12 Jan 2017
2017 is here! And honestly, we cannot think of a better way to begin this new year with you than.. a discount sale! So until 28 February you can have a 30% off discount on your first year of PRO plan.
You don't need to do anything special: the first year of all PRO plans will just cost 50,82$ instead of 72,60$.
If you are already on PRO Plan, we are also running a sale on STORE plan: pay 6 months for advance and you get one more month for free. Contact us and we'll tell you the details on how to benefit from this promo.
Tell all your creative friends and colleagues, and help us reach more people!
For any doubt, question, suggestion or problem, please contact us at uservoice or write us at [email protected].
21 Dec 2016
Today, we are bringing something a bit different to our blog. As you know, we don't just announce improvements and promos in our blog, but also try to bring valuable content. Until now, this usually consisted on interviews with other artists and illustrators. But we didn't really had the chance to talk about the other side of the table: the people hiring illustrators for editorial projects.
Recently, we were at Feria Liber 2016 and we had the chance to do precisely that: we talked with a log of publishing firms focused on illustration about what they look for in artists, and which are the best ways to approach them for work.
One of these conversation was with Edu Flores, from the publishing firm Apila Editions. Apila is a small publishing firm focused on children illustrated albums, born in the Art School of Zaragoza. As Edu says, they created Apila to "be able to teach things we actually had done": knowing the publishing market first hand, creating their own firm with their own resources.
One of the first things we talked about is the kind of Illustrated Album made at Apila. Edu told us that when they receive proposals that "smell of being pedagogical stuff", they just reject them. The main mission for an illustrated album at Apila must be telling a story with which the children can feel moved and identified with. Of course, comunnicating values is needed in a children book, but always through storytelling, which must be the core of the whole thing.
Edu admits there has been a sort of children illustration boom, and that they receive much more proposals that they can process, although they always try to answer to everyone. This illustration boom has also brought bad things, such as some style standardization. That's why Apila always looks for unique illustrators with a distinguishing style. This is a bit easier to find on illustrations that are not 100% digital, and it's usual for Apila to work with illustrators that only use "real" techniques, or a combination of that and digital techniques, at most.
About approaching editors with new ideas, Edu says that "email is the most inmediate way to do that". It is very important to be as brief and succint as possible, both in the email text and in the illustration portfolio or attached material. The person reading our proposal is also trying to process emails from a lot of other artists, and we are seriously under the risk of overloading them. It is better to be brief (both textually and visually) and straight to the point.
Edu also talked about an attitude he sometimes finds on beginning artists and that can really be self-defeating for them: they approach editors with a kind of "don't steal my idea" attitude. This defensive way to do things, that sometimes gets to the point of the artist not wanting to show her/his work, will make the editor just pass instantly on them. Apila, as the vas majority of publishing firms, don't want to steal anyone's work. It's very difficult for them to process all the proposals they get, and making them "struggle" to see an artist's work just makes no sense at all.
We are talking mostly about illustration, but Edu really emphasizes that "that is only half of the formula". It is key to work with good writers, and writers that can make a story work in a brief, limited, and demanding format such as the children illustrated album. As Edu says, if writing was a boxing combat, "a writer can win a novel over points, has to knock out on a short story".
We don't want to finish this post without talking about the Primera Impresion (First impression) prize, organized by Apila Editions. The aim of this prize is to give a first chance to illustrators with no publications so far, working with them and paying them just as Apila does with well-known artists. This creates great opportunities that kick-start the career of the selected artists. Edu highlighted the success cases of Olga de Dios, winner of 2013 edition, and Canizales, winner of 2016 edition with "Guapa".
The final advice from Edu is "talk less and do more". Right now, there are a lot of events, workshops and fairs around illustration. They bring positive things, but our main focus should be on creating stuff, starting new projects, and show them to the world in every way we can.
Thanks a lot for this great conversation and advice, Edu!
12 Dec 2016
From the beginning of this year we've been improving our Discover Artists section to get your work more visible and get you more work opportunities. Among these improvements was the Featured Pictures list, where our team has been featuring works from our users on a daily basis.
But we felt this wasn't enough! We want this visibility to depend on the community, too, and that's why we are releasing our own likes today. You can now set as liked your favourite works, and see the featured pictures list ordered by number of likes.
