A few money making, tips, truths and myths.

A follow on to the last post. A list of things to remember and the truth about making money that I have found out the hardway its particularly aimed at peope who want to be there own boss. It really is not all it is cracked up to be.

research and planning. should be done the top before the below is even considered.
what are you going to sell, whats the market. who is the target market? how much will it cost, how much are you selling it for. hours you need to put in. what will you need to do.
how much profit will you make. taxes?


1. There is no such thing as easy money -
You get out exactly what you put in. You need to put in time and money. How much time and money you put in will determine how much money you will make.
Money comes to money. You have to put it in to get it back. It cant come from nothing.
The first thing you ned to do to make money is save.

2. You can be your own boss - yes but thats only the tip of the iceberg.
Yes you can be your own boss but you also have to be every other member of staff you could possibly think of.
You have to be

• The boss
• the customer service team
• the buyer
• the advertiser
• the seller
• the cleaner
• the restorer
• the accountant
• the concept artist
• the research team
• the delivery guy
• the person who wraps up the parcels.
• and so much more.......

3. You can make money doing what you love - Yes but expect to find out exactly how much you love it. In my case sanding marker pen of 30 year old vinyl for 4 hours a day can be a passion killer.
I loved vintage toys and had a huge collection, now I know exactly what happens to the plastic as it ages it made me want to get rid of my own collection before it rotted on the shelf. I no longer collect vintage toys. 

4. You can choose your own hours, You can but if you want to make any money expect to be working every day.
Most of my time is taken up with customer service. Answering questions making sure they know when they are going to recieve the item, negotiating prices and so forth.

5. Not everyone is on your side. The more trading you do the more problems you will get.
People trying to rip you off,
people not paying,
competitors trying to give you a bad name.
customers who are not satisfied.
things getting lost in the post
people demanding refunds.

6. You need to be organised. Very much so, it is all well and good taking peoples money but you need to make sure you post the right item to the right people. That may seem easy enough, but when your trying to sort out boxes of toys into piles to send to 60 different people it can get confusing.

7. You need knowledge - Very true, you need extensive knowledge of what you are selling. If I didnt I wouldnt be able to answer customers questions, restore items, or even advertise items properly.
I know the names of them, there release year, the condition all that stuff.

8. You can make money part time. - I need to work every day, it is a full time thing. I cant ignore questions even for one day or else they will go elsewhere.

 So in short dont let it put you off, just be prepared. It is very very hard work. 
It does loads for your confidence and independance though.

a long and quite educational success story......

Hello Blog! It has been a while.

Just a post to talk about the things I have been up to since the pause of my studies in November.

Great news I have been feeling loads better recently and I'm positive I will make a full recovery.

So what have I been up too. Well.... its a long and quite educational story, there is lots that any reader could learn from it so I shall begin.


In November I temporarily left university as you may well know, I found myself Jobless, moneyless with bills to pay and a family to support.
I worked out that I would be ok until after christmas. So I decided that after christmas I was going to go into business for myself and earn some cash......

One problem.... How?....I needed to find a way to make money....... fast.

I am going to write a money making guide afterwards that may help students who are skint and are desperate to make money, They probably wont like what i'm going to tell them though, but there are a few rules many of which I learnt whilst at university. I have made a few mistakes on my quest.
 I will tell you though there is no such thing as EASY MONEY, making money comes with its own price tag.... more on that in the next post.

I WOULD LIKE TO ADD AT THIS MOMENT THAT MY EFFORTS DID PAY OFF. HERES THE STORY OF HOW THAT HAPPENED!

The first thing I thought of (and this is a bit obvious) is something I could sell and make a profit on.
I read a few money making guides and all of them had one thing in common. They clearly stated that you should SELL WHAT YOU KNOW!

What do I know? art? there really is no market for that sort of thing in the online auction place, Unless its rare, signed by the artist, who is famous.
I have tried to make money on my art in the summer I sold a few ink sketches for 40 quid each, but that was just fluke that someone saw it and liked it. This was not an option for now.

What else do I know? Im a collector of my little ponies and vintage toys, I know them really well.
I was on the right line now but here is where I made my first mistake.

I looked online ( I should say that I did some extensive research) into the market for this kind of thing and found that the best selling ponies where the custom hand made plushes (cuddly toys) They were going for about 100 to 150 quid.

So I sold a vintage toy online to make some money so I could buy the material and started planning the concept, the pattern and all of that.
These cuddly toys sold because they were an accurate representation of the character that they were meant to represent.

