[MUSIC LOGO]
Thank you all for being here today.
My name is Rebecca Trawick.
I'm the director and curator of the Wignall
Museum at Chaffey College.
Thanks so much for joining us today at--
today's artists talk featuring Susan Brand, presented
as part of our current exhibition reunion.
Reunion brings together works of art,
and the written word from faculty and staff
who teach and support instruction at Chaffey College.
Reunion is on view at the Wignall Museum
through March 11 2023.
So today I'm pleased to introduce
illustrator, Susan brand.
Susan Brand grew up in the spare beauty of the desert Southwest
where she fell in love with drawing and observing nature
at an early age.
She attended ArtCenter College of design,
earning a BFA in Illustration and Advertising
before moving to New York City.
After an early career in animation and design,
she discovered natural science illustration and found her joy.
Brand is known for images of botanical and natural science
subjects presented with brevity and acuity.
She illustrated the cover of The Sound Of A Wild Snail Eating,
by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, and recently provided interior--
excuse me, interior illustrations for Forager Field
Notes For Surviving a Family Cult.
a Memoir By Michelle Dowd, who is with us today.
Hey, Michelle.
And who is also a professor at Chaffey College.
Michelle is a professor in journalism
and English at Chaffey College, and she's currently
on sabbatical and a book tour as Forager
has launched this week--
actually, tomorrow evening at the Sam and Alfreda Maloof
Foundation.
Susan's studio is located in Maplewood, New Jersey.
So please join me in giving Susan a warm virtual welcome.
Hello.
Thank you.
It's nice to see this many people here.
Hello, Michel.
I'm going to share my screen and get started.
Start at the beginning.
I was born in El Paso, Texas.
It's at the western tippy-tip of Texas,
and sandwiched between New Mexico and Mexico.
The city itself is wrapped around this mountain,
and you either lived on the east side or the west side.
We lived on the west side.
This beautiful desert.
The colors changed constantly for the very subtle beauty,
and the sunsets were spectacular.
I grew up in this house.
My father was a homebuilder, and he built our house.
You can see the mountain behind.
When we were kids, we were basically told to go play.
Parents didn't want to see us.
They didn't-- they wouldn't engage with us.
They sent us out to play.
So we often just ran around until the streetlights came on.
But one of the obvious things to do is go explore the desert.
And we got very familiar with rocks,
and seed pods, and thornes.
I think we've spent most of our childhood pushing
each other into cactuses.
Looking for snacks, looking for fossils.
And if we really, really quiet in the desert,
you could easily see all of this wildlife,
including that rattlesnake, which
I guess we were smart enough to stay away from,
most of the time.
Another big influence growing up was the colors
of living on the border.
Everything was really colorful and festive,
and the border was very porous at the time.
A lot of people had family on both sides of the border.
Some people lived on one side, and worked on the other.
It was a lot more porous than it is now
because of national security.
And the food was spectacular.
One of the places that I love to visit,
that was about a half mile walk from my house,
was the University of Texas in El Paso.
So you can see it's Bhutan architecture,
Himalayan on the border.
The natural science museum was filled with curiosities.
It's a little more standardized now.
At the time it was kind of like a Victorian cabinet
of curiosities, and the curators were very patient.
We asked a lot of questions, and they were happy to fill us in.
The other place I like to visit was the museum.
They started taking us in school trips.
When we were kids, there was a world class collection.
The owner of a local department store
had acquired a Botticelli, and Byzantine paintings on wood,
as well as Spanish and Mexican folk art
and modern masterpieces.
I loved school.
At school was my place.
School was my safe place, and I got really high grades.
Really good grades and I always, always, always was drawing.
I Drew everything.
I always had a paper with me and pencils.
I assumed that I would continue to see all the people I'd
always known and grown up with all the way
through high school.
And at the high school, I was in the drama
club, and cheer person, and painting murals
in the cafeteria.
Very involved.
In the middle of my sophomore year, my mother
surprised us with a move to Chula Vista, California.
So out of the blue, I was living somewhere
where I didn't know a soul.
Everyone already had their friends.
I wasn't sure what was in store for me, and I had art, though.
I continued to make art, unfortunately,
the high school that I went to had one art class,
and it was OK.
But, there was a graphic arts class
and a vocational curriculum.
So this is way before computers.
I'll give you a little context for that soon.
Everything had to be done with a t-square, a triangle,
and an x-acto knife.
And that's me using x-acto knife at age 16.
And we learned how to print on a press
similar to the one in the picture
when we did the school newspapers, and memo pads,
and silkscreened bumper stickers.
There was a dark room.
There was everything you needed to have a little print shop.
And that turned out to be a really good place
for me to spend time.
We also had a photo typositor machine.
And this was how you could get type headlines.
You had to type it in and this machine
developed the photography on reels of negatives.
There was letters, and you could make headlines.
That was the big news there.
This is what a personal computer looked like at that point
in time, just to give you some context.
I also worked in a bookstore and discovered underground comics.
I loved, loved, loved underground comics.
I love comics of any kind.
Also working the bookstore was really amazing
because there was every single book and magazine
available in San Diego County at this bookstore,
and I learned a lot about how books
were stocked, how they were merchandised, and magazines
as well.
And I could look through any magazines I wanted.
Since it was the end of high school,
the mode was for everyone to decide
what their career was going to be,
and I just always assumed I'd be an artist.
I was getting pressured by the guidance counselor
to look into science and math.
But I really wanted to be an artist.
And one of the guidance counselors told me,
you could be a commercial artist.
