A Disgruntled Designer whose Passion is Art

Hello again this is my typical art-space when I practice my dearest passions.

However....

For the first time I am stepping out of this rosy-rosy world I would like myself to always stay as an artist to voice out my 2 cents so as to request real Artists .... "Please don't contribute to the world of Starving Artists."?!

Just an hour ago I was taken aback by a sad statement made by an associate who should be a mediator to put designers at a better wicket....entertaining clients to conduct business by unpaid designs in order to help kickstart a proposal. I decide not to quote anything from his words because I am still an active member of the industry.

I am glad my niche keeps me safe from this kind of batter-y!! I guess. But thanks to such shockers, it encourages me to take some action....Diversification has continued to be my main soup for a while now and I don't regret it.

In the past couple of years, though I am humbled by the fact that fans for my art have grown... astronomical have been the requests for free or pro-bono work I have received. If people love art they must want to pay for it, right? If people love an artist's music they must want to pay for that goodwill. Then...How so, is it not?!

In 2012 alone, I have received the following asks-for-free: 

• 26 requests for free work from the general public. (2 I could afford to do.)
• 4 free requests from friends and relatives (1-1/2 of which I could afford to do.)
• 4 free requests from live new clients wanting to test Design skills unpaid manhours.
• 3 free requests of logo-design/redesign stating "this should be a child's-play for you a pro".
• 2 free requests to do concepts for pitches absolutely free with no payment guarantee.
• 2 requests for charity. (1 I did for a deserving cause.)

Don't these good Samaritans in search of free-to-work-artists ever think that authorized artists are doing this job for a living? After the job is perfectly done after tens of changes, then...artists have to worry about a a disappearance-without-paying-act which happens all too often whether large corporates or not unless held by strong legal papers. Where there is no jurisdiction ever covering artists....Where is the answer to that?!

My take!

Now hasn't the whole world got an over-dose of hitech art, animation etc etc. and pleasure of watching it at down-to-earth prices or no rates. Thanks to the fancy words of crowd-sourcing, 99designs, elance etc etc.

As we speak.... there are many animators even in Hollywood out of jobs for a very long time. So those who have jobs let's count our blessings but realize this is not a blessing in disguise...it's time to find better blessings :o) A Hollywood animation studio is getting 70% of their animators filled by students who they will not pay a cent. The Students' incentive is that they get to work in a Hollywood Studio. The business house's incentive is? They have 70% of their animators working for free. 

Dear Design students - after your 2-year free work experience with your ex-Hollywood Studio employee certificate, what salary-scales would you new animators' community ever get? Congrats! you would have officially set your bar so low that you have made the whole global design community a commodity.

My take!!

Art & Design & Animation with computer tools coming of age is now taken for granted that.... nobody has the time to differentiate between quality or mediocre work. Unfortunately for true artists! You may want to take the red carpet march out rather than be ushered in... while you still have the spirit.

Perhaps you could do well building your own gallery and housing your pieces in it.

My take!!!

... to people who are truly passionate about doing art (this maybe a "Note to self" too to constantly keep nudging me back to reality) is to just keep it as your passion "FOREVER". The moment you depend on art alone to make a living....the way things are panning out!? You don't want to hate your passions... do you? That would be killing your own spirit!! FOREVER.

I would be glad to hear your thoughts too. Before I stop may I ask of one thing.... do not be in a hurry to make judgements yet... we may not generalize and make inferences based upon this post for.... 

I am just throwing these pointers your way to ruminate upon. It is still a hypothesis as it still depends upon the Art of the Artist to handle such ugliness to come out of it in handsome colors. But until then the Artist must have strong options to fall back on.

Thank you again for sharing my thoughts.

Poetry Scintillates Visual Imagination

This Illustration... below... is one of my latest children's illustrations which I made for an an Abu Dhabi-based Poetess for her very special Kids Poem "An Angel without Wings."

Copyright Notification: The Illustration and Poem are strictly copyright protected respectively to Remy Francis for the Illustration and  the Poet and may not be copied or found anywhere else. 

I learnt the pleasure of listening to poems way back in primary school when I was called in as the kid in class to visualize poems covered in every term. 

Being a crazy artaholic, I was only too pleased to share my visual imagination with my fellow classmates and have the pictures hang in my classroom all year round. These paintings were replicated out of poems from English Romantic Poets such as William Wordsworth's The Solitary Reaper, John Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci et cetera and even pictures that came out of some unforgettable Non-de-tail sessions. 

I have my 5th grade teacher Mrs. John to thank for giving me this very special grounding in art & studies, which may have played an important part in rescuing me from the clutches of a point-less Exam-focussed learning system. A system which made me in later university days to not opt (for what would have been an amazing move) Astronomy (for the worst reason that I would not win high grades with it) over a subject titled "Linear Programming". Although this won me a centum in grading it has played to be of no use in any form in my career or life today. 

Getting back to the actual motivator for my making this post....

....how an organised method of utilitarian visualization makes me still relive some very famous poems taught to me in elementary school as if it happened today, with the same strength of freshness as when it was introduced to me more than 20 years ago.

Thank you once again for coming by!