Michele Rosenthal
@dialmformichele
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Colorful vector illustrator, available for freelance 🫖 Corporate Memphis apologist 🫖Building @ArmadilloStock 🫖 she/her 🏳️🌈 ✡ ☭
New York
Joined August 2010
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Hello
#PortfolioDay
! I'm Michele, a freelance illustrator in New York, communicating complex ideas through colorful vector scenes in publishing, tech, healthcare and more for over a decade.
🎨
📸
💌 michelerosenthal
@gmail
.com
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It's such a powerful statement for these Jewish organizations to be demonstrating on Shabbat. "We will not rest" in this context means "the situation is so dire it requires breaking one of our most holy commandments." ❤️
BREAKING: NYPD have come to disperse the crowd and silence our voices but we’re only getting louder.
We will not rest until we get a ceasefire, safe return of hostages, and an end to the siege on Gaza.
Countless lives are at stake.
@jvplive
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So sick of AI. Just unplug it already. It's bad enough that the fossil fuel industry and military industrial complex are hurtling us toward a geological collapse. Now we have one final genius invention of capitalism, a magical machine that eliminates the need for labor by
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"I freelance, I don't have a single source of income."
"Ok, we'll need to see your W2."
"I don't have a W2, just 1099s."
"Ok, send us your 1099."
"All of them?"
"No, just the one for your main source of income."
"I freelance, I don't have a single source of income!" 😭
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A Torah is such a sacred document, Jews don't touch the pages with our bare fingers, for archival purposes. When the Torah is read, we use a Yad (literally "hand") which is usually a pointer with a little hand on the end. Using a knife as a Yad is sick.
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What did I tell you
Calling all artists. This is making the rounds. There is hope for us yet!
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The Verge didn't "choose" this image. They hired the artist Álvaro Bernis (whose name is cropped from the screenshot) to create an original illustration. Not for the first time, I find myself wondering: do we actually care about artists, or do we simply hate AI?
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Norman Rockwell is often associated with the conservative, racist politics of 1950s white America. So I thought it would be nice to share some of his lesser-known antiracist work from the 1960s.
The Runaway, 1958 \ Golden Rule, 1961
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stealing it, and all it costs to run is the low low price of exceeding the world's energy grids. For fucks sake. We don't want this technology. We don't need this technology. It doesn't create anything of value. All it does is consume energy and pollute. Everyone hates it, and
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it will never earn back anyone's investment let alone the cost of the entire world's energy supply. Just unplug it for good. Shut it down. Let the bubble burst already.
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If you're trying to earn a living as an illustrator, it's important to know that different illustration markets pay very different prices. 🧵
Commissions and products for the general public will typically pay the least, because the public doesn't have a lot of money to spend.
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If you understand that artists are workers, you understand that art is not about having an idea. Art is about doing the labor.
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Artists are workers! Thinking of turning this into a series
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Every time I critique the damage AI is doing to the arts industry, someone has to chime in with "but what of the common man who yearns for endless free consumption and unearned feelings of accomplishment?"
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A respect for children is a constant theme in Rockwell's work. Here, he uses a child's point of view to tackle the complex subject of integrating white suburbs.
New Kids in the Neighborhood, 1967
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Hello, I've decided to write a long thread of unsolicited advice for anyone thinking of turning illustration into a career 🎨🧵
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🧵🎨 A Long, Definitive Thread on "Flat Art" (or, as I will be refusing to call it, "Corporate Memphis") 🎨🧵
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His next assignment from Look was about the murders of three civil rights activists. The magazine decided to publish his rough sketch rather than the final painting, with Rockwell agreeing that the sketch had more emotional impact.
Murder in Mississippi (Southern Justice), 1965
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Is "big artist" and "small artist" about follower count? Because there are "small artists" who are successful working professionals and "big artists" who are kids drawing for fun, so I never understand what we're talking about in these conversations.
