Colophon: The experience

As you can see, this was the schedule and it was packed, no holiday included, this was a business trip. I managed to ween my way into the illustration portfolio market where I was given a table to strut my stuff for one hour on the Friday. This made all of the promotion worthwhile as you can see in the hastily taken photographs I managed to take up most of the table, and people lapped it up. The best thing about the whole weekend, and my presentation was to see the lack of pretence amongst the curators and editors at the top of their game. Everyone was just passionate and genuinely interested in their business and that of others. 

Having the table was a big boost as it allowed me to talk face to face with people and get them interested in my work. I haven't yet had the chance to contact most of the people back as yet, but there was genuine interest in my Actionscript work - from KM Studios based in Mexico - which was a bonus seeing as I spent a lot of the past year training myself to this discipline. There has already been interest with a mention on the french blog Culture-Buzz to whom I spoke to and a professional photographer snapping up my guerilla advertising!

One main thing about the trip was to enlighten me to the ability to collaborate with other individuals outside of the main companies and agencies, namely freelance photographers who were very interested in working with illustrators such as myself. As all of the magazines were freelance it was interesting to see how the business side of things are changing, with a lot of the conferences held at Colophon focusing on the changes from print to digital and the use of advertising. Although it is seen as the devil, advertising is crucial to the survival and funding - and therefore distribution of art and artistic magazines. 

The trip left me with much to ponder in terms of career choice, and the use of media. It seems that there is a stereotype for illustrators at the moment to be character based, and I feel the new generations of illustrators are much more balanced with the ability to mix media with photography and print techniques included. If I can try to mix photography into my work the outcomes can become more professional when mixed with my existing digital styles. then I can strive to be slightly different than the crowd and produce truly original imagery.