And I thought that sounded savvy.
You could make-- you could make money making art,
because I just couldn't imagine acquiring enough
patrons to make a living for my paintings,
but I love the idea of commercial art.
In the high school library, there
was a magazine called Graphis Magazine,
and I used to go on my lunch hour
and just pour through these magazines
with these amazing illustrations, and important
looking design.
And over and over, I could see that the designers being
profiled had gone to ArtCenter.
And I mentioned that to the librarian,
and a week later, she said, I've got something for you.
And this yellow square was the catalog for ArtCenter College,
and I thought that was slick already.
ArtCenter College looked really business-like and really
important, and it looked like some place
that I could learn how to make all those slick arty
things in the Graphis Magazine.
And people were obviously making things and treating it
very seriously, and I really wanted to go there,
and then I saw the painting studio
and I figured that would be a dream.
And actually the man in the center
in the back, talking like he knows what he's doing,
was one of my painting professors.
So to go to the ArtCenter, you would need a portfolio.
My graphic arts teacher was also the photography teacher
and he started photographing all of the art I'd accumulated up
in that point.
This is my high school art, including the memo pads
we made in the print shop.
And you could tell it was the 70s.
And the way that you would present a portfolio in 1979
was on slides.
So back to El Paso.
I started college at the University of Texas.
The Himalayan looking University,
and I took printmaking and got all of my general education out
of the way, so I wouldn't have to be doing that at ArtCenter.
And I applied to ArtCenter, figuring--
I'd been told it would take a few times to apply and get in.
And I also met my people.
I realized other artists were lots of fun.
Other artists understood all the weird things
that I thought and did, and other artists
were willing to dress up like wizards at the drop of a hat.
And I did get into Art Center on the first try.
I was not expecting that.
And so I moved to Pasadena.
I didn't know a single person.
All I knew was I was accepted to ArtCenter.
and it really did look like this, which blew me away.
And everyone did seem to always have something to do
and I did end up taking the painting classes,
and I ended up making weird stuff in the shop.
And I met more of my people.
And that was fantastic.
I'm still in touch with so many people
that I went to ArtCenter with.
And now came the hard part.
Looking for work.
Now you're out of school.
I was still in LA.
And what did you do?
You put a portfolio together, so I
took my life drawings and my packaging,
and the art I created, and put in a big portfolio.
And you would call people, and you'd
call our directors and designers,
and record cover designers, and you'd go to their studios.
You'd bring your big portfolio, and you'd put it down
and then maybe they'd have a light box,
and they'd look at your slides.
And hopefully, all the other designers would gather around
and you'd give everyone business cards or post cards.
And that way, they'd remember who
you were in case they had something that you could do.
So I got a couple of design jobs.
I met every single record designer at Warner Brothers.
And it was a lot of driving around
and a lot of discouragement and everyone
I knew was moving to New York.
And I finally got a job, painting matte cells
for a special effect, for a Burger King commercial.
Those are flying hamburgers and Pepsis.
And I was basically in a spare studio
painting black paint onto cells to mask that stuff off,
and I got home and there was a message on my answering
machine, and a friend of mine who was--
now an art director at J. Walter Thompson in New York
was in town, and wanted to see if I wanted to hang out.
And she was in town for a shoot, and she
was shooting this commercial.
So I went from doing the mat sells on the flying hamburgers,
and I went and met her on set, and we had a great time,
and she told me how great New York was
and we went back to her hotel.
And right at the last minute, I parked my car
and I took my portfolio with me.
I still don't know why.
This is in West Hollywood and at the time a lot of cars
were getting towed because they had really bad signage
for parking, and you could come out and your car would be gone.
And you'd have to go get it out of impound
because of parking laws.
Well my car was gone, But it was stolen.
And I was there with my portfolio and no car
in Los Angeles.
A week later, they found my car.
It was totaled, and I got all my insurance money.
And at that point, I had a decision to make.
Did I want to start to buy another car,
or did I want to go somewhere where I didn't need
a car with a little nest egg.
This is what personal computers look like in 1984.
And I moved to New York.
So New York City--
as I was taking my portfolio around,
I was making lots of other work, I
started making these shrines, these three dimensional boxes.
And I started selling them in little galleries and to people.
And again, I was taking my portfolio around
with the new work.
I went to see lots of designers.
I went to record companies.
I got a little regular gig doing illustrations
for Elektra Records.
And the director in Los Angeles that I
had done the effects for called me up and he said, listen, go
see Ariel Blackman, he's looking at portfolios.
And everyone wanted to know who was looking
at portfolios because you could call up and show
your portfolio.
And it was if they were open or we're
slow and looking at young illustrators work.
So I got prepared and I was really nervous
because I'd seen Ariel Blackman's illustrations
on the New Yorker.
And at the time, there was a commercial running
that had the cavemen and it was in his style.
He was a really nice guy.
It was in this building on 47th Street,
and the Jewelers exchange, the top floor of that building
and inside it was like a medieval castle.
The people who had built that studio out
at the turn of the century had designed
St Bartholomew's church.
This fireplace was huge.
The whole room was paneled with wood.
The ceiling was sculpted.
There was leaded glass windows.
It was an incredible room and I was completely intimidated,
and almost not listening.
And he liked my portfolio.
He was-- held things upside down and looked at them.
And at one point he said, can you set type?
And I said, Yes, I know how to set type.
And he said, OK.
Can start tomorrow?
And I thought he was offering me a little gig,
setting some type for him.
And then he said, but you'll have to learn animation.
And I didn't understand at all.
