Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Dog Dreams

A few years ago I helped Bill Plympton with some mundane technical thing. Something to do with a DVD.

I offered to do it gratis, as a professional courtesy. Bill insisted -he would be making money from this endeavor and felt I should be compensated. He offered either $200 or a cel from his just completed "Guard Dog."

Not wanting money in the first I chose the artwork.

I hope I'm never so desperate that I'd chose cash over craft.


Had I made the other choice, that money would be long gone spent on candy and comic books, no doubt. Bill did ask me not to sell the art (he makes his living from it), but I wouldn't even consider trading a memento of my professional relationship to one of the giant figures of our field.

There was a little gathering at the Plympton studio to promote his newest DVD which contains "Guard Dog" and its follow up films.

Purchase your own directly from his studio.



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We've jokingly discussed the idea of having interns pay us for the privilege of scanning in our studio. Especially hearing some of the underhanded things other studios to their "interns", or even just guests who would like to look around.

Yesterday's New York Times featured an article on the paying-for-an-internship phenomenon. It turns out the company they site most frequently, University of Dreams, is in our building. While standing in the lobby, I've dreamt up many courses that this school could've had in it curriculum. None involved paying to work. Unless you have a broad definition of "work".

I think you need to be selective with whom you work, and I also think that artists deserve to be paid for their work. (Admittedly we've paid some people pretty badly, and there are few students that put in irregular hours for free -these flaws make us human) Those are a couple reasons why we don't jump head over heels at every student with a decent portfolio who wants to learn on the job.

In a few days will be posting some of our tips for "job hunting" as well.

1 comment:

soawesome said...

It was good seeing you that day :) nice to see a familiar face i haven't seen in a while. (cool picture by the way..I blend in with the crowd pretty well)