Pimp Thyself!

This last couple of weeks, I feel like I've barely done any work, purely because I've been getting stuff printed and sorted for all the upcoming cons I've got on after my trip to New York. Hopefully though, this can still be seen as work! I thought I'd just show a couple of the things I've had printed that will be made into what I like to call Pimp Packs to hand out to peeps at the New York Con. I may not be selling stuff, but I can still spread my head-cheese around a bit!

First off is a nifty little print adorned with what I've come to see as my "brand" charaters. I love these little doods as they make great stickers and just seem to tie all my work up and hopefully give people an idea of what they can expect from my portfolio. I'll be doing something similar to this but a lot cooler and much more inventive when I finally start sending stuff out to publishers!

Also to add to my Pimp Packs are two business cards; one for my sites and one for my shop. I figured that making a card purely for my online shop would be better than just handing out cards for my website as it saves people going through everywhere else to find it. They're not amazing, but hopefully they'll get people looking! (Apologies for the bad photos! :P)

Social Networking and the Evils Thereof

I'm addicted to Facebook. I love the bloody thing. The first thing I do in the morning is see what everyone is up to. I then tell everyone what I'm up to, trying to make it somewhat amusing and hopefully interesting. I then repeat this process several billion times throughout the day. Why is social networking so addictive? I could text or call half the people I'm friends with and meet them in the real world, yet I'm lazy and stay in touch through status updates. Sadly, this suits me fine as I'm a bit of a hermit and having the world in a box on my desk is a very convenient way for me to keep my grubby little fingers in the social pie. It took me a while to get into Twitter but it's fast becoming another favourite.

It's not just for the sake of it that I like these sites; I've found that as an illustrator, they're very useful tools: You can let people know what work you're doing, where you're going to be selling stuff, etc. I've gotten some interesting commissions through these sites and a lot more interest in my work. Setting a page up purely for my "business" has been great too as it's a very nifty thing to be able to give people Facebook details at comic book conventions. FB seems to be an acceptable form of professional networking now which I quite like as it's a very accessible system. However, like most web-based promotional tools, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

How does everyone else find social networking? Does it work for you? Do you do it just because you feel left out otherwise? What are the perils of using social networking in a professional capacity? Gimme your opinions! I would like to do a follow-up post to this so the more the merrier! :P

Check out my Pies!

Well, not literal pies, but I do have my fingers in quite a few! I'll be featured on several blogs and websites over the next few weeks which is awesome. Keep an eye out for New Sugar #7 which I'll be in with a selection of pictures and a small interview. The awesome I like Characters will feature some of my pics on the 27th of July and hopefully my pic of Solid Snake will be appearing on Lifemeter which I will also be doing more pics for.

Hopefully being on these different sites means a variety of folks who aren't familiar with my work may happen upon my site; I've had a lot of positive feedback from various shows and sites so far so casting my artistic net far and wide can only be a good thing!