And then he took me downstairs, one floor down.
And there was an entire animation studio, with people
working, and work tables.
And they were making commercials,
and they were finishing a feature length film
that he-- in his style, called the soldier's tale.
And it was airing om-- about to air on PBS.
And what he needed me to type for
was a circle sticker that was going to go on the VHS package.
And I started working in the animation studio the next day.
I joined a Union and I met other people.
That's me at my animation desk.
It was an amazing place to work.
First of all, he was animating the style
of every illustrator I admired.
We were animating Seymour Chwast, and Steven Guarnaccia,
Brad Holland.
It was insane.
And every Friday he would host a lunch
and invite whatever illustrator he
was hanging out with at the time to talk to all of us.
And it was a great way for all of us
to connect with each other.
One time he had--
Art Spiegelman came, Mous had just come out,
and we all got signed copies of Mous.
Just on and on, it was a real privilege.
So I worked there for three years.
Within the first two weeks of working there,
I got a strange assignment that made the sales rep panic.
Blackman had started the storyboard
and got into the sixth frame, and then left town.
And basically asked me to finish the concept.
Make the storyboard, present it to the client
without him approving it.
And I panicked and did it.
I came up with the idea of using shadow puppets.
And it actually got produced and the representative was--
hopefully this will play.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So I think he made it out alive.
During my time there, we worked on hundreds
of commercials over the course of the three years
that I worked there, and had a couple of chances to use
my collage style on spots too.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This special presentation of The Nutcracker
is made possible by a grant from IBM.
We offer this celebration of the holiday
season with the very best wishes of IBM people around the world.
This special presentation of the Vienna day concert
is made possible by a grant from IBM.
We offer this celebration of the new year
with the very best wishes of IBM people
here and around the world.
Trying to keep up with business communications
is enough to make anyone feel lost.
Fortunately, there are the 9x advisors.
Experts who've conquered the toughest communications
territory.
They'll show you what you do need and what you don't.
In phones, integrated voice and data systems, networking too.
So you and your system will feel right at home.
9x business information systems.
Communications, without complications.
I'm sorry So after three years and hundreds of commercials,
it really was a super amazing experience
but I wanted to get back to painting and doing
illustrations.
Also Blackman was super, super picky perfectionist.
One of the last things he had me do
is he wanted an exit sign for the studio,
and you could see you finally use this.
And I knew the one way that I could think of something.
The one thing I could design would be his own handwriting,
because then he couldn't critique
the font used or whatever.
So I had him write the word exit,
and then blew it up on the Xerox machine.
And I had left it on my desk, and gone
to get the supplies to cut the mask to make the sign,
and I came to my desk and I saw this little note
that says, Susan, I retouched the x on this bottom right,
Bob.
And I couldn't figure out what he changed.
It looked exactly the same.
And then I realized he added this little bump on the x.
So that pretty much sums up what it was like to work for him.
It was a little stressful, but like I said,
it was an incredible, incredible, experience.
And I went freelance.
I was self-employed.
I started getting more illustration work.
I still was doing my newsletter for Elektra.
I was doing some package design.
And I was also still doing animation,
and after a few years, I'd gotten a little real together.
So I'll play that.
Hopefully this won't be as loud.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Chex, the classic taste.
Chex, the classic crunch.
The classic taste that can't be beat.
The real taste of corn, rice and wheat.
Chex, the classic crunch.
This classic crunchy shape of Chex
lets the milk burst through, and the timeless taste stay in.
Chex, the classic crush.
.
Think is there only one choice for office Typewriters?
Think again.
Think Canon.
Canon Typewriters are sturdy and reliable.
With text editing power and speed, and custom features
that make all your office work effortlessly beautiful.
So if you think there's only one choice for office typewriters,
think again, it pays to think twice.
Think Canon.
Think again.
Think Canon.
Let's rock.
Given the extraordinary everchanging selection
of fresh foods on our all you can eat, freshtastiks food bar.
Who she can't please everyone.
The you-can-eat freshtastik food bar.
Free with every dinner.
Only at bonanza.
Qbee the 2bee bringing you beautiful true blue TV delight.
QB the 2B I love what you do because you bring me Nick
At Night.
Now you get a little sense of what
we were doing in the late 80s in New York City animation.
Film is incredibly collaborative.
The Check's commercial, we had 15 artists
emulating Norman Rockwell.
The director shot all of that footage
with costume models, cast to look
like the people in the paintings.
And then we dismantled the footage,
and blew up prints of each frame and paint it on the frames.
The Stop Motion commercial, that's all plastic food.
That's all food that we cast, and sculpted, and painted,
and made.
And the animator-- that was 18 hours straight that he
shot that spot.
He went on to become the head of animation at Sony Pictures.
And people went on to other things,
but it was incredible, incredible experience
and with amazing people.
At about that time, I was getting so much work
and I was having people come work in my apartment, which was
very annoying to my landlady.
So I ended up renting studio space on Union Square.
The building on the left is my building.
I was on the top floor, the arched windows and my view
was the view on the right, out those arched windows.
And I don't think I appreciated it at the time.
But it was a great location, and it was very official,
and I was a serious person at that point.
About that time, I got a call to go to New Mexico.
The same director that had worked on the Burger King
commercial with, that had given me the heads up on the ink
tank, was shooting a film in Southern New Mexico
and remembered I was from there.
And we had a few meetings, and I ended up
doing all of the production design.
Choosing the costumes, hiring the scenic, finding cars.
This was before cell phones in the middle of New Mexico.
It was pretty challenging.
It was amazing.
