Selling my soul, officially
Apr. 28th, 2012 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgAs of tonight I've now uploaded 20 images to my Redbubble account, which was the (most recent) minimum limit I set for myself before I started promoting my work to the Redbubble community. If you're not familiar with Redbubble, it's an online service providing print and e-commerce services to artists. Artists provide the artwork, they manage the orders and printing. Artists get cash.
This will take the form of submitting images to specialist groups in the hope that they will (a) display, and (hopefully) (b) feature them on the group pages. Some groups also have challenges/competitions for particularly themed works (i.e. even more specific than the group guidelines) so I'll keep an eye out for those to enter. The prizes for those tend to be recognition and glory (although I've seen the odd $20 Redbubble voucher on offer), so that's exactly what I'm after now.
I plan to continue to upload new works at about the same pace - 3-6 a day seems do-able. They all need processing before they go up; some need to be brightened for print (which makes them look a bit wishy washy for comfort on the screen - I really have to order myself some prints to make sure they do look like I think they will), but most of the effort goes into blowing them up and thinking of suitable names.
How hard can that be? I hear you ask, Haven't you heard of Resize?
Well yes, as a matter of fact yes I have heard of Resize, but if I more than doubled the size of my originals in one hit they'd make great gingham dresses, or maybe teatowels, or tablecloths. I could probably call some of them tartans at that point. So no, blocky pixellation is not my friend. I do a sequence of small resizes interspersed with saving, blurring, and smoothing. It's my secret recipe. Also a great way to chew up disk space.
As for tagging and descriptions I've got a fairly standard template going on so that doesn't require much energy or imagination. The name thing is actually useful - when I run out of inspiration, that's the time to stop for the night because I might start making mistakes And That Would Be Bad.
Thus far (and pretty much only as a test piece) I've put up only one of the posters I had at Swancon, and it's only available in smallish print sizes. I can't just resize the whole thing because the text will go bye-byes. I'm probably going to set the collages aside for the time being and concentrate on individual images. Unless, of course, someone has a burning desire for something in particular. I do requests ;-)
It feels good to have reached this point well under my deadline of "in time for Christmas shopping". Once I've got my stock a bit larger (maybe 30) I might look into prepping some of them for iPhone covers. Friend C knocked one up for me* and I must say it looked pretty good. I've had one enquiry about t-shirts, which will also require a different render, but I'm not entirely convinced my pictures would work on a t-shirt. Oh well, if someone wants, I shall provide.
I'm even thinking that there might be enough good ones in the pipeline for an exhibition one day. I could alwayspad things out provide a rich mixed-media experience with my old CD sculptures and bits and pieces of stray art.
And now to avoid obsessively checking my page views and praying for sales. Oh yeah, that's gonna happen.
Thanks everyone who's encouraged me along the way, although I must say it seems like no time at all since I took the first crystal photos that led to this point. There's plenty of mileage in this pretty rock thing yet.
(*) No, he did not get anything or anyone pregnant on my behalf
This will take the form of submitting images to specialist groups in the hope that they will (a) display, and (hopefully) (b) feature them on the group pages. Some groups also have challenges/competitions for particularly themed works (i.e. even more specific than the group guidelines) so I'll keep an eye out for those to enter. The prizes for those tend to be recognition and glory (although I've seen the odd $20 Redbubble voucher on offer), so that's exactly what I'm after now.
I plan to continue to upload new works at about the same pace - 3-6 a day seems do-able. They all need processing before they go up; some need to be brightened for print (which makes them look a bit wishy washy for comfort on the screen - I really have to order myself some prints to make sure they do look like I think they will), but most of the effort goes into blowing them up and thinking of suitable names.
How hard can that be? I hear you ask, Haven't you heard of Resize?
Well yes, as a matter of fact yes I have heard of Resize, but if I more than doubled the size of my originals in one hit they'd make great gingham dresses, or maybe teatowels, or tablecloths. I could probably call some of them tartans at that point. So no, blocky pixellation is not my friend. I do a sequence of small resizes interspersed with saving, blurring, and smoothing. It's my secret recipe. Also a great way to chew up disk space.
As for tagging and descriptions I've got a fairly standard template going on so that doesn't require much energy or imagination. The name thing is actually useful - when I run out of inspiration, that's the time to stop for the night because I might start making mistakes And That Would Be Bad.
Thus far (and pretty much only as a test piece) I've put up only one of the posters I had at Swancon, and it's only available in smallish print sizes. I can't just resize the whole thing because the text will go bye-byes. I'm probably going to set the collages aside for the time being and concentrate on individual images. Unless, of course, someone has a burning desire for something in particular. I do requests ;-)
It feels good to have reached this point well under my deadline of "in time for Christmas shopping". Once I've got my stock a bit larger (maybe 30) I might look into prepping some of them for iPhone covers. Friend C knocked one up for me* and I must say it looked pretty good. I've had one enquiry about t-shirts, which will also require a different render, but I'm not entirely convinced my pictures would work on a t-shirt. Oh well, if someone wants, I shall provide.
I'm even thinking that there might be enough good ones in the pipeline for an exhibition one day. I could always
And now to avoid obsessively checking my page views and praying for sales. Oh yeah, that's gonna happen.
Thanks everyone who's encouraged me along the way, although I must say it seems like no time at all since I took the first crystal photos that led to this point. There's plenty of mileage in this pretty rock thing yet.
(*) No, he did not get anything or anyone pregnant on my behalf