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A baby could look at a bear, see this simple line drawing, and say "bear." A computer has to be fed thousands upon thousands of examples to be able to approximate the same. So no, we don't learn the same way, lol
Imagine thinking humans are like fancy computers that can only regurgitate the information fed into our brains' "data sets," when our species literally invented the concepts of drawing, written language, God and the infinite.
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Was Rockwell perfect? Nope! But it's important to contextualize an artist's work, especially when they were institutionally limited from expressing their personal views. His "aesthetics" may seem conservative today, but you can't judge an artist's politics by aesthetics alone. 🎨
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Much of his early work was subject to the racist policies of the Saturday Evening Post, where an editor told him "never to show colored people except as servants." Here he follows that rules, while subtly subverting power dynamics.
Woman in Riding Habit Fallen off Horse, 1934
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Feinstein got her political start by stepping in as San Francisco Mayor after George Moscone was murdered by her good friend Dan White, whose private journal has been in her personal possession ever since. This is all I want to talk about today.
so did anybody make sure to get dan white's journal from feinstein or nah
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@Dr_Kal_Drungus
It's so laughable how these non-artists can only engage with art through its surface aesthetic appeal, without any understanding or even interest in its actual functional purpose
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I enjoy talking about Jewish practices and beliefs, but I hate that this is the context.
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@AlastorsDemons
@zzsleeps
The problem is that my biggest contract of the year is never big enough to convince someone to give me a loan or let me rent an apartment
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To clarify my thoughts before this tweet breaks containment: genAI represents labor theft on a massive scale. Hating AI is not enough to combat it. We also need to value and uplift the labor of the artists and other thinking workers who are being exploited.
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Why You Should Be Hiring Full-Time Illustrators to your Specialized Design Teams, a thread 🎨🧵
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Ah, I think I understand the confusion. You were supposed to automate the jobs humans *don't* want to do. You don't need to automate the work we enjoy. Glad I could clear this up for you.
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I'm really enjoying seeing everyone's AI fan art, lol. Here's my version, took me 2 hours in Procreate.
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I'm begging you all to identify as workers instead of consumers. There is no such thing as a consumer's natural "right" to the products of worker exploitation.
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My mom enrolled me in an adult art class when I was 7. When she found out the teacher was drawing directly on top of my work to "show me how to do it" she pulled me from the class. Shout out to my mom for teaching me to value my own work, and never doing anything like this 🩷
This is the heartwarming content we needed to see today. 🩷
@jnack
thanks for sharing this amazing
#AdobeFirefly
Structure Reference collab! Try it out:
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Yes, it's difficult to build a good, stable career as a working artist. But it's difficult for any worker to build a good, stable career under capitalism.
Artists are exploited, but not uniquely so, and we should work more to connect our struggles to the broader labor movement.
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Something to look into
This is honestly one reason I did the S-corp thing…as far as anybody’s concerned, I’m just a regular employee
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Most of the people calling me stupid in the replies are not engaging with my central argument, which is that AI does not generate as much value as the energy it consumes. That's what makes it a bubble set to burst.
So sick of AI. Just unplug it already. It's bad enough that the fossil fuel industry and military industrial complex are hurtling us toward a geological collapse. Now we have one final genius invention of capitalism, a magical machine that eliminates the need for labor by
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The discourse around people who are tired of "flat art" has been going on for several years now. So I've been wanting to do a break down of where flat art comes from, what are the misconceptions, what are the criticisms, and which criticisms are worth paying attention to.
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Okay this one is so funny to me, because this ALREADY EXISTS! Mickey is probably the most extensively character-sheeted character of ALL TIME! This might actually win the prize as THE most useless thing I've ever seen AI used for 😂
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Imagine a licensing website FOR illustrators.
Just a simple UI for member artists to upload and manage their original works.
And if someone wanted to license an image, it would link directly back to the artist for one-on-one license negotiation. No cut.
We could build this.
