Well, 2017 has been a good one.

I was able to quit my day job, focus 100% on Ikonoform and for the past couple of months, I have gotten comfortable in a proper office instead of working from home.

Both has it’s pros and cons, but I highly recommend a real office if you have kids

It’s been a grind, but things are finally moving fast and I can’t wait for what 2018 has in store.

Most importantly though; my family is well. It’s odd how we take something like that for granted.

I hope you all get to spend the holidays with your loved ones and have a fantastic new year!

Here is a quick write up of my trip.

Getting there

I drove. 3.5 hours. In the rain.

Great fun.

Accommodation

I thought I was pretty clever bringing the car with me.

• I didn’t have to book the rather expensive SAS Radisson hotel right next to the venue
• I could choose any awesome airbnb penthouse in the area instead
• I wasn’t dependent on public transportation and could easily commute to the conference

Genius.

Being super comfortable with my masculinity and baffled by the prices of airbnb penthouses, this place hit a sweet spot in location, price and most of all availability (I was a bit late on the booking part).

So much for the penthouse experience…

The plan was to get some work done while not at the conference. Hence the table (no matter the romantic style) would be a great fit for the laptop. This didn’t work out that well as it had apparently just been replaced by a sink and mini fridge…

First world problems. All good

The Venue

Not having accounted for the heavy heavy morning traffic (leaving me to question my accommodation choice once again), I arrived at Lindholmen Science Park where the conference took place.

Round and round we go!

Parking was quite expensive, but once that was over with I walked in to a pretty great setting.

Breakfast!

I have to say. This conference had the best food arrangement of any arch viz related ones I’ve been to – take note here Fabio!

It might not be something everyone appreciates, but I sure did.

Solid breakfast every morning. Good coffee in the breaks. Really good lunch and a couple of snacks here and there. Everything nicely presented and a super professional staff. I have to say that these guys (gals actually) had things tuned to perfection. It was a pleasure.

< 100

The venue was quite small. I think we were around 90 people. Simply because there wasn’t room for more.

It was quite nice. It allowed for a better way of interacting with people as you could actually remember faces and people weren’t scattered far and beyond.

There was one auditorium to fit the less than 100 nerds. It had one big ass screen for the speakers to present on. Quite the setting and how I wish this type of screen could be a standard at presentations.

The conference lasted two days.

• Day 1 had presentations from studios in the industry
• Day 2 was packed with training sessions from Corona, iToo and Vray.

Marc Good(for the)win

One of the speakers were architectural photographer Marc Goodwin from Archmospheres (don’t know how to pronounce it? Dont’ worry. Not even Marc knows).

Marc Goodwin presenting

This guy was my highlight of the conference. I had never heard of him before, but his images and presentation blew me away.

It was both highly entertaining and thought provoking. He managed to get the audience involved and was a beast at presenting. Such relaxed. Much wow.

If you ever get the chance to hear him present. Go!

– I’m still waiting on that follow back on Instagram you promised me Marc…

Day 2

The AVD conference is trying to create a meeting place for people in the industry, but also for people interested in the industry.

Day 2 featured small workshops from some of the most used tools we have in arch viz. It was a great way to get to ask questions directly to the companies and learn a new thing or two.

Kudos to all of the presenters in the workshop. They managed to make it relevant to the audience by making it very hands on and allowing for as many questions we had.

Wrapping up

Despite some initial minor setbacks on my journey, this was a fantastic trip. I met some wonderful new people. Reconnected with a couple of others I met at the D2 in 2016 (shout out to Jason and Erik!). I picked up some great tips for Corona and iToo’s software and had great fun.

Next year I will definitely stay closer to the venue so I’m not reliant on the car to get there. People continued their chats out about in the city of Gothenburg and I’m bummed I didn’t bother to tag along.

Sadly, I had to limit my after hours beer intake and drive the stupid car back to “the penthouse”.

My man Jason representing the amazing french madhouse (Luxigon)

All images from the event was kindly provided by AVD.