I started trying out the pattern for these toys. My first one was a disater and out of proportion, the second was better but still not right.
I made 5 different patterns altogether and with each one I made they looked better and better.
Unfortunatley it took me 2 days to make them, cost 5 quid to make and I was really having trouble shifting them.
So I decided to move on. It just wasnt worth it. The time it took and the small profit, I would be lucky if I made enough money to live off....

So what went wrong?

1. I should have used some old cheap material to practice on first... but I was too eager.
2. I should have made sure that the design was correct and that the pattern would make a toy that was an accurate representation of the character...... before I made it.
3. I didnt know anything about making toys.... I knew the product... but not how to make it properly.
4. My reputation for selling this kind of thing online was zero. The people who were making the money had a decent rep because they had been doing it for ages and had sold many.

If its any consolation I am now very very good at making cuddly toys because of  all the mistakes I made. It took a month of practice and making before I got this good.. doing it every single day.

I didnt make a loss though, which was good.

I knew vintage toys! I had some spares upstairs that I had bought for about 30p online and I had restored. I have been doing it for years so I know what works.

So I took some really nice pictures and put them on an online auction.
Verdict. They still didnt sell very well.

More research was needed.  I looked at my competitors items for sale and realised that they were running a business by having a buy it now price. If the Collector saw the item on auction they would try and get it cheap... on a buy it now there is always a chance that someone else could pay for it straight away and you would miss out.

So I tried it. I bought some more vintage toys for dirt cheap on line did them up, took some very nice pics, gave a highly detailed description, offered to combine postage if the buyer bought more than one and listed them for a buy it now price of 14.99.

and they sold... for 14.99. each.  The rarer ones sold for more about £25 the less rarer ones about £9

This is cheaper than alot of other peoples stuff and my pictures are better too.

So I bought loads more, I decided that I wouldnt spend more than 99p on a vintage toy. That way I could make a decent profit.
After a month I had built myself a decent reputation and I had customers who had bought things before contacting me and asking for more things.

Which I was happy to sell to them. After the first month it is going really well. Im even managing to save some money.

My best customer is a primary school teacher from london called Barry! I made alot of money this week. It sounds good but its not all its cracked up to be. There are pros and cons which I will discuss in the next post.

I am getting out of it what I put in. I am able to look after my family and not claim benefits and that really does alot for my confidence.  I am now not worried about money because I know I possess skills that allow me to make it. Most of those skills I have learnt in my adult education.

too many pictures

Ive uploaded so much work to this blog, that I have reached my limit of pics this blog can hold...
Its my own fault for drawing too many sketches.
I was gonna show my game production....

Progress - How far have I come?

I really wasnt happy with the previous visual design work, But I have been told that its not about whether my work would win any prizes or not its about how far I have come.

Just how far have I come?

Lets compare my work to a month ago and last year. Lets really see how far I have come from the beginning.

 Visual design.

Bradgate park colour finals from the beginning.

I made some alterations...

 Its the last two images I wanted to compare really. looking at them both I realise that I have progressed and this wasnt as bad as I had thought.
Areas on which I have improved,
My paintings are not blurry as they once were, unless of course I want parts of them to be, so I am in more control of my visual design work, I like being in control.
My composition has improved (hey) my painting techniques use of colour. Thats not saying I couldnt improve on this. I will alter it again. Im interested to know what chris thinks.

Game production

 

One thing I will say, my textures are no longer muddy. When heather first told me that I thought she meant actual mud, I spent the next few projects trying to take pictures for "clean" texture reference.

 I can make normal maps now and my work is believable. The biggest breakthrough is in the aesthetic appeal of my 3d work. It just looks better. Loads better. 

Critical studies

Yep the ol' blog. I believe I am talking and writing about my work more and that may be the reason I am making better progress. I know its just the iceing on the cake but I want that iceing to compliment a beautiful cake not cover up a mediocre one.

If trying works like it has, and also like i didnt realise then carrying on doing what I do is the way forward. Im talking about my progress now and showing my failures and my accomplishments.

I think the most progress I have made is being able to find passion and inspiration in the most unlikely of places and most boring sounding of projects. 

I am enjoying it, Im even able to work with a dull day at bradgate. Thats an achievment.

There will be days I consider giving up, there will be days that I achieve so much I cant believe it.

I still make progress though even through my struggles. That is great to see visually.

