A question that's been bothering me all this time is what

I seriously hope you didn't just graduate art school and have no idea what to do. I hope this isn't the reason you posted this.

Depends what you're trade is. People go to art school for different mediums and artforms.

>>2931479
usually you teach at art school, or you get some other job. or you can be poor. i chose being poor, it's pretty great.

>>2931481
Goodness no, that'd be stupid.
Tbh I'm actually asking because I plan on going to art school next year.
I'm practicing each day already (though I admit that I should do a lot more), but people keep bugging me about what I'm going to do afterwards.
I can imagine myself as a character designer for various media, but I don't actually know anything about this stuff yet.
Most answers on the internet are pretty vague, so I thought I'd ask here for more precise answers.

>>2931484
so which one do I choose if I want to draw concepts and the like for movies and games?

>>2931489
If I my ask, why?

Well OP I'm a receptionist now, I graduated in 2013 so obviously it took some time to work my way through the shitter min wage jobs to get to this steady income after spending those years doing nothing relevant to an actual job
>How does one earn a steady income through being an artist?
O.
Good luck?

>>2931494
Mate, it's like you haven't even checked out the art school you plan to go to. Usually they have programs such as video game art, visual development and even 3D for animation/movies.

Honestly? a lot of them go into debt. i have two friends who owe 100k after animation school and they both make 30-50k a year. meanwhile i did not go to school and i'm making 100k per year now

it's a bit of a tossup though. my friend went to cal arts doing design and she has some 90k a year job working like 20 hours per week.

>>2931962
>100k after animation
*each

from what i know they haven't even started to pay it off

>>2931962
I don't think you read the question correctly, anon. OP was asking what they do, not what happened to them. Obviously everyone who goes to school goes into debt. Like what jobs are the two friends you mentioned doing that allows them to make 30-50k a year? Is it art related, will it bring future opportunities, etc.

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>>2931479
You cold call individuals and companies, work through a 98% rejection rate and hunt those jobs down.

I got my first gig ($550 for cover art) a week after getting home.

Also, don't undercut yourself. Just say no to bad jobs.

Art attached before anyone asks. This one was $200, part of a bigger series.

>>2932026
How would know not to undercut yourself in the beginning though? Wouldn't you just have to accept anything because anything is better than nothing?

>>2932026
I'm willing to do this but I have a few questions:

How do you get the leads?

How are you doing now?

Did you have a portfolio or website to link them to?

>>2932032
That's a big question actually.

Hobbyist: any beer money is good! Take it.

Professional: know how much you need to live off your craft. After taxes.

For me, that's minimum $200 per illustration (less if the client orders a bulk of them) because I live in USA and central Europe (I'm travelling).
In the beginning you might not have many commissions or be slow, so you'll have to estimate how much you can scale (for example, how much faster you get over time).

>>2932034
Social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, ...) + company websites.

I send them a short draft on why my skills match their company/project + relevant images + a link to my portfolio.

Hello,

I'm [x], here is my portfolio: [website]
[x a paragraph of selling yourself]
[ask a question about their project]
Looking forward to hearing from you,
[x]

Still got 98% rejection though and that sucks. I think you're "good" when the clients come to you instead of having to hunt.

>>2932043
Following up on anon's leads questions I'm curious, do you just see "x" company/client on social media and then just hit them up, or do you already have an idea of who you could work with?

I'm mostly wondering because I'm at a point where I think I could start attempting to hit up some possible clients but I'm not really aware of who exactly. Also following up on that, if you don't mind what kind of direction did you take with your portfolio before you got your first paid gig? Since I've kind of just been grinding fundies and applying it to whatever I like it's hard to commit to a portfolio geared towards the unknown.

>>2932053
I contact any. Maybe that's why I have the high rejection rate.

Here's my portfolio: http://www.irishopp.com/

The Riding Up Front and comic book are after getting gigs, below that is the portfolio that started got me work. Illustration work, though I was aiming for concept art.

I'm a fan of mentorships, that's what I'm planning to do the coming months to improve my portfolio. Offer $600 for six weeks of mentoring (only one Skype call a week) to an artist you like and they'll be like "Hell yeah I teach you!". It's a lot of money, so I hope it'll be worth it :)

>>2932062
Oh good shit, I think I remember seeing these in some draw threads. That's kind of interesting getting picked for more illustrative work with a body of concept work.

Thanks for the info and good luck with the mentorship.

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>>2932026
>>2932039
>>2932062
For months I had no idea how most people went about doing this. Thanks for information

I'm a junior year painting major right now at a pretty reputable art school, and graduates from my program seem to go one of several ways.

Residencies and grants are a fairly common option, less common is being represented at a gallery.
Residencies are nice, as they allows you to continue making work without having to worry about how you're going to be able to afford rent in the meantime.
The ideal is obviously being picked up by a gallery and being able to paint full time, but this is hard to do, especially as a student right out of college. One major problem in the contemporary art scene is that everyone wants to be shown, and not enough people want to show.

Another common thing is working whatever job you can find that's even tangentially related to your field, and making work and trying to get represented by galleries at the same time. Some of my graduate friends work in screenprint shops, some work at schools or teach workshops, all while trying to make connections and get shown.

Lastly there's grad school, which is necessary if you ever want to teach at the collegiate level, or advance your career in a fairly quick way. It sounds silly because the instant worry is that you'll go into even more debt doing this, but most MFA programs have really good financial aid via scholarship, and the really good, really competitive ones don't even charge tuition.

All that said, art school isn't worth going into a bunch of debt for if you want to look at it by the numbers. The experience and connections are pretty invaluable though.