The secret garden

Yesterday I received a little parcel from my lovely agent and inside there was my copy of A Treasury of Classic Stories recently published by Parragon.

How exciting!! It's always rewarding to see your work in print.
As promised in one of my previous post, here the photos of the actual book.

Maybe it's impossible to see in photo, but the hardcover is made with an awesome cotton material and it has little gold pieces here and there to make it even more precious. It's truly gorgeous!!

I did book right after finishing my Diploma of Illustration, between December and February last year. During that time, I spent a month in Italy with my family and took the work with me.
I love the fact illustrators can work just about anywhere!

If you fancy a copy, click here!

The book

And here are the images of the real book!!
I'm very happy how it turned out printed, the colours are so faithful to the original artworks!
Isn't it cute??

Here's the link if you might decide to give this as a present this Christmas to some little people of yours...!

My first ever publishing job

Finally, after exactly 12 months of waiting, the first even publishing job I worked on has been released. 
YESSS!!
It's called Twas the night before Christmas, published by Ladybird in a board book format with sound. 

I still remember when I got the news from my agency, Good Illustration agency. 
They found me this job right after signing with them (I can't remember exactly but probably the same week!) and of course I was thrilled but also a bit scared and anxious at the same time. 
Gosh, my first publishing gig!

I was still studying at the time, finishing off the last term of my illustration diploma.
Luckily, everything went really smooth, the Ladybird people were really nice to work with, they gave me lots of tips and suggestions to make the artworks better. 

Here it is some of the original art I created for the book (only my favs!)
I will be able to share the actual book pics with text when I get my copies... hopefully soon!

And here it is the link to the Ladybird book page where you can buy the book! 

I must say, seeing this illustrations after one year, I feel like I would do some things differently. Hopefully this is a sign I've matured and learned some things along the way.
But generally speaking, I am pretty happy how they turned out. I still think I did a pretty funny and jolly Santa Claus!:)

And since I like to see other people's processes, I decided to add also some rough sketches I did during some early version of it. It's interesting to see how the layout in some has really changed!

Bologna children's book fair... here I come!!

BIG BIG news!! 

I've just bought a flight ticket to Italy and FINALLy next year I'll be able to attend Bologna Children's Book Fair.. wooooooo!!!

Since I'm an organisation freak, I'm already organising everything. I'm too excited to just wait!! 

Actually, the only thing I managed to get done so far is to book a place to stay. I found a little nice place on Airbnb not far from the fair. 

Also, I did some research looking for what other illustrators wrote about their experience at the fair in the previous years.
Luckily, I've found a lot of people who posted about it. 
Here below are some of the best ones I found so far. 
If you are planning to go, I would HIGHLY recommend reading these!!

Genie Espinosa

Maria Bogade

Kariona Chapman

Miriam Bos

Marloes de Vries 

Emily A. Fox

Mel Macklin

I will post later on about my fair preparation. There is so much to do!! 
Still 6 months to go, but I can't wait already! :D

The way to a client's heart is through his stomach

In the last month, I've been planning to do a bit of promotion with the hope to gain some new clients.
That's because I would like to expand my work to products, packaging and advertising a bit more.

In order to make this happen I decided I needed to do something a bit different than the usual postcard. 
I squeezed my little brain trying come up with a new idea.
The plan was to invent something a bit more creative and try to impress the clients-to-be with my brilliance.

What I came up with is this: a little glass jar that has a label with my own illustration. A sort of a mock up of my little product and packaging. 
I'm not a designer so I've tried to stay away from fonts and actual design and focusing more on the illustration aspect. 
Here it is what the finished thing looks like. 

Inside the jar I added two very important things.

Firstly, some lollies that have two different purposes. Number 1, simply filling the jar. Number 2, getting the way to the client's heart through his stomach! And because of this I hope they will keep the jar on their desk for weeks!

Also, on top of the lollies I've added a little piece of nice thick paper. On it is printed a QR code that leads to a webpage that I've designed (unfortunately I couldn't escape the designing part here) where I introduce myself and explain why the heck I'm sending this thing to them. 

On top of the jar, I added a little sticker that says "Knock Knock. Who's there?". 
I hope my attempt to "enter" their world should be clear at this point. 

