Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts is happy to announce two great new events in the new year — please join us for either, or both!

One-Day Negotiation Training: Tuesday, January 27th; please click here to register

Litigation Workshop: Thursday, January 29th

Details:

One-Day Negotiation Training
When: Tuesday, January 27, 2009: 10am — 6pm
Where: Manhattan Location TBA.
Who: For both artists and attorneys.
CLE: YES, CLE credit is being offered for this event. Mostly Areas of Professional Practice credits and Skills credits, plus 1 Ethics credit. This program qualifies as transitional for newly admitted attorneys.
Cost:
– Artists: $100 with registration by January 9th; $150 after January 9th
– Attorneys: $275 with registration by January 9th; $325 after January 9th
Note: The completion of this program does NOT qualify you to be a volunteer through MediateArt, VLA’s mediation, contract negotiation, and negotiation counseling department. Serving as a MediateArt volunteer requires the completion of our MediateArt Training Program, to be offered later in 2009.

Program Description: A one-day overview of basic and more advanced negotiation skills, including contract negotiation and deal mediation (deal memo mediation). This is a good overview of negotiation for anyone, regardless of area of discipline, although there will be some focus on arts and entertainment issues in particular.

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Litigation Workshop: “The Nuts and Bolts of Entertainment Law Litigation”
Co-sponsored by EASL, the Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law section of the New York State Bar Association
When: Thursday, January 29, 2009: 6pm — 8pm
Where: VLA’s Lobby Auditorium; 1 East 53rd Street (northeast corner of 53rd & 5th).
Who: For both artists and attorneys, but primarily geared towards artists.
CLE: NO, CLE credit is not being offered for this event.
Cost: $25 for artists; $50 for attorneys

Program Description: This two-hour program will cover “the nuts and bolts of entertainment law litigation,” including how to draft and reply to cease and desist letters, and what happens if you ignore one; how to initiate a lawsuit and how to reply to one; how to find a lawyer if you want to sue someone or need to defend a lawsuit; and what happens once litigation has been initiated, including how to analyze when and whether to settle.

Since 1969, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has been the leading provider of pro bono legal services, mediation services, educational programs and publications, and advocacy to the arts community in New York. The first arts-related legal aid organization, VLA is the model for similar organizations around the world. For more information about Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, please see www.vlany.org.

Graphic Artist Guild Teleclass.

Last call for our next teleclass: How Not to get Cheated Out of All Your Hard Work with Mark Saku and Cameron Collins. It takes place on Thursday, January 29, 2009 from 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EST.

Graphic Design has become a viable business opportunity for countless talented artists. Many times, however, the agreements that control the creation and use of artwork can be one-sided and inequitable. Knowledge of how to negotiate agreements, and how to protect your intellectual property, is essential to successfully translating your art into long-term
financial stability.

Cameron J. Collins, Esq. and Mark B. Saku, Esq. will help explain the intricacies and fine-print associated with work-for-hire agreements and intellectual property licensing. Both attorneys represent a variety of artists involved with the licensing and protection of their intellectual property. Cameron and Mark each have substantial experience negotiating intellectual
property agreements and can relay the traditional ways in which artists are now protecting and their works.

The fee is $15 for members and $25 for non-members. When you register you will be sent information about how to dial in, as well as any applicable handouts from our speakers. And, as a special bonus, all registrants will receive an audio file of the class.

For those unable to attend and want to learn what was covered, classes will be available as downloadable audio files for the same price. More information on these files will be posted on the Guild’s web site as the files become available.

PDF of files attached here.For more information about our teleclass series please contact the Guild office at 212.791.3400 x10, or email sales@gag.org.

Don’t forget, your paid registration includes a copy of the audio file, so register today to secure your place on the call!

Here’s a great list of ten tips for starting and running a small business that also apply to freelance creators. Remember, freelancers are small business people. No matter how iconoclastic you are in your art, it doesn’t hurt to exercise some discipline when it comes to your studio.

At the top of the list, is Set Work hours and Stick to Them. I used to be a lot more disciplined about time management myself. Nowadays, I’ve been working 6 hours one day, and 14 hours the next. Not so good. I pulled out all of my time management training tapes and motivational tapes, and have been a lot more disciplined since January. But last year was a very disruptive one and I eroded my time management and personal discipline skills. So, it’s back to boot camp for me!

A rule I used to break all the time: Even when you really need the money, don’t take just any assignment. While I thoroughly reject the psuedo-mystical explanation provided in the article that “…the universe will take cues from your behavior and provide for you accordingly”, the Occam’s Razor explanation is simply that taking any old job for a buck is depressing, demoralizing, and likely to lead to more bad jobs simply because you won’t do your best work, and the best clients won’t see the work of which you are capable. If people only see second-rate work from you, then you will get second-rate jobs.