It was-- it took six months to shoot--
to get everything together and shoot everything.
And eventually the film got released.
The director of photography, I think the next project
for him was sling blade, it was not
the first movie I worked on.
I had already worked on three or four movies
in the set department, and doing pre-production for movies.
So it wasn't like out of the blue.
I got a call the last month I was in New Mexico
from someone I worked with at an effects firm,
and he was telling me that, I was
going to want to work on the next project he had
and that I should call him the minute I got back to New York.
And so I did.
Heads up.
This is what a personal computer, desktop
looked like at this point.
This is 1991 and I was going to get super familiar with this.
I also owned a Newton.
Just fun fact.
The project he called me on was a CD interactive.
They really don't exist anymore.
We used to call it the eight track of the 90s.
We were licensed to do Flintstones, Jetsons Time Warp.
Fred Flintstone went to George Jetsons' world,
George Jetston him went to Fred Flintstones world.
It's basically an explorer game where you just
clicked on everything you possibly could and animations
would happen.
And right as we were finishing that job,
I got called by a friend who was working
at AT&T on a super secret, top secret, interactive television
trial.
We weren't allowed to tell anybody what we were doing.
I worked here for three years.
No one knew what I was doing.
And when I showed up for work, I saw
a lot of people that had disappeared
from the freelance scene and realized
they were all here in this building in lower Manhattan,
inventing interactive television.
There was probably 100 people.
25 people in the art department.
About 30 programmers.
Everyone was really great.
It was a really great group of people to work with.
I designed for computer generated
imagery, The Fantasy Baseball.
We were the sports team.
Our team was the only team that finished our application
and had it up on the server just in time for the whole project
to be canceled.
So the project was canceled.
We had one last party.
We couldn't bring spouses.
We could only have one drink.
And so almost as a goof, we all decided to dress up,
crazy dress up, to make it the best hilarious party we
possibly .
Could.
The woman on the left ended up being my producer
for the next 10 years.
What happened was, we were all still getting
our day rate and the people who hired us weren't there to fire
us.
So there were people still showing up every day
and clocking in and getting their day rate, which
seemed appropriate at the time.
And at one point, the programmer that working on my project
pulled me aside.
He goes, we still have clients and I said like who,
and he said, NFL.
So we have to give them something.
So we invented this game called Two Minute Warning.
This is HTML one.
And by doing this game, the programmer
taught me how to do the HTML markup language.
It's not-- and he told me this isn't a programming language,
It's a markup.
And it actually reminded me of specking type.
That was not WYSIWYG programs.
On the right you see, you literally
had to type everything.
You had to know what all those tags meant or nothing would
work and you'd go back and forth to your browser
to see if things were working and it
was really interesting way to learn HTML but we did it.
So now it's 1995.
Left there and got work on a desktop computer game.
This is how far things had come in just a few years.
[INAUDIBLE] a CD Rom.
It's gearheads.
It's a twitch game.
I subcontracted.
So my company did all of the animation, the graphics,
the logo, the interface design.
I had a team of five people working on my,
end and RJA had probably 20 programmers
doing the programming.
I animated all the explosions and E 2D effects,
and did the color design as well.
And it did really well.
It got really good reviews, but it only worked on desktop.
I saw it five years later in a $2 bin
at a Rite Aid or something.
But it was a good experience.
The logo was done by my friend, Laura.
Laura, I had worked with in animation.
She had worked at AT&T.
We called her in to do the logo on gearheads
because she was such an amazing typographer.
This is my leave behind that I would leave at the end.
This was before I even had my own website.
This is for my studio.
This is what a browser looked like.
This is 96, 95, 96.
This is what my website looked like.
I had it in my actual website.
And I had started pitching.
I didn't want to work in advertising,
and right away the internet turned into a place
for advertising.
And I started pitching projects to different companies.
And my favorite place to go pitch
was the Museum of Natural History.
Because you could bring whatever idea.
There was-- they really didn't even have a website yet.
They just had their name at the top of the page
and you could pitch to whoever, and have three hour discussion
about intelligent life in the universe,
and go look at all the dioramas.
And it was really amazing and I loved the people there.
This website is still--
they still use content from this website.
It was one of the only early learner websites that they had.
It was simple.
Exploring nature activities and I
worked with a friend of mine who taught second and third graders
at Friends Seminary.
My friend John is an incredible educator.
And one of the projects we did was the subway system
with his class.
So 6 and 7 and 8-year-old kids helped me do this website.
And they were really savvy, and they were asking me
how much RAM my computer has.
Something I'd never heard.
6, 7 and 8-year-old kids ask.
But my favorite thing they were impressed by,
they thought I was so cool because I could touch type
and not look at the keyboard.
And nothing like a seven-year-old telling you
that it's cool that you could type.
This is their interactive subway system.
So one of the last animation jobs I did.
Actually, the last broadcast animation job I did
was this one.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So that was pitched to me and it was pitched to Nick & Junior
by my friend, Kalman, who I actually
went to ArtCenter with.
And he lives in La now and he's a filmmaker.
We had so much fun reconnecting, and working together.
I started getting a little burnt out.
I had little kids.
I just wasn't feeling it.
I was still getting a lot of calls for work
but I decided to close down my studio.
I had saved a lot of money.
And just put that aside and took some time
to spend with my kids.
And in my-- so basically I went back to the land.
I started gardening, and doing programs with kids, and hiking,
and foraging, and medicine making.
I joined the Board of the Conservancy in my town.
