Hi I just found your blog and think it is great, I just have a question. My prof is teaching us about professional skills as an artist, and they include things like cold calls (she literally is getting us to contact companies that are our dream jobs) but my question is, have you ever heard an elevator pitch from an artist like a digital painter or something like that, because I tried looking for some info on it and couldn't find examples of how it is to be like.
I hope by “cold calls” you don’t mean via the phone, we don’t like those (see Agent KillFee’s post here).
There is actually a lot of information out there about elevator pitches, it’s probably just not specific to artists, because we tend to think of elevator pitches as being for more traditional “businesspeople.” But as a freelancer, you ARE a businessperson, so you’ve gotta know how to quickly tell someone what it is that you do. For an illustrator, it’s pretty simple, something like this is enough:“My name is _________________ and I’m an illustrator who specializes in (whatever your niche is) for the (your industry) industry.”
Of course, you need to know what your niche is first. You do know what your niche is, right?
It’s awesome that your professor is teaching you business skills! It’s such a critical component of an artist’s career, and a lot of programs gloss over it in favor of other things. Talking to people (I include emails in “talking”) can feel really hard, but the more you do it the easier it gets! When you email artists and ADs for practice, I would recommend letting them know that you’re a student; the illustration industry is filled with generous educators, and if people have time they will often write back; it’s always good to let people know what you want from them (for example, practice talking to people you admire). Don’t feel badly if you do not get a response; I promise you it’s not personal.
Like Agent Real Talk said, the idea of a pitch is very different depending on what kind of art you do.
Gallery work needs artist’s statements, and you need to be able to talk to not-necessarily-technically-savvy potential patrons about what your art is about and where it comes from. Both of these are a type of elevator pitch. Wikipedia goes a bit into different types and the artist statement history. There’s LOTS of sites out there that talk about artist statements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_statement
Illustration work doesn’t reeeeeally operate around artist’s statements and pitches; it’s very art-centric. You’re hired because your skills and voice match what’s needed for a client’s predetermined product.
BUT. Pitching a PROJECT is a whole different animal. A children’s book, or a graphic novel (or other comic)…that’s gonna need a pitch. Each publisher is going to have their own guidelines, so look at what’s out there and see what’s being asked for. For example, here’s Image Comics’ submissions guidelines: https://imagecomics.com/about/submissions
If you’re working on one of these creative-project things, definitely have an elevator pitch practiced and memorized for interacting face to face in a professional capacity. I would recommend having a practiced 1-sentance summary as well (for casual “Oh hey, what kind of comics do you do?” “Right now I’m working on a French Revolution werewolf horror book.” off-the-cuff conversations. This is so you can talk about your work with people who don’t need the whole pitch ;-)). You can use the structures for book and movie elevator pitches for comics as well.
Remember, artists grow and change throughout their whole careers. You don’t have to decide your artistic identity OMG RIGHT THIS SECOND (and school is an awesome time to experiment and feel out different things), but learning how to focus and articulate what you are doing, even project to project, is a really important skill.