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As we talk about pricing in the illustration industry, can we also update our categories for the digital age? Forget half page / full page rates. How do we price a blog header / sticker set / social media post formatted 5 ways / OC commission / pfp / animated postcard / etc etc
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Some additional context:
@taekoomega
Gladly! Norman Rockwell was an American illustrator, famous in his day, and still familiar to most Americans. He was known for his slice-of-life magazine covers for The Saturday Evening Post, from the 1920s-1950s. Today he's considered an important 20th century painter.
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@taekoomega
Gladly! Norman Rockwell was an American illustrator, famous in his day, and still familiar to most Americans. He was known for his slice-of-life magazine covers for The Saturday Evening Post, from the 1920s-1950s. Today he's considered an important 20th century painter.
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@tejuabiolaart
Well said. This was an issue I had with Percy Jackson. The characters have disabilities, but they're immediately rebranded as superpowers, and we never see them struggle with those limitations again. But then I think ATLA does this better than almost any other piece of media.
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And finally, the industry with the most money to spend, and the best prices for illustrators: Advertising. There is SO MUCH money in advertising. The downside, of course, is that you have to work in advertising.
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We're going to unlock creativity by eliminating the creative process!!!
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Looking through illustrated midcentury magazine covers and screaming RETVRN!!!
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I'm blocking anyone who tells me these are "fake" or "self-hating" Jews because I block antisemites on sight.
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Honestly this is their own fault for not doing the slightest bit of market research before spending all that money. Their total failure to consider their audience during the ad's creation was more insulting to me than the ad itself, lol
Apple has scrapped plans to run its infamous iPad Pro "Crush" ad, issuing an apology for coming off insensitive toward artists. By
@Amber_M_Neely
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🚨 Shutterstock has *already* used contributors' artwork in AI datasets, without the artists' informed consent.
Remove your artwork from Shutterstock immediately. Remove your artwork from ANY of the big licensing websites, because I'm positive they're all doing this.
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I often think about illustration in the time before online photo references. To be a painter like Norman Rockwell, you once had to hire various models, keep full collections of costumes and props, and take every photo yourself. Before the internet, realism was expensive work.
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None of these AI-only "artists" would know what to do with even the mildest bit of client feedback
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The entertainment industry (film, tv) has a LOT of money to spend, even though they hate spending it on "low-level" artists. Things like storyboarding, animation, and motion graphics can make for good stable careers, as long as you know your worth and are prepared to fight for it
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Too often I see flat artists using abstraction to *avoid* diversity, instead of learning how to draw simplified people with distinct ethnicities and body types. Don't fall into this trap! Flat art and diversity can easily coexist when done right.
🎨Jade Purple Brown / Lo Harris
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Children's books tend to be low-paying, especially once you calculate how many hours it actually takes to complete an entire book. For example, $3,000 for 400 hours of work is only minimum wage. Comics and Magic cards also tend to be very labor intensive for not enough pay.
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I am not anti-work. Work is supposed to be rewarding, meaningful, fulfilling. Work is how we contribute to the society we want to build together. In a healthy society, we would all be proud of our work.
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@football_rose
Jews don't believe in punishment for breaking commandments. We keep them out of a sense of holy obligation, and are allowed to break them in order to save human life.
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The most important thing as a working artist is to *know your own worth.* I might choose to do a $100 commission for someone I like, but I would charge thousands of dollars to an ad agency for the exact same image, and that's because I know the true value of what I do. ❤️🎨
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I'll say it again, these people don't want to create art, they want to consume art. Artists understand there are ideas we may never be able to execute to our full satisfaction, but we can create unexpected magic through the struggle. Consumers just want endless free consumption.
Had a convo recently w/ someone who said they wanted to use AI because they have ideas but can't draw. First of all, besides learning to draw - you could just collaborate with an artist who draws? Why not work with a human over AI? Don't get that logic.
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Editorial, that most "prestigious" of illustration fields, pays shit, because they've kept prices stagnated for the last 50 years. The New York Times exploits artists for very little pay because they can. Very few illustrators can make a living off of editorial alone these days.