This is now limited only to the featured pictures list in Discover Artists, but we plan to allow pictures to be liked from any portfolio website, so any picture can get into the global ranking. But we don't want to make such a big change without knowing your thoughts about it, so you can help us filling this super-short survey about this.
For any doubt, question, suggestion or problem, please contact us at uservoice or write us at [email protected].
24 Nov 2016
It's that time of the year: once again, we are going all BLACK FRIDAY Crazy!
From today until sunday, first year of PRO plan will have a 50% off: 36,30$ instead of 72,60$.
Tell all your creative friends and colleagues, and help us reach more people!
15 Nov 2016
Today we brought you a different flavour on our interview series. This time, we talked with Abraham Cózar, serial entrepreneur and founder of Chibi Games. Chibig is an apps and mobile game studio with a strong focus on narrative. As you'll see through the interview, art and illustration play a decisive role on Chibig process and success.
Tell us a bit about yourself: how did you get in the path of mobile development and entrepreneurship?
I'm a Telecommunication Engineer from Valencia. When I finished my degree, I got into entrepreneurship and the Lanzadera Incubation Programme, where I created my first company with other partners, aiming to develop educational applications for mobile devices.
This first entrepreneurial adventure didn't work out, and we went out of business. But I learnt a lot through the way, both on business and technical sides. A year and a half ago I decided to start Chibig studio, in order to put these things I learnt into practice and keep learning new stuff.
You founded Chibig, a mobile app and videogame production studio specially targeted to kids and youg adults. How this project started?
I always enjoyed videogames since I was a kid, I just grew with them. When I first began learning programming, I suddenly understood I had the tools to create my own games. I first began to do so in my free time, as a hobby. It was something that was always there, but years had to pass for me to make the decision of making it my career.
With tablets and mobile devices, videogame distribution has become hugely accessible to small teams. I saw one indie studio after another making big titles, so I decided to give it a try.
I always liked to write and tell stories, too. My main intention with Chibig is to create titles with a strong narrative content, games that develop stories and characters which hook the player. I think there's a lot of room for that in mobile games and that there is a lot of audience looking for games like that.
One of your latest games, Deiland, had more than one million users. How did you arrive to such a milestone?
When I started the game studio, our main objective was to be profitable as soon as we could. We wanted to be sustainable without private investors. We started creating small games and apps were we didn't spend more than 2 months of development time, so we could test user acquisition and monetization strategies as soon as possible.
Not every app did have the same success, some of them worked out while others didn't. But we learnt about our audience and improved our creative process with each one of them.
The success of Deiland was kind of a surprise. I developed it in 2 months, launched it on the app stores and just in two weeks got top ranking positions on a lot of countries. People loved it: they reviewed it, scored it well, or recorded gameplays on Youtube. It got a very good position without any advertising investment, and kept getting users until it got more than one million.
All your games and apps have a strong focus on art and illustration. How do you fit illustration into the production process?
From the very beginning, I wanted to make games with professional illustrations. For 3D models, I use a lot of pre-built assets that can be purchased on Internet. This gets the production process very agile, but the result won't be that unique and will lack personality. Having illustrator Miriam Barea working on the games allows us to make things unique and different.
The illustrator work is present over all the production process of the game: from the idea concepts, to character and user interface design, to the very release of the game and its launching campaign. Our illustrator is a key part of Chibi Games!
What do you need from an illustrator to feel comfortable working together on a project?
A very important thing we need is the artist to be independent! She has to be able to work on an idea and developt with just some lightweight guidelines from us. The illustrator is a key part of world building in the game, and a creative, talented and proactive person is needed for this.
It is also important that the illustrator finds balance between the amount of detail in artwork and the available time and deadlines for the whole project.
And last but not least: What is being cooked right now at Chibi Games? What new stuff can be expet??
We recently launched our latest game: Ankora, which is a prequel to Deiland. We put more work in this project that the others before (about 6 months of development), trying to put in it the things our users found lacking in Deiland. We are polishing some details right now to release the final version.
After first weeks of testing, we are very glad because players have connected well with both games and uderstood they belong to the same shared universe. Our intention is to keep expanding the Deiland universe, developing new games with more stories and characters, releasing a Deiland saga game every year.
That aside, we'll keep creating smaller games that allow us to keep experimenting with new stuff. Our most inmediate release will be a small pet-game project, where players we'll have to take care of a baby dragon.
Thanks a lot Abraham!
