Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work · Nick Petrella and Andy Heise

#361: Dan Gorman (Illustrator and Comic Artist) (pt. 1 of 2)

·40 min·2 clips

Dan Gorman says success requires a business mindset: quality work, hit deadlines, and be someone people want to work with.

1. Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast episode #361 (part 1 of 2) profiles illustrator Dan Gorman and the patchwork of income streams behind a 15-year career in comics, sketch cards and medical illustration. 2. Hosts Andy Heiss and Nick Petrella interview Gorman, co-founder of Route 8 Studios, a BFA graduate in medical illustration, and a sketch artist on over 150 licensed trading card sets for brands like Marvel and Star Wars. 3. Gorman's thesis is that versatility plus reputation beats specialization, summed up in his line that "the more tricks that you have in your bag, the more opportunities that you're going to get." 4. He recounts getting into the Cleveland Institute of Art's medical illustration program, where 7 of 100 applicants were accepted and only 2 graduated, and working as a medical illustrator from 1999 to 2012 while secretly aiming to draw superheroes. 5. His break into comics began in 2006 with fan art at conventions, led to his first published sketch card sets in 2010 for Bragent Marketing, and a Marvel set at Upper Deck, and he got his first pencil work by alphabetizing publishers with open submissions and sending a portfolio only to AC Comics. 6. He says he works 40 hours a week as a graphic designer at a promotional products company and roughly 40 more freelancing, with most income from the day job and Topps Fanatics sketch cards, and he has a hard time saying no to one type of job each November. 7. On licensing, he explains he holds no licenses personally but is approved through Topps for properties such as Star Wars, Major League Baseball, Disney and Nickelodeon after submitting samples, and that license holders give "absolutely no help" on what samples to send. 8. He describes medical-legal illustration for attorneys, billed hourly, where drawings need sign-off from the attorney, medical experts and sometimes insurers, and where cases often settle just before final color. 9. He says patent work grew out of nine years at a law firm and includes a macerating RV toilet and the modern Turkey baster, and he describes sketching open heart surgery as a student and nearly fainting during a pediatric hand procedure. 10. Aspiring illustrators and artists building a multi-income creative career will get the most from this.

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