And we were basically taking out invasive plants and planting
and new plants, and learning about trees
and cultivating the wildflower preserve,
and it was really a great experience.
Around the time, I decided to take an illustration
class because I thought, well, wouldn't it
be nice to learn watercolor and paint flowers,
and I took a class from my friend, Mindy Lighthipe.
And we became really good friends.
Her studio was in the next town.
She had open studios.
We spent days and days and days just finding things to draw.
She was a person that I could just go and pull up mushrooms
with, and throw them on a table and paint them.
And she introduced me to the woman
at the bottom of the screen, Patricia [INAUDIBLE],, who
worked at the Museum in Natural History,
and she's been a freelance Illustrator there for 40 years.
She's freelance.
She's contract.
And they gave her an office.
If you go in the mammillary department
at the Museum of Natural History where the offices
are, where the scientists work.
Every single piece of artwork on the walls is something she did.
She's an amazing person.
And she's talked me into joining--
these are some of the illustrations
I did in the years after that.
And I joined the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators.
And I got a job, and the person who recommended me for this job
was my friend, Laura.
The person who had worked at AT&T. Who
did the Gearheads logo.
Had moved to North Carolina and was working at Algonquin.
And they were having trouble.
They were using a photograph of a snail
and she emailed it to me and she says, what's wrong with this?
And I said, well they filled the photograph
because the spiral on the shell is going the wrong direction.
And she had the creative director call me.
She goes OK.
And I said it's not the species that's mentioned
in the manuscript, et cetera.
So they hired me to do the cover of this book.
And it was just a beautiful memoir
about a woman's chronic illness, and how she dealt with it
by slowing her life down.
And metaphorically, someone had given her a snail
and the title alludes to the sound
of the snail chewing on leave in the middle of the night.
She could hear it eating.
And it's a beautiful book.
I don't think Algonquin thought it would do as well as it did.
It did very, very well.
I also added a fern for the paperback,
and it's all over the world.
There's no market that this book isn't still in print.
That was a really nice experience.
And I'm actually good friends with Elizabeth now.
I continue to do natural science illustration,
and Patricia [INAUDIBLE] tricked me
into joining the Selma Ganghi Club.
An art club in New York City.
We do monotypes.
I'm doing one tomorrow night.
I have monotype parties once a month.
I've met many, many, many more of my people.
Every single person in that photograph on the lower left
is a printmaker.
It's just a joy.
I was the chairman for the Junior Scholarship Committee.
So artists age 21 to 35.
We get special membership rates for this club
and have their own exhibits twice a year.
I continue to do natural science illustration.
I go to the museum once a month, and sketch with Patricia
after hours.
And then Forager came last year, and I was really, really happy.
Again, Laura recommended me to the new creative director
at Algonquin.
And the project just sounded amazing.
I was a little too eager.
I should probably have negotiated a little bit more.
They didn't assign me a scientist
to vet the work, which is interesting
but I had access to a lot of people
that could look and tell me if I'd gotten anything wrong.
I worked in pencil.
The turnaround time was tight.
There were 17 illustrations.
I had a month to do the pencils, and a month to do finals.
And I-- the creative director and I had a great relationship.
We never even talked on the phone.
I think we just emailed.
I fed him a few at a time.
I didn't want to do 17 illustrations and then find out
they were wrong.
So I fed him five at a time, or three at a time.
And he didn't ask for any changes, which made
me really super suspicious.
But-- and he kept saying, and then you'll add your flair.
And I didn't know what he was talking about.
But I-- So I just did what I did and I
guess I added my flair because there were no changes.
Actually, he did he did make some suggestions
on some of the layouts and I actually
used all his suggestions.
They were really good.
So as you can see, these appear to be,
which is what the contracted ink drawings.
And I actually am a really good inker.
I can work on Bristol, but it was a tight schedule,
so I made a Photoshop brush.
I actually inked the entire thing in Photoshop.
So there are 17 illustrations.
Show 9 here.
Right here's my advice, everybody.
Obviously, I'll take some questions.
Anyone who's doing any kind of freelance, or selling design.
Get this book because it tells you what the going
rate is for everything.
Everything from fabric design, to spot illustration,
to a cover illustration, to a magazine illustration,
to a local newspaper illustration.
It's worth getting.
Get this book.
All of these links--
I have a link that I'll put in the chat on my website.
You don't need to--
You could do a screenshot if you want, but these are all--
find your people.
Find your people.
You are a strange animal if you're an Illustrator
or if you're an artist and you need to be around other people
like you.
You don't want to reinvent the wheel.
You don't want to wonder what you should be
charging for an illustration.
You get that book.
You don't want to wonder what's the best gouache.
Meet people.
Go to meetups.
Go to-- volunteer.
There are so many people that have volunteered
at the SCBWI conventions that now have books
because they learn so much.
The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators
is another really good organization
if there's a local chapter.
People love to share information,
and you want to be around people that share their information.
If you ask someone how they did something
and they don't tell you, that's lame.
You tell them-- you tell them how you did it
and always pay it forward if someone helps you out.
Closer to home, I know you guys are in LA.
There's a Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles,
the most cumbersome name ever.
Their website could use a little help,
but it's a really good organization.
They're really nice people, and I
think Brad Holland is a member.
And also meet up, not in a creepy way,
and sorry for repeating world wide web twice, but made up
is a- be specific when you do your searches.
I found life drawing people that want
to go out and sketch in parks.
People that want to go to museums.
Other people.
That's what you want to do.
Thank you, Susan.
I want to make you aware that there
are a lot of pops and kudos in the chat.
Oh, thank you.