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Ok, no. No art style is inherently corporate, because that describes how the illustrations are used, not how they look. It's not the fault of talented illustrators that capitalism has co-opted an appealing and popular style for its own propaganda. That's what capitalism does.
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It's very obvious to me that media companies have begun hiring "AI artists" who are simply Photoshopping stolen art and calling it AI.
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The illustrator behind the U-Haul truck graphics is Steve King
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Most of my career has been in the tech world, which has money, and pays artists pretty well to make their tech feel more human. The trade off is that large companies like Facebook will own everything you do, and smaller tech startups have very fast staff turnover.
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But a lot of flat artists today are inspired by the 50s and 60s, at the height of Modernism's popularity. By this period, illustrators had perfected the art of abstraction. They learned how to pack a ton of personality into simple, flat shapes, and the results are still appealing
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I'm going to write a book about how Corporate Memphis criticism is a dogwhistle for fascist reactionaries who are angry at diversity.
The "Corporate Memphis"
#art
style, as well as Cal-Arts are meant to be a psy-op. The misshapen bodies with overly thick limbs and distinctly unsexy bodies are meant to normalize unhealthy bodies. People are rapidly becoming more obese, ugly, Brutalized people can see themselves
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Institutions like private schools and colleges, hospitals, or government agencies all have money to spend and tend to pay good prices.
Nonprofits are always trying to get artists to work for a "discount," yet they also typically have plenty of money they're willing to spend.
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📢 An update! Me and a small team have been working slowly but steadily to create this community-run licensing website for illustrators. After a ton of discussion and planning, we're finally gearing up to really build the thing, and I'm hoping to launch our beta by September.
Imagine a licensing website FOR illustrators.
Just a simple UI for member artists to upload and manage their original works.
And if someone wanted to license an image, it would link directly back to the artist for one-on-one license negotiation. No cut.
We could build this.
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First of all, illustration's not for everyone, and that's ok. It can be a difficult, unstable career, and requires passion and commitment. Be aware that drawing will lose some of its fun when you turn it into work, and you might find you prefer drawing as a hobby instead.
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I'm sorry, but no it doesn't. Like any style, flat art has a shared set of conventions: minimal texture and shading, exaggerated proportions, colorful geometric shapes, an embrace of looking digital.
🎨
@owendaveydraws
/
@runefisker
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@AlastorsDemons
@zzsleeps
I usually end up sharing my tax return with the "total income" number circled
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Since some folks were confused by the first image in the thread:
@AntikytheraClio
@SanssouciArt
Ah, sorry that wasn't clear! I wasn't calling "The Runaway" particularly anti-racist. I was using it as a well-known example of how his work has become associated with conservative politics. It's mostly there for context and contrast.
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The point is not to tell you where you should and shouldn't work, but to help you make the right decisions for yourself and your career. Everyone has their own personal calculation of what makes a job worth taking, and compensation is only one piece of that.
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THE END! If you've made it all the way here, thank you so so much for reading! I didn't highlight nearly as many artists as I would have liked, so please drop your fav flat artists in the comments. ❤️
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Welcome to Illustration Twitter. Every month we like to get together to remind ourselves that flat art is still good, digital art is not cheating, and working for exposure is bad. There's coffee in the back.
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It's been interesting watching corporations navigate the space between "we want to steal other people's labor" and "we don't want anyone stealing OUR labor"
The New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft over the use of its stories to train chatbots
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A lot of these AI nerds don't want to make art on demand, they want to consume art on demand, and they don't understand the difference
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But within that, there is so much wonderful variety and imagination.
🎨Tomi Um /
@1PriyaMistry
/ Levi Jacobs / me lol
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They think they've invented a machine that can make valuable art when they don't even understand what makes art valuable in the first place
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@NecroKuma3
It's probably because they're not hiring midjourney artists. They're probably giving the task to someone on their graphic design team do it for no additional pay. Unfortunately, in-house employees are often not credited.