*Task 13 composition/ applying contrast in v.d

k. Time to talk about visual design this week. It was in most parts a lot of mistakes.

and applying contrast, contrast in other ways than we typical think of when we think of contrast.

This week I felt it. I felt the pressure and the work I put in. I felt the failures. Visual design is H-CORE.

Regardless of how hardcore or not it is/was Im going to talk through my mistakes, stresses and then how I managed, through sheer determination some camomile tea and some sleep to turn things around.

 

After doing several sketches already and watercolours (that failed miserably) and learning about composition I realised I knew nothing about composition.

If true knowledge is knowing you know nothing I consider myself Albert Einstein.

So I reflected on the lecture and did some research of my own and decided that this week I would focus on using different methods of contrast to help with the composition of this weeks final.

I had plenty of sketches, I looked through them and found a page of sketches which I had drawn and before that moment I didnt realise why they worked.

One particular place at bradgate park had alot of natural "line" in the landscape that all seemed to point to a particular spot, making it the focal point.

I thought yes, its my chance to use something else aswell as the rule of thirds and golden rule I usually swear by.

these watercolours just didnt turn out, In an attempt to try and control the paint I managed to control it less. Although I still had colour to work with and even the splodges managed to convey the atmosphere of the day,

 On thursday I started painting over my final sketch.  I got so worked up with this, I spent hours and this is all I achieved.

 

What I wanted to achieve was contrast in line, contrast in colour, contrast in value, contrast shape. contrast between the full ground and the empty sky and focus  by making the focal point more "in focus" or  detailed and the painting around the outside a little more blurry amongst other things that i will discuss when I present my final at the end of the post.




 I started again the next over the colour background I had created in photshop, which was just base colours and silhouettes.

I wanted to render this image entirely out of dots and lines that I beleived would be a good contrast of texture. The image I had chosen also had alot of pointy and round shapes making up the whole image which I thought was also a nice contrast.

I rendered away in no where near as long as the failed bradgate painting of previous. At the time I got stuck I looked up a grass tutorial, that I made and it just looked weird so I got rid of it by cropping the image. I was hoping to show alot of ground in contrast to a small amount of sky after all why would I want an image that consisted of mostly grey sky?

 

I didnt think the image had alot of contrast in the ususal sense and just looked dull so I brightened it up a bit  (too much thats why its small so it dosent hurt your eyes, ow) I had used alot of colours, hoping that if the majority of them had the same value they would work.

I made the area near the focal point more brighter aswell to emphasis it.

 

 I thought Id add some darker colur around the edges to try and add the attention to the focal point, i overdid it a bit, The greyscale shows the image for its value, I  thought the grasses at the front of the image looked abit out of sorts and needed blending in a bit. There was too much light directly to dark in the rock at the back aswell.

The trees at the back where to  "in your face" and needed fading out a bit.

 I added more shades of grey to the rock and also added some highlights shadows to make it look a bit better, a bit of grass too. I also added some last few touches to the trees to give them more definition.
I added some more line strokes to areas for contrast in texture. I feel like im using the word contrast too much.


 The last thing I did was to blend the edges by added some more "paint" and making the "brushstrokes" lower opacity to reduce the emphasis on the edges directing the eye to the focal point.

This is the most recent final, with contrast concentrated on.

In comparison to the failed peice this is an achievement, But i learnt something, I like the way that texture has been used for contrast and the way it is painted contrasts against the empty sky.

The lines that point to the centre that are coming from all areas contrast with the round shapes in the image. The value of the colours in the foreground have  mostly been made the same value, with a little contrast.

I will continue with composition though, Im not entirely happy with this image i have used other things such as repitition of line, the rule of thirds and the golden rule.

Im going to go now if i use the word contrast anymore I feel the word will be permententally be imprinted in my brain.

How I feel about game art -The 20 in 2 theory revisted

Yep its almost been a year now (10 months to be exact) since I as an inexperienced fresher, naively and idiotically tried to prove my worth as an artist by drawing 20 thumbnails in 2 minutes.

You'll be pleased to here that this isn't a post where I'm going to attempt that again, nor will there be any posts in the future where I attempt that again.  Its a post were I talk about what I have learnt since then and my thoughts on achievement

During the concept/planning research and before and after it I considered could I do 20 thumbnails in 2 minutes, well it depends on what I want to achieve. If I want to show the world "yeah" I can pointlessly speed draw 20 or more in 2 minutes for the purpose of proving that I can speed draw 20 or more thumbnails in 2 minutes then yes i could. I would gain absolutely nothing.