You can definitely take a look at that.
So I'm happy to ask any questions that you all
have in the chat, but if anyone would like to share their own,
would like to voice it, you're more than
welcome to do that as well.
Does anyone want to step up or should I hop into the chat?
So Malik, Miss Brand, have you ever
made an animation for a movie or a short film?
But like for the entire movie?
I don't know?
Where's Malik?
Malik?
Can you clarify for us, Malik, if you don't mind.
Oh, well, I meant for, have you made an animation
for the entire movie?
Oh, no.
I haven't.
No.
That's like just so much work.
If you got a job like that, then that's your life's work.
I did a short film and it took me
seven years of all of my spare time,
and all of my spare money.
Well well, are you are you currently doing animation now?
I'm actually not.
I'm doing-- I'm doing some gifts.
I haven't-- I'm cured.
I don't really want to do animation right now,
but that could change.
That could change.
If I get inspired, I will definitely do animation.
Thanks, Malik.
Thank you, Susan.
OK.
Melanie.
She said, have you ever worked on any projects that
had a long narrative storyline?
Like a story with characters.
I am currently working on a graphic novel.
It's like an early learner graphic novel, and it's about--
Yeah, it's long and it's tedious to work on.
And I'm really enjoying it.
Jasmine asks, how did you feel when
you created your animation?
How do you feel when you accomplish it? or--
It's kind of magical.
I mean, it's a long process to animate by hand,
even that last-- the hopping bunnies.
That was entirely digital, but you're still
literally animating every frame and making decisions
on every frame.
So it's really easy to get caught up in the minutia.
It's really important to plan.
If you don't have a storyboard, things fall apart.
If you don't have your timings, things fall apart.
It's-- any long term project really needs an outline,
a skeleton, and then you work from there.
You get-- and when I first started in animation,
those storyboards had to be so nailed down
because you were asking all these people to do
all this work, and spending all this money.
Every concept had to be so solid.
And now you could just try things on your computer.
That could be part of the reason why I'm just not as enchanted
by animation these days.
But it was always magical to see it and--
you kind of knew it inside out.
Like you'd seen it a million times.
You knew every single frame.
So it was really great to do.
There was actually one thing I left out
the list is the organization, ASIFA.
I know LA has got a big ASIFA constituent.
But ASIFA East in New York, once a year, there's a Film Festival
and you could show and we showed our commercials.
And to see an audience watching it
in a theater, that's when you realize,
Oh, we did something.
We did something interesting.
We did something special.
The Norman Rockwell piece was technologically astonishing.
It won a CLIO award and it got a lot of attention
for the studio that produced it.
But we knew every frame of that by the time
we saw it all together.
So Yeah, it was it's magical, but a lot of it
was like being in the trenches with other people making.
Thanks.
Charmaine, do you have a question?
In your sketchbook, and from your presentation,
you obviously have a lot of different kinds of art
that you do.
And I noticed in your sketchbook you
have a lot of very detailed pen work,
and then also a lot of very colorful loose landscaping.
Some beautiful stuff, and then the monotype stuff.
Do you have a current favorite or what
you would go to if you weren't doing something
for a commission or for work but would just sit down
and do it for fun.
Do you have a current favorite?
My current favorite is kind of semi tight oil painting.
I've been doing a lot of still lives.
When I look at the base of it and the colorist when I paint,
and so it's--
I'm looking at light and form.
And sometimes I want to paint really tight,
but sometimes I like something loose.
A lot of the time, loose paintings
are sketches for tighter paintings,
like they're more concept art.
But when I was working in illustration,
I was also used as a copy artist for publishing.
I can work in just any style, which
was really valuable in the animation world
because you had to replicate different people's style
and be consistent with it.
And we used to have a running joke.
We'd call each other dialist style.
what's your style?
People are like, what's your style?
And I was like, I don't know, I don't know what my style is.
But I've made peace with that.
So that's-- but that's a persistent question.
Thank you.
Do you think you have a flair because you're
genuinely interested, right?
I think so
You talk about the landscape.
You talk about gardening.
Foraging.
All of that.
Yeah.
I think I was working with-- there was
an Illustrator, Lila Rogers.
I think she's a rep now.
Actually, she's a very successful rep and she has--
she teaches classes.
A lot of people go into teaching.
How to get illustration work, because there's not
that much illustration work.
But one of the things she says and this is so true.
People buy your joy.
People by your joy.
Like if I sell fine art, it's often
because I had a joyful time.
I just-- the bunny that's on the front of my website
right now, just sold last week.
I loved making it.
And I think there's something strange about that.
But if you really joyfully did something and it's authentic,
people are drawn to that.
So you just said something.
You said there's not much illustration work.
Can you talk about that?
What choices are being made in the commercial space?
Well, what's happened in the last 30 years or so is,
schools were really pumping out a lot of graduates coming out
with illustration portfolios.
And maybe kind of having a formulaic idea
of what they were going to do.
And what I tell people, especially like my own kids
are in their early 20s, and my youngest
is a stand up comedian, and my eldest is a music producer.
So I'm cursed.
So I tell them like, if you're going
to have a creative life, what's the very most
important is, you figure out how to make a living.
One way or another.
I don't care what you do.
You could work in a bakery, or you
could do something tangential.
But something you don't bring home, and make time
for your art.
And make time to develop your art, and then just as
importantly, find your people.
Find the other people that are doing what you're doing.
Find the people that are going to collaborate with you.
And in my opinion, that's success.
And as far as illustration goes, it changes all the time.
Like I've been working now for almost 40 years.