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Imagine thinking humans are like fancy computers that can only regurgitate the information fed into our brains' "data sets," when our species literally invented the concepts of drawing, written language, God and the infinite.
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Everyone will tell you DON'T WORK FOR FREE (or cheap). Here's why. Firstly, we illustrators rely on each other to keep a certain standard of pricing in the industry. Undervaluing your work undervalues everyone's work.
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As a side bar, this is why I hate the name "Corporate Memphis." The style is neither inherently corporate (I'll get to that later), nor is it in any way related to the 80s interior design movement Memphis. It takes its influence directly from midcentury modern illustration.
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But hey, do you know who DID love this new vector art style? Tech startups. People in tech were also millennials, and liked digital art that looked digital. The retro inspiration gave this new style lots of colorful, friendly, appealing personality.
🎨
@byalicelee
for Slack
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This is a really good point, running a business selling your own products *can* be a great way to earn a living
I don’t find this to be true. I earn more from selling products to the public than I did doing commercial work. This is because I run the business, no one is taking a cut, and I’m good at making things people are willing to pay for.
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I grew up keeping Kosher in a Kosher home. This gave me flashbacks to the middle school kid who once tried to sneak nonkosher meat into my lunch. When I caught him, he asked if I would go to hell if I ate it, and was disappointed when I replied "no, I would just feel bad." AMA
i need to stop reading AITA cuz this antisemitic bitch who ruined a kosher kitchen while calling kashrut "OCD" is gonna make me blow a gasket. oh you think judaism is "legalistic"? congrats on being yet another basic ass christian antisemite.
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Also important! Licensing allows you to make passive income on the artwork you've already created. That's why the ownership rights to your work are so valuable. Even if you've already been paid for your labor, you can still sell your artwork over and over.
@dialmformichele
I really wanna mention LICENSING, BABY!!! I made a living wage this year due to many factors but one I did not expect was licensing. Now I can take one work that I sell personally, & also license it out for wallpapers, puzzles, cross stitch etc ^^
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Sam Altman is selling a fantasy to capitalists: the fantasy of extracting wealth from an army of digital slaves without ever again needing to hire a pesky human worker. But you can only sell that fantasy to people who refuse to acknowledge or understand the labor theory of value.
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And so vector art began to develop as its own distinct style in the 2000s but especially the 2010s, aided, I suspect, by the rise of industry social media platform
@dribbble
.
(These are some flat illustrations I liked on Dribbble in 2012)
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@AntikytheraClio
@SanssouciArt
Ah, sorry that wasn't clear! I wasn't calling "The Runaway" particularly anti-racist. I was using it as a well-known example of how his work has become associated with conservative politics. It's mostly there for context and contrast.
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Artist confidence boost! Reply with one piece of art you're proud of, and I'll explain why a tech bro using AI could never do what you do.
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Modernism started to take hold in the world of illustration around the 1920s, especially in relation to art deco and the jazz age.
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In conclusion! "Flat art" is a style that combines the long tradition of Modernism, particularly midcentury illustration, with recent computer technology. It is a style that was developed by illustrators, then adopted by tech companies, NOT the other way around.
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Learn the basics about price negotiation, usage rights, contracts, invoicing, and taxes. Being a freelance illustrator means you're also running a business.
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@AdeptAdaptor
I hear you. I think the myth of the free market serves to obscure who actually has the power to set the rules of the market. But personally, I absolutely believe it's possible to build a system that's more equitable for everyone than capitalism.
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And this is why I removed my work from any licensing sites at the beginning of the year. It was clear to me they would all eventually take this route.
Introducing Generative AI by Getty Images – a new tool that pairs our best-in-class creative content with the latest AI technology for a commercially safe generative AI tool! Trained on Getty Images’ world-class creative content, the tool works seamlessly with our expansive
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After centuries of realism, flat shapes and exaggerated proportions were exciting new concepts in Western art. Of course, these concepts already existed elsewhere, and Modernism borrowed heavily from the flatness of Japanese art, and the exaggerated proportions of African art.
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