I’ve worked for free and will probably do it again, but not if you ask me to! So please don’t bother

My friend and fellow CG artist Fabio Palvelli spoke on this subject in one of his great vlogs: Youtube video. 

He covers some of the common questions on the matter and this post is what I feel should be added to the delicate topic. 

Go check him out, he is known to be funny on occasions – oh and he is also the face of the amazing D2 Conference I wrote about last year. (I really should get paid for all this praise…)

Creatives Are Weird

The creative business is an odd business. There’s no denying it.

In most industries, “free” always comes with a catch, but we as creatives tend to be so passionate about our field of work and enjoy it so much (at times), that doing work for free isn’t just something that happens once in a while, it’s almost expected of us.

So when a potential client expects you to work for free, there’s nothing like a good tweet:

• You are a student or single with no responsibilities and lots of time.
• You got a family to provide for and have little to no spare time.

Should you be compensated differently based on the time you have available? I don’t think so.

It doesn’t really matter if you spend the time you have on something unproductive anyway. I don’t know, maybe you spend it on yet another personal project. Testing different bokeh effects on a shallow DOF shot of some stupid plant and light fixture in a “Scandinavian” apartment that no one (but your Facebook group) cares about – instead of doing meaningful work.

Ahem…

What I’m getting at, is that it’s very hard to give advice that will work for everyone.

There is however one key thing I think should be the rule for everyone no matter their situation:

“Never take on a client who asks you to do free work”

You are the one who decides when, to whom and under what circumstances you’ll offer to work for free. Simple as that. Doing free work is something you choose to do. Not something you are asked to do.

If the client asks you to deliver your service without payment, he is simply trying to take advantage of you. I don’t like these kind of people. There is no value exchange. Only value taking. So turn clients like this down, but remember to be a professional about it. You always want to be the bigger person, even though it seems unfair.

There will be plenty promises of exposure, recommendations and possibilities of future paid work. Don’t bite.

The chances of you getting burned are too high. There’s a much better way of doing free work.

When Do You Choose To Work For Free?

Since so much depends on your situation, I can only speak to something we all experience:

The time when there’s no commercial work. Aka: downtime.

You probably have a (or a couple of) half-finished personal project collecting digital dust. All of them from “downtime” periods. Don’t get me wrong, doing personal projects is a great way to grow as an artist and it’s fun to try something new. But since this is a post about if you should do free work or not, I’m sure you are as frustrated as I was when clients aren’t waiting in line at your door.

So, what I suggest you to do (and what I did when starting out) is to delete your Scandinavian-apartment-DOF-test.max file and see if you can’t provide some actual value to someone.

I knew I could provide great value to a client if I had the chance, but no one was contacting me since they didn’t even know about me yet.

As a little side note, the reason client’s aren’t contacting you is probably this:

1. They have never heard of you
2. They don’t trust you
3. Your work isn’t good enough (yet).

All stuff for future post. Okay, let’s get back on track.

What To Do Then?

Open up your social media apps and maybe the local newspaper. Instagram, FB, Houzz, Behance, Linkedin, Twitter, anything where you follow (ideally) a local architect or whatever your target client would be.

Either you find a potential client you could really help out (maybe their current images suck) or you try and seek out someone you’d love to work for.

I’ll cover the first type in this post and save the other for later.

So, you’ve found someone who has some interesting projects, but their image material is really lacking. You know you could have done it so much better. If only they had come to you when they needed it…

If there’s enough material available, you should redo that project as your new personal project.

How would you approach this task if they had come to you? It might be a bit hard without knowing the brief, but just do your best. Try and dig up some more info about who this company is. What are their values, what type of projects do they normally do. Can you find any interviews with one of the founders or something like that. Go deep. It’s a great exercise none the less.

Take your time. Be thorough. Make the project great and fitting to their profile. Show a good understanding of their company and project. You need to present yourself as something they’ve been missing.