And when I started, everyone wanted
to be a magazine Illustrator.
I want to do editorial illustration.
And I want to get on the cover of Time magazine.
No one even reads magazines anymore.
The internet hadn't even been invented
when I graduated from college.
And everyone I know is still kicking because they
went with the flow.
If you have a creative mind and you can create imagery,
you will have work.
You will have work but you need to find that path.
It's not a formula.
So Melanie had a question about approaching client work,
and I thought it was interesting that you talked about forager.
I think it was forager.
And you hadn't even had a conversation with your contact.
Could you talk about that a little bit?
I got really lucky on both those books with Algonquin,
because of my friend Laura recommended me.
She was really well respected.
And based on the snail book, I've gotten other book work.
Before, when I had to look for work, and really the best way
to look, do not go on LinkedIn and see
what people are looking for.
Don't enter contests.
Don't ever enter contests.
Don't do that.
The money that they're paying in prize money,
some intelligent person should have
been looking for an Illustrator, and pay that Illustrator.
I hate contests.
Can you tell?
But the thing to do is, if you want to--
still even if you want to illustrate for that [INAUDIBLE]
or the New York Times, or something.
Find out who the art director is.
Find out their email address.
But here's a trick.
This is a small enough room.
I'll let you know this.
People don't expect a phone call.
They don't expect a phone call.
Call them up.
Freak them out.
Say that you're in your 20s.
And you know how to use a phone, and ask them a question.
Ask them how you could get in touch with them.
You are in a magic area if you're in your 20s
that you can call old people like me,
and we love to hear from you.
It makes us still feel alive.
You know, I highly recommend calling people
or sending a postcard if you actually
physically know where they are.
Otherwise, go to events.
Go to-- like the SCBWI conference is
like-- you will get work.
If you bring a portfolio there.
If you start networking.
If you join your local group, you will learn how to do it.
They will walk you through getting a picture book made.
They will walk you through meeting an art director,
meeting a creative director, and showing-- they will tell you
what should be in your.
Portfolio look for other people.
And don't rely on-- yes, have a great Instagram.
Have a consistent Instagram.
Follow people.
But you're not going to get paid for your likes.
That's not how it works.
I have sold things that I've posted on Instagram,
but I could--
I do know people who do earn a living posting things
on Instagram.
I can tell you not to do that.
But there's other ways of connecting
with people that are going to pay you for your art.
If you really, really like a book cover,
find out who designed it.
They want to see your work.
Get in touch with them and tell them,
I love the cover on this book, and that you did that.
That's great for them to hear that.
If you do contact someone looking for work,
be able to tell them what they did
that you thought was so great.
And so it doesn't look like you're just spamming everybody.
If you want to do a pattern of surface design,
and you're in a store, and you're like, Oh,
that's an amazing greeting card or that's an amazing folder.
Turn it over.
Who made it?
Go on LinkedIn and see who the creative director, or the art
director, or the designer is for that manufacturer,
or for that greeting card company
and contact them directly.
Be a private eye.
Find those find those people.
Are there any artists or illustrators
who you would recommend?
Who are really exciting right now
that we should be looking at.
I love Raphael Lopez.
He is a children's book Illustrator.
He lives in San Diego.
He's done like big murals there and stuff.
And this past year, he did a set of stamps
for the US Postal Service, Mariachi stamps.
He's amazing.
That's-- I'm not really like looking at a lot
of illustrators these days.
I still love like main snaps work.
You know, like the old people like me.
And what are your favorite digital tools right now?
Oh, boy.
I'm just looking at my desktop.
I've got everything.
I have the entire Adobe suite.
I'm an expert level on all of the Adobe software.
I do like using ProCreate on the iPad.
I like Fresco.
You mentioned that the illustrations for Forager
were not vetted by a scientist.
Can you talk-- like is that a normal process?
Is that the usual process?
I'm curious about that
Yeah, if this was like--
if it had been like a field guide
that people would be using, there
would probably be a botanist assigned to the project.
But it was a little off to the side,
and I knew things needed to be accurate.
I double check the Latin names with the creative director.
That was like a lot of the initial discussion.
It was just narrowing down everything
to the actual, exact species because I needed
it to be accurate in that way.
And I actually ended up spending a lot of time
at the Museum of Natural History.
Just running stuff by people.
Like, oh, yeah that looks fine, or like that leaf
show the fur under the leaf.
But also in the descriptions that Michelle had made,
there were specific things that she was using the plants for.
I think she talked about the plants.
And so I tried to illuminate those things so
that it would go with the copy.
Yeah, often if you're given an actual science illustration,
it's attached to--
it's often commissioned by an organization
and a scientist wants the illustration themselves.
So it's kind of baked in.
A couple of times I've worked on books
where they sent me the Latin name, and a package
of reference material.
And the really great thing about Michelle's book
is when I lived in Pasadena, I used
to go hiking in the Angeles National Forest all the time,
and I had physically interacted with and touched almost
every species that I depicted.
I think the only one I had was the snow
plant, which was the weirdest one and I wish I had seen it.
So you're working with the publishing house.
You're not working with Michelle, necessarily,
are there--
or are you?
No.
This is the interesting thing about publishing.
And it didn't make sense at first.
The first time I did anything with a publisher,
they wouldn't even tell me who the author was.
They're like, we want you to do this,
and it really had to do with that the editor, the marketing
department, they could they're picturing a product
that they're going to sell and they like things
to go smoothly, and what if we didn't get along,
or what if things could go off the rails.