These are all the materials I used for the project:
-15 glass jars
-lollies
-round stickers
-label printed on sticker paper
-QR code printed on thick textured paper

I must point out the QR code is the only way they have to found out who is sending the package.

I figured keeping the sender mysterious would add a bit more interest to the whole experience. 
I know, this could be risky since the usual thing to do would be putting your name and web address on every single element of the promo. 
But since this is an unorthodox way of promotion, I decided to do things a bit unconventionally for once. 

The idea of doing this unusual promo comes from the fact more than once I've heard art directors say they want to receive something unique and clever and personalised and different when receiving stuff from illustrators. 

I hope this little promo experiment ticks all these boxes!

To start with, I'm going to send only 15 of them and see what's the response. So I made a very selective list of all the creative agencies here in Australia I really would like to work with. 

Also, I tried to pay attention to the ones that already use illustrations for their projects.

Now the only thing I have left to do is shipping them! 

This will be definitely the most pricy expense of the whole project.

That's why I will try to deliver some of them myself (without them getting to see me, of course;)). 

Fingers crossed they like it!

Detoxing

October is here! And with it also the new issue of Nature and Health magazine with one of my illustration in it!

I really like doing this kind of editorial work lately, it is a good way to step away from bigger projects I usually work on and doing something new and refreshing for a couple of days. 

This one in particular was really fun to make. I even like how it turned out! Maybe because I'm into this kind of themes myself? Maybe. 

Anyway, here it is the initial sketch I did for it followed by the magazine spread.

Happy detoxing everyone!

Milton and King wallpapers

Hey there! 

I recently had the pleasure to collaborate with Milton and King, an Australian company that produces high quality wallpapers. 

In particular, I was asked to create a series of wallpapers for their children line called Muffin and Mani. 

As you can see, the illustrations are inspired to very popular nursery rhymes. 

(totally off topic: I grew up in a Latin culture environment, in Italy to be specific, and we don't have nursery rhymes! Or at least not these ones. So basically I got to know them while I was doing this project... )

Here some pictures of the actual wallpapers

And here the original art I created to be transformed in wallpapers. 
If you're interested in purchasing them, please have a look on their website.

Q+A

A lovely design/illustration student contacted me asking for advice for his life after college. 

It has happened a lot recently that students contact me for this reason. 
It seems quite unreal to me since I was a student myself not long ago!
Anyway, I'm glad people think I'm someone able to give advice!:)
Here the Q+A. 

How many artworks are recommended for presenting a portfolio?

I would recommend you to put no more than 15-20 pieces in your portfolio and only your best work. 

Honestly, I never had the need to print a phisical portfolio to show around, nowadays everything is digital and usually people look at my website to see my work, or eventually I like to bring with me an ipad with my images in it if I have a meeting. 

But if you're interested about the process of putting together a portfolio, I would advice you to read these blog posts. Very illuminating. 

http://juanamartinezneal.com/blog/2013/05/21/mentee-portfolio-vs-grand-prize-winner-portfolio/

http://idleillustration.com/2012/07/16/putting-together-a-prize-winning-portfolio/

Where should a person start if they want to pursue this career?

Regarding starting out, my first tip for someone that is about to get out of college is to not wait until you finished college to promote yourself or find the first commissions. An art degree doesn't make any different in the illustration world, so my advice is to start now, immediately, do not wait any more time to actively start behaving like an illustrator and look for work, commissions and possible clients to contact. 

I would highly recommend you to get a proper professional website (behance is good to share stuff with other peers, but not so much as a professional window for your work to show to a client). Having one helped me enormously. 

Then you could start emailing the clients you would like to work with. A nice brief email introducing yourself with a link to your new shiny website will do. 

Most of them might not reply but some will do! And those might become your first clients...

What makes a successful illustrator?

I personally think a successful illustrator is like a stew recipe. You need to throw in a pot the following ingredients:

- Tons of perseverance. Which means never ever give up. In the end only the ones who didn't get discourage by the rejections (everyone has them all the time!) will become a professional. 

- Passion for the job. If you aren't willing to work weekends, don't even start.

- Your personality. Creative work is very personal and different for each one of us. I reckon that's because our artistic work is the reflection of a piece of our identity, and that's what makes it special and unique. 

- A sprinkle of luck.