The longer you can keep your expenses low, you will be able to afford to take jobs that inspire you until you are on your feet and self supporting. Moving out on your own or getting a nice studio is great, but hold off on acquiring the trappings of success as long as you can. Keep your surroundings modest and try to only take work that allows you to do your best.

This is a REALLY important one: Communicate with clients to keep them happy, even when you mess up. When you are running behind schedule, or overbooked, or your cat died, it’s important to let your clients know if you are going to screw the pooch. They need to know where the project stands, so they can make other arrangements. Editors aren’t ogres. Many of them can squeeze a few extra days (or even weeks) out of a deadline, if you really need it.

What they can’t stand is the freelancer who simply drops out of sight, or, worse yet, the freelancer who treats them as if they are some kind of confession booth. Your editor is not your friend, they are not a psychiatrist. Don’t share every problem and setback. Just let them know you need more time.

If you are too open with your personal problems, the editor will begin to see YOU as the problem. Don’t run to your editor with every little thing: your annoying neighbor, the flu, the car had a flat, etc. These are things that happen in the normal course of everyone’s life, but when that is ALL the editor ever hears from you, they will eventually hear your name and think, “What is up with that loser, now?”

I used to be a lot more chatty about minor personal problems with my editors (and even online) but people have long memories, and they often remember only the bad stuff.

For example, sometime in 1994 or so, I had an accident and got chemical burns in my eyes. I am blind as a bat and picked up swimmers ear medication thinking it was my contact lens drops. The problem cleared up in about three months and there was no lasting damage. However, last year, an editor with whom I have never worked inquired about it, wondering if a twelve-year-old injury might impede my ability to get a job done! I had almost forgotten about it, but 12 years later, that editor had not.

And last year when I postponed a meeting with an editor by one day so I could get over a migraine, the editor’s first question was “Do you get those a lot?” Well, actually, no, but an editor is going to want to know if you have a lot of health problems or personal problems that will make meeting deadlines difficult.

Don’t tell your editor anything about yourself they don’t really need to know. If it’s not relevant to the job, it probably isn’t any of their business.

Editors can be great people, they may even be friends, but in the end, they are talking to you on company time on company matters. Behave accordingly.

Reposted and updated from the old blog. Hope it’s of use.

c

Must Read.

A few years ago, I wrote an article on my work schedule (reposted just a few weeks ago, click the Time Management tab), and the rather intense demands in it led some people to observe that my attitude showed a disturbing level of American go-get-it drive, a sad obsession with “being #1″, and a workaholic tendency.

Darn those crazy Americans! When are they ever going to learn to stop and smell the roses (I grow roses, by the way.)

Well, this very interesting article is yet another look at the simple fact behind success; PRACTICE is a greater indicator of success as an artist than innate talent, and the work habits of those artists who succeed show that those who work harder get better results. It’s not God-given talent, it’s drive and work ethic.

Scientists have investigated this question of expertise — specifically, skill at a level that seems unobtainable by normal, motivated individuals. In one study, researchers led by Florida State University professor K. Anders Ericsson studied musicians at a Berlin conservatory. Students were divided into three skill levels, including one the faculty had identified as having the best chance of becoming world-class soloists. The researchers had the students keep diaries of their schedules and looked at such information as when they started playing and their practice habits as children…

The results were clear-cut, with little room for any sort of inscrutable God-given talent. The elite musicians had simply practiced far more than the others. “That’s been replicated for all sorts of things — chess players and athletes, dart players,” says Ericsson. “The only striking difference between experts and amateurs is in this capability to deliberately practice.” The group even determined the number of hours musicians must play to compete at the highest professional level — about 10,000, the equivalent of practicing four hours a day, every day, for almost seven years. (more…)

Free video tutorials available every week at Photoshop User TV, brought to you by the National Association of Photoshop User gurus. You, the faithful viewers, who will have to sit through a few commercials and some light banter, but it’s free, so no complaining from me on that score. I never fail to learn some nifty tip or tool watching this program which requires Flash to view.

Even though there are a lot of free tutorials out there in webderland, I still strongly recommend paying for Lynda.com as the ultimate online source for tutorials for virtually any computer program of any kind. Need training in Maya and other complex animation programs? You will find many of them at Lynda.com.

Many free tutorial sites are poorly organized, and finding just what you need can be problematic. All of the videos at Lynda.com are meticulously organized and sequenced by program type, technique, and tool. Even if you have very old programs, many of the tutorials are still available at Lynda. The site adds new programs every month, and has over 20,000 videos available. Each one runs about 8 or ten minutes per task, so you can find dozens of hours of tips and training for almost any program you can think of. Subscribe and get unlimited monthly access. You’ll save money not having to search around the net for every little task to pay for the site subscription.

c

PS: Old episodes go offline and you have to pay $1.99 to download them unless you are an NAPP member. I am, so that’s yet one more reason to join the organization, out of which I have already gotten far more than my money’s worth.

Not a paid endorsement, or anything. Just in case you were wondering if I get shill money for all this.

No.