Document Your Process

While you are working, save a few work-in-progress images and references and write down some of your thoughts. As you are doing this you are gathering material and preparing content for the case study you will present them with.

Case study?! Yeah, a case study. You aren’t just going to send them an email with some images. When you’ve finished your project, you’ll have a good amount of content to quickly put into a pdf or you website (don’t make it public until that client gives the okay) for a great case study on this project.

Showing the client (and future potential clients) how you actually handled this project will build one of the most important things in client services: trust.

You’ve made a bunch of great looking images (or what ever the client needed improved) and your case study is ready. Now go ahead and prepare that email you’ve been longing to send for quite a while.

Sending The Work To The Client

Make sure you find at least two or three email adresses to decision makers in that company. Send it to the right guy or gal as main receiver and put the other one or two in CC – just in case the main one misses the email, is sick or something else. You want to make sure your hard work is noticed and that someone will pick up on it, but don’t be a douche and spam every one!

In the email you don’t start off by talking about yourself. Make it about them. We all love hearing great things about ourselves. Explain to them that you’ve come across their X project and you found it very interesting. Leave out that you think their images look like crap. As much as we love hearing great things about ourselves, we hate hearing negative things even more.

End the mail with something like: “Here is how I have approached your X project and this is the final result. I’m curious to know how you normally work with such a project and I would love to learn more about your process.”

That’s it. No sleazy sales talk. Just curiosity and great work. Be patient. People tend to be busy, but I’m sure they’ll get back to you eventually. You’ll definitely be on their radar and while you are waiting and happen to experience downtime, do it all over again with a new potential client.

This approach to free work will give you meaningful portfolio work that potential clients can connect with. While doing so, you get images to use on social media to build awareness about your work and you also end up with a great case study to build trust when people visit your website.

You will bring great value to (hopefully) thankful people and as you’ve proved to them you can do good work on exactly their type of project, you’ll be one of the first ones they think about when in need of your type of service.

This, as everything on the blog, is just my personal opinion and advice to people who is in the same situation I have been in and what worked for me. I’ll love to hear from you how this worked out for you, so don’t be shy and send me a message if you want

In the past few weeks I’ve missed out on a couple of projects, even a really big one I was sure of, and it sucks. But that’s it. What more is there to it? Okay, I did probably complain about it a little and I’m bringing it up again right here, but it happened to coincide with me getting some great advice just for situations like this.

I follow a guy online who’s a really succesful entrepreneur. You might know him or maybe not, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is refreshing as hell and brutally honest. His name is Gary Vaynerchuck. He said something in one of his videos the other day that really stuck by me:

“Every day I convince myself, that a major tragedy has happened to me. At some point today I may pretend that my children got hit by a bus and died. I know it’s weird, but I want to feel it because coming in (at the office) and loosing a client, having a great executive quit or something completely different, it doesn’t matter! It becomes secondary.

When you are grateful for what you have instead of being worried about what you don’t have, you are in a totally different mindset.”

– Gary Vaynerchuck

Being a father myself, it is truly horrible to try and imagine that happening to you. But it could be anything really. Maybe your own good health or someone else close to you. These things in life means everything and yet it’s so easy to take for granted.

One step further

To put your life further into perspective you might enjoy this article by Ali Binazir M.D., M.Phil.

It goes over what the chance of you even being born is. There’s a great infographic here and he sums it up like this:

“So what’s the probability of your existing?  It’s the probability of 2 million people getting together – about the population of San Diego – each to play a game of dice with a trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice, and they all come up the exact same number – say, 550,343,279,001.

A miracle is an event so unlikely as to be almost impossible.  By that definition, I’ve just shown that you are a miracle.

Now go forth and feel and act like the miracle that you are.”

– Ali Binazir

That is insane! I’m even typing this out on a high-end computer, in my own home, with the lights on, radiators pulsing, nice and comfortable, I had good meals all through the day and earlier I walked out with my family to buy a god damn Christmas tree. All of this without even fearing for their or my own safety! Put together all of that and the odds are even crazier.

