work.

I resolve to try to get a meeting with the museum and propose something a little more grown up…. I’m not sure what yet, but I'll report it in my documentary filmmaking blog.

Steven Poliakoff (I’m sure the spelling’s wrong) and editing

There’s an evening dedicated to the writer director on this weekend. He makes some great films and actually has control over them. When asked how he stops TV execs ruining his work, he said that on “shooting the past” he was told to speed it up and make it more action packed. He simply refused and the result was so popular (as popular as the Eastenders Christmas episode) that nobody stops him now.

We then saw one of his films – a monologue. It was rubbish.

I start wondering whether having other people with some control over your creative work is good or bad overall. For me, collaborative work has strengths – in that the jokes are better, the focus is sharper and the adherence to storytelling or other perceived ‘rules’ of creative work tends to be better because there’s someone there stopping any one person going off the rails.
However, most artistic projects go beyond the rules and the instant impact and only those working constantly on them can ever really get the whole picture. If someone taking a brief (or even a sustained) look at the finished product has control over it, they whittle it down to focus on their perception rather than the whole – more complex – picture.

This gives collaborative projects on the whole more impact and instant appeal, but less complexity and lasting strength.

In my own case, I often find when I’m working to a brief where the commissioner wants to change a lot of what I do, there’s often a very positive result – I end up improving the work. However, this only happens up to a point – beyond which the work starts to become too de-focused and the original ideas are lost or distorted.

Next time I get such a project in, I’ll take you through the revisions, and we’ll see what happens….