What is the point of that? No point. In my work these days (thumbnail sketches included) I try to get as much out of the time as possible. If I wanted to thumbnail for the purpose of composition, lighting and all that other jazz then no probably not, it would take a lot more consideration and a lot longer, but I would achieve something.

Lets talk about my new view of achievement and my future hopes for what I will gain from game art design.

Honestly the stress of trying to get 70% for every project kind of backfires because stress makes me make mistakes, brutally murders my confidence by hacking away at my thought process in a project. It makes me over think too much.
Honestly I find I write the best, draw the best and model 3d the best when I am myself and trying to be something I'm not almost kills me,

I was and most of us were very big fish in tiny ponds at college, unexpectedly entering the game art ocean with unimaginably huge fish. Not the best anymore, but with a chance to grow.

I'm going to be real now, this is not me being negative I just needed to take a step back and look at things from the perspective of my own skills in reality.

I am not a first class honours student and the chances are that I never will be.

I don't have the skill to be getting 70% right now, I have the determination to build those skills but to be at that level I don't believe I can do it within the next 2 years or have the time to put the work in to get them to that level. I will keep trying though.

That's not saying I don't work hard, I put a lot of work in, I work everyday but I still don't think its enough to be at that level.

My thoughts for the future are this, If I could get a 2:1 I would be very happy and that will take a damn lot of work. I think it could be within my reach If I really, really, really really try. I mean really try.

I made errors in visual design this week and my final sucked, I went to bed at 2am in tears and in an absolute broken wreckage and have some kind of stress cold now. My dreams were filled with thoughts that I was going to fail visual design. Ive since redone it in a calmer mood and it turned out better, I don't want to ever be in that state again.

I decided today that I'm going to do this course to gain knowledge, skills and confidence and to enjoy it. What happens after that I can only imagine and hypothesise I can never really know. I'm not mates with doctor who and I cant go into the future to see.

I am going to try and be all I can be but not at the expense of my health or my family, I really needed to decide exactly how much I can be. I'll do all I can til the very end of my time here. whenever that may be.

I will be all I can be, and do all that I can.

My philosophy was, will and has always been the title of this blog,

Pretty polygons or damn good tri's at the very least.

*Task 13 composition/ contrast

Contrast by definition "The state of being strikingly different from something else, typically something in juxtaposition or close association"

Its those damn words again..... so hard to read.

I dont think that is quite accurate to be honest after doing some research.  The idea of setting one thing off against the other would be a more accurate discription. 
Maybe in more detail I could say the idea is not how different these things are its how they work together, contrast as one element of composition.

Lets break contrast down into its many forms. Probably the most obvious example of contrast in an image would be difference in value (light against dark ) or contrast in colour thats what most of us would think of if I said contrast.

Colour

I am glad to have finally realised that there is more to colours in composition than just contrasting and complimentary colours.
Colours can be used in composition to set each other off  without neccesarily being "classed" as complimentary or contrasting colours. My inner artist says Huh? what on earth do you mean victoria? How confusing!

let me explain.(to myself)

I discovered today that if two colours have the same value, they can still set each other off. There is still more to it though.
This very much depends on the lighting in an image. Colour and lighting are of course inseperable. Another realization.

That is probably why My living room and kitchen have the same paint on the walls but it looks like the colours are different. The same colour will always appear different in different lighting conditions.

Bright/dull? Maybe I can use this in my bradgate final so it dosent look so grey? would it work?

Texture/solidity

I have included solidity and texture in the same because I want to focus on this in particular this week, even though Its not just  the texture that conveys how hard or soft an object is in an image it can be a whole list of other things, light, shape, value.
Contrast can  be achieved with the use of texture or having hard or soft objects in the same image that contrast against each other but work so well.
I found an excellent example but unfortunatley cant place the image here. It was an image of stonehenge with fluffy white clouds in the background it worked really well.

This has made me think and consider how I could convey this contrast in texture/solidity.
Line perhaps, how about brushstrokes? I could use contrasting brush strokes round and straight. Shapes pointed and round.

Im going to go off and rework that damned painting. I will write more about contrast after, i want to take this one step at a time to avoid confusion.































Referencewww. answers.com

http://thedecorologist.com/how-light-affects-paint-colors

http://thefreemanview.com/techniques/composition-by-contrast/

http://www.firstpages.com/hauschild/photography/AIB/AIB/PVC.htm