Your 3D software might crash and set you back. Clients come and go. You can’t go to some event because of this and that. Your toilet is leaking and causing damage to your hardwood floor. And our bitching goes on and on. I’m guilty of this too!

There’s so much stuff we constantly complain about. It seem’s like we are just wired that way. The negative weigh heavier than the good stuff. That’s why Gary’s quote above makes sense. Scary as it may sound, it really puts all of your “problems” into perspective.

I’m going to be get better at seeing all the good things in my life that I already have and take for granted. Stop complaining and take responsibility for every situation. No one else will. I’ll work on my patience and continue working towards my goals.

This is not my new years resolution. Fuck that. Why would I want to wait for 2017 to begin before improving my life? My mindset is already starting to change and if you want change, start now!

We all know how important perspective is to our drawings/images. Let’s apply it to life as well.

So with this small rant, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

See you in 2017!

You seek entertainment, in front of a monitor.

You gather inspiration, in front of a monitor.

You eat (at times), in front of a monitor.

You poop, in front of a … Oh come on, I’m not the only one bringing the phone am I?

That’s a lot of hours spent in front of a monitor and not in front of people.

Sure you say hi to people at work, or at home, but how often do you strike up a conversation with a stranger?

The number one reason for not doing this (apart from that it’s become a strange thing to do in western society), is that you fear running out of stuff to talk about. That’s my best guess at least.

Now that’s a valid excuse, but what’s your excuse for not talking to people who actually share your interest, your passion even?

(D2 Conference. Karim Mousa from Plompmozes in front of a … monitor)

Go to a conference

Last week I was in Vienna. I attended the d2 Conference hosted by Büro WHAT!

Two days before the conference start, I also attended a workshop by the very talented guys from Plompmozes.

This event was a game changer.

I had been there before (the first one in 2014) and at that time I brought a friend. This time I went alone.

Don’t get me wrong it’s great having someone to share the experience with, but you’ll most likely end up just hanging out with your friend. We didn’t participate in the social events outside the conference (like having dinner with the other attendees) and we didn’t really seek out others to speak to.

Reach out, say hello

This time was way different and actually also the way I would advice you to go to conferences:

• Go alone.
• Use social media prior to the conference to ask who else is going.
• Try to chat a little with some of them beforehand.
• Do a little research about the speakers.
• Relax!

Now you’ll see familiar faces and you have a conversation starter. Doing it like that, gave me a little peace of mind.

Most of the people at a conference will be complete strangers to you. Do some work before hand, be a little more active on the forum, say hi on twitter, like some stuff on facebook and have a profile picture that’s up to date!

Doing the above made it a lot easier to start new conversations.

Some could recognize me, others didn’t. Some of the most fun and interesting conversations I had was with the complete strangers.

Spanish airguitar solo

No, I’m not having a stroke. I’ll get back to it in a bit.

Going to a conference will most likely include some sort of schedule with speakers presenting their view on the business. My advice for you when it comes to listening to speakers is the same as when you read books (you really should read books):

Use what inspires you, throw away the rest. 

Now, it’s not healthy to reject everything you disagree with, but you can’t take what’s coming from a book or speaker for granted. It’s the author’s opinion and it’s what works for him – same as this blog!

Some of the speakers you’ll downright disagree with, others will have some good tips and once in a while you’ll witness greatness. The d2 conference had all three kind of speakers and it was great conversation material for interacting with the other attendees.

Stay in touch

When there’s no monitor to hide behind. No unnatural distance in communication. You will find so many new friends and like minded people at these kinds of events. You just have to dare to reach out. The rewards will be plentiful.

Business cards are weird. I gave out some, received some too. Now they sit in a drawer, as I’m sure mine does too. The people you really hit it off with, the ones you have genuine conversations with, add them on Facebook right there or send them a follow up email/message later. Don’t let the good experience fade away.

Wrap up

This image pretty much sums up the feeling I left Vienna with.

