Plum Pudding Illustration Agency

Any interactive book - novelty 

Activity books

Picture Books

Other products

Puzzles

Plays - Set design

‘Hug in a box’ - Book and cuddly toy

Export of books

America and Europe are biggest markets

Trade Market

£1.99 - Value

>>>>> Quality mass market

£20.00 - Gift

All equally in demand

Value

Generic characters - bright bold - stickers books novelty

Quality/Mass market

Work into drawings a bit more and show off their signature style. Sweet/ cute - arty but safe

Trade/Gift

Artists are pushing boundaries - more labor intensive in the creating of the artwork.

The ins and outs of being a freelance illustrator

Freelance - freedom to fit work around family/other work

You need to be organised: plan ahead with payments

Work from home or share a studio?

Keep with the trends

Look up Kate Pankhurst

Trade Fairs

Bologna Children’s book fair

Frankfurter Buchmesse

Bookexpo America

Surtex

The London Book Fair

It’s important to pace your story well

• Average attention span of a 5 - 6 year old is ten to fifteen minutes
• Picture books: 32pp including end papers
• How do you make your story stand out?
• Clever composition: Don’t be afraid of white space
• More impact if you have a mixture of full colour, busy spreads followed bu a spot illustration cut to white.

Look up ‘Ella, Who?’ Illustrated by Sara Sanchez

What is the point in an agent?

• Find work, support, negotiate, give guidance, deal with the contracts and markets…
• Another platform for you and your illustrations to gain exposure
• Develop your work so it fits with the current markets

Developing Paula Bowles’ work

Originally quite muted colours, really sweet, quite traditional

At the minute the market is asking for more vibrant, bold, punchy colours

Have to adapt to the current market

Submitting your work

• 10-20 jpegs or pdf
• Research companies: The Writers’ And Artists’ Yearbook lists lots of publishers and agencies: check the submission guidelines on each companies website
• Consistency: Character studies - different poses/emotions
• Mixture of children and animals
• Mixture of full full and spot arts
• Keep different styles separate 
• When working digitally always 300dpi and CMYK

Look up Mar Ferrero

Look up Xavier Bonet

Netflix: 'Abstract' - Ep.1

'Christoph Niemann: Illustration'

• Finding the balance of abstraction 

• Separation between real life and work life
• Working under deadline - tricky clients 

The New Yorker - May 16, 2016

• Juggling - One ball in the air at any one time - sense of feeling out of control - that's when you have the best ideas though, when you let go a little.
• Not just image making - Animation angle
• Be a ruthless editor and a careless artist
• Coffee cup mark making 
• Saying the same thing in new ways

Lecture

Leeds College of Art

Introduction to Presentation Skills

1st March 2017 /// Rick Ferguson

• Behaviour
• Structure
• Content

Why do I want to become better at this?

• Development of communication skills - A better understanding of me and other people, which could develop different partnerships and collaborations
• Better job opportunities 
• Gain confidence in myself and have more confidence presenting my work and ideas

Albert Mehribian’s communication model on the relative importance of the different ways in which we communicate 

• The way we say the words - 38%
• Non-verbal behaviour (Body Language) - 55%
• The words we use - 7%

(%) Relative impact of how we communicate 

Behaviour 

Speed - can vary, choose when you want to speed up slightly, and slow down slightly 

Volume - can also vary, but the main consideration is that you can be heard! 

Pitch - decide where to vary the pitch, to pose a question or to emphasise words

Avoid crutch words - (so, okay, right then, moving on, um, err..)

Appropriate eye contact (could split the room into quarters, and randomly make eye contact within the quarters)

Awareness of unconscious ‘tic’s’/movements. Be aware of gestures

Structure

Bookending (Mentioning something at the start of your presentation and returning to out at the end.)

Power of Three (We only tend to be able to remember 3 main things - any more than this and our brain had difficulty coping) - Intro (including one bookend)/ First Section/ Second Section/ Third Section/ Conclusion (including bookend 2)

Content

How to decide what kind of content I might include? (And what content I might want to avoid)

• Head (where?/ what?/ how?)
• Heart (why?/ who?/ who else?)

6 Logical Levels 

(Head) > Environment 

> Behaviour

> Capabilities and Skills

> Beliefs and Values

> Identity

(Heart) > Mission/Vision 

TASK

Prepare and practice a short (1.5 - 2.5 minutes long) presentation about you

• How you will behave when delivery it
• How you will structure it
• How you will decide what content to include