And I thought that was really, after working in animation
where everyone wanted to meet each other
and make things together, I thought
it was the craziest thing.
And almost everyone, like--
the author for the snail book.
Now we know each other.
We're really-- we actually Zoomed all throughout COVID.
It was a Godsend.
I tend to get along with people.
But I was like, OK.
I do respect that.
And especially children's books, I
think it's really important to know as it illustrated,
if you want to do children's books,
do not find a writer whose book you're going to illustrate.
Don't do that.
If you want to have a big book that's in every store.
That everyone's going to read their kids,
and get in every library.
It's going to come through a major publisher
and the publisher looks at the manuscript
and hires the Illustrator that matches that manuscript,
in their opinion.
And there's been several children's books
that are re-illustrated with different illustrators
at different times, but it's not connected.
Some people do go hand in hand, and they
do-- you could patch a project together,
but you're cutting your chances in half
of getting it published.
It's an interesting phenomenon but it makes sense.
And that, again, at SCBWI they would walk you through that
"Why?'
That's the case and that you need
to just build a good general purpose portfolio
and make yourself available.
And SCBWI again?
The Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators.
OK, got it.
So it's interesting.
Michelle, I don't know if you--
sorry not to call you out, but last week, Michelle
talked a little bit about her process.
And similarly, she talked about having to let go there.
Were certain things that she couldn't make a decision about.
And the cover was certainly one of them.
I don't know if you have anything
to add about that, Michelle.
I thought that was really interesting.
Yeah, I didn't meet Susan until I am after.
I added her Facebook.
Well, not Facebook.
Probably on Insta.
Instagram, yeah.
Instagram.
After, I saw the gallery.
I mean, they didn't even--
they wouldn't even let me see it until it had already been
approved, and it was too late.
So if I had not liked two illustrations,
it would have made no difference whatsoever.
Exactly.
Exactly
Although, I did like them very much.
And then I reached out to you, but Yeah.
It's fascinating the way you explained it from your side,
because they did not--
I did have someone that I knew and they--
Algonquin went just-- was like, no, this isn't your call.
Exactly
So anyway, but you did such a lovely job, Susan.
So I'm so grateful.
Thank you.
It was a privilege.
Excellent.
Thank you both.
Stephanie.
You have a question?
Yeah.
I actually had a couple of questions.
I was wondering, how did it feel to work
in so many different kinds of media
with like advertisement, and like the movies,
and the computer games, and like did you
have a favorite amongst those?
Or is painting just your real favorite
when you moved on from those?
I think I just like making imagery, and it--
it changes all the time what I want to do.
And I used to think that was really problematic,
but enough times gone by that, I'm a jack of all trades.
I'm really, really enjoying life drawing
and sketching animals and plants now.
Like I said, I'm starting to paint more.
I don't think I have a favorite.
And I feel really fortunate that I was given so much opportunity
to try so many things out.
Well, and then my other question was,
what was it like working on the--,
I think it was with the computer games, how it was classified
and you couldn't share it with anyone,
and you can even have your significant other go
to the party.
I thought that was those, Wow.
It was like the worst.
Like, the best thing was like there was enough other people
there.
Like I said, there was 25 people in the art department.
So we knew what was up.
And you know, like people had asked when we were--
I think some people came up with cover stories.
I would just say, like, we had to sign a piece of paper.
It was so laughable at the end that the technology didn't even
happen.
It was just ludicrous but while I was working there,
there was so many of us, and we needed
to be using the fastest, most efficient equipment.
Like we were using like top of--
cutting, bleeding edge technology.
And there were so many of us in the art department
that we were a beta testing pod for Photoshop.
And when we started that project,
Photoshop did not have layers.
You had to make all these different pictures.
If you were going to present a client,
you had to do picture A, picture B. You were using so much space
up on your drive just having all these different files,
and keeping them organized.
We begged Adobe, like please, if there's
anything you're going to do because we
were using After Effects.
Adobe didn't own After Effects.
It was owned by a small company in Rhode Island.
And After Effects had layers.
And we were like, look at this, look
at this, what you could do?
And so not only did they add layers,
that was version 2 of Photoshop, they bought After Effects.
And it was partly because we were doing that.
So there was the pros to that, and working
with these amazing--
I don't know how, but they found a ton of programmers
to work on this, and they pay-- they were paying handsomely,
like I got my day rate for three years.
That was a lot of money.
And these programmers were paid really well.
They were vetted really well.
The programmers in charge were vetting
and again this is before the internet was huge.
This was before there was Google.
If you were a programmer, you were
a nerd that probably couldn't talk to people.
And I had worked in effects houses.
They were doing 3D animations CGI.
Writing the code.
Like I worked on a Barbie commercial
and there was programmers in the back.
Five programmers writing code for Barbie's hair.
It wasn't-- you couldn't buy it out of the box.
That's what people were doing.
And so these programmers--
they somehow found programmers at AT&T that had social skills.
That could communicate, and collaborate with you.
I'm still friends with all these programmers.
They went on to have leadership positions
because they could run meetings and follow up on communication.
And I still know a lot of programmers
that just don't do that.
They do brilliant code and they need a different situation.
But yeah, that was the upside of it.
Being top secret, that's what made it worth
doing that project.
That's amazing, and thank you for sharing that with us.
That's awesome.
Well, Thank you all for being here, and a huge thanks to you,
Susan for sharing about your history,
and your educational journey, and your process.
It's really incredible.
We appreciate you all for spending time with us today.
And again, huge thanks to you Susan.
Thank you.
[AUDIO LOGO]