It’s Victor E. Tarrés. A Spanish 3D artist that has a very interesting story to tell and does incredible images. He might come across a bit weird on that image. He is. The guy still uses autocad for all his 3D work for christs sake!

I met so many amazing people, made new friends and felt so inspired returning home to Denmark. I no longer feel alone behind my monitor. I’m definitely going next year!

(Images © d2 Conferences)

What do you feel when you discover yet another stunning image by some artist? No, not the image above – Even though I was really proud of it three years ago…

It’s everywhere!

When you keep seeing great images out there, it can feel a bit frightening. At times I look at my own work, shake my head and feel a little hopeless.

Instagram, Behance, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and the list goes on. Everywhere you’ll see beautiful stuff.

As you grow, you’ll look to new and better piers to improve, but no matter where you are in your career as an artist, you’ll often find yourself wondering:

How on earth did they make something so awesome?!

There’s always been good work out there, but now it’s just way more accessible and it’s almost impossible not getting it thrown in your face constantly.

Reality check

I’m guessing your news feed isn’t covered with poor looking images. Why should it be? Looking at bad work isn’t very inspiring. Well, after a while it can be.

When I was still studying architecture, I thought I was the shit as I made the top image back in 2013 . One day in my last year at the academy, my professor actually pulled me aside and said:

“Jens, I know you enjoy making these 3D visualizations, but frankly, you aren’t very good at them. Maybe you should focus on something else…”

It stung a little hearing that. I knew I wasn’t that good, but whatever, I was loving it. When looking back at it now, I have to agree with my professor! I’m just glad I didn’t follow his advice. 

The bad stuff

You surely know how to find the good stuff, but what about the bad stuff. Where is it hiding?

You need to go look for it actively and not where most of the good stuff is. I had a hard time even finding my old stuff. It was stowed away in an old dropbox folder, long forgotten.

That’s the funny thing with bad stuff, you stow it away, forget it, glad you didn’t post it. Then comes a day where you stumble upon one of your old images and it’s just so freaking valuable.

You will instantly see how much you have improved. It’s an incredible feeling.

I’ve been really tempted to go and delete my old stuff from 3D sites and fora around the web. Until recently I felt embarrassed by it. Leaving it up serves as a reminder of where I was a few years ago. What felt overwhelming to accomplish back then, is now something I do daily without thinking about it. Now I have new goals. 

Old work should inspire you. Seeing it should go to show that you can improve. No matter your current skill level.

Completing your work

Putting your work out there, is a must. It sure is scary, but how will you grow if you are not looking for feedback? There’s this thing holding us back from showing “uncompleted work”. We want it to be perfect before we present it to the world.

“Work is never finished, only abandoned.”

– Paul Valéry

You need to realise that an image is never completed. There’s always room for improvement. When we are happy with an image thinking it was “finished”, I guarantee you. It was not.

So how do you know when your image is actually ready for the world to behold? Your image will be completed when you won’t have more time to work on it. Simple as that. That’s how deadlines work.

Curation

To answer the initial question of how some of the best artists seemingly only creates beautiful images. Well, they don’t. The great artists choose to share their good work, not the bad. It’s called curating. Exactly as when art galleries or museums have a curator decide what should be on display.

The great artists have serveral images nowhere near as good, stored in some old dropbox folder. They choose to curate what they show the world.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve curated the hell out of my website and most of my social media. I don’t want to scare off potential clients with bad work. You really should curate what you share. Just have in mind that every one does it and that the great artists have years of experience in failing before getting to where they are now.

Be proud of what you share and the image you have shared. You are putting yourself out there. Most people only consume. Very few produce.

Now go share something! – please not an image of your coffee mug or stupid pet. How would feedback on that help you improve your work?

That was it. My first blog post! Oh man, I know I’ll look back at it in some time and cringe, but this blog is to push myself in to getting better. Better at writing, better at sharing, better at helping others.

Thank you for following my journey. I hope some of it was useful to you.