Zero 2 Illo » General News

Kidlitart Thursday 9th September

Jonathan — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:40:37 +0000

Kidlitart is a live Twitter chat every Thursday at 9:00 pm Eastern (US time), for children’s book illustrators, picture book authors, author/illustrators and friends run by Bonnie Adamson and Wendy Martin.

I’ve been wanting to join the chats for ages but due to the time difference, it’s always been in the early hours of the morning. But now I have no excuse as I’m very flattered to have been asked to join the chat on Thursday 9th September as a special guest to talk about the importance of being part of an online illustration community.

I will be drawing a name at random from those that participate in the live chat (actual participants though not just lurkers) and will be giving away a copy of the new zero2illo ’12 Week Challenge Kit’ ebook. I’ll also be giving away a special coupon code to all participants for $7 off the price of the ebook too (valid until Sunday 12th September).

Don’t worry if you can’t make the live chat as Bonnie and Wendy do a great job of collating a transcript of the conversation on the kidlitart blog.

I’m really looking forward to taking part (if a little daunted – I’m quite shy really!) and would like to thank Bonnie and Wendy for inviting me as a special guest.

The 12 Week Challenge Kit Is Finally Here!

Jonathan — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:02:30 +0000

It seems a long time ago since we launched the 12 Week Challenge on the blog and now finally we’re proud to launch the “zero2illo 12 Week Challenge Kit“.

We’ve worked super hard to create this – taking on board the feedback we received following the blog version of the challenge – and have compiled lots of extra resources to make the Challenge even more useful and action-able.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who took part in the original 12 Week Challenge (the “alumni”!), those of you who have already pre-purchased the kit (your copy should be in your inbox already) and to those of you who go on to buy the kit – for your ongoing support of zero2illo.

I’d also like to send out a big thank you to Carlos Castellanos, Jannie Ho, Holly Dewolf, Scott Purdy, Gaia Bordicchia and Charlie Gilkey for their support, time and valuable contributions to the 12 week challenge.

If you find the kit useful in helping you reach your illustration goals, Lea and I would really appreciate it if you helped spread the word by tweeting, Facebooking and commenting about it around the web.

We’re very proud of the end result – and we hope it enables as many people as possible to start creating the illustration business they’ve always dreamed about. You can check out & purchase your copy of the kit here >>>

‘The zero2illo 12 Week Challenge Kit’ ebook – sneak peek

Jonathan — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:27:37 +0000

As newsletter subscribers will already know the official launch date of ‘The zero2illo 12 Week Challenge Kit’ ebook is on the 1st September.

We’re working away behind the scenes to pull together all of the content from the weekly challenge blog posts along with lots of extra content and resources. I’ve been working on the design over the past week and wanted to give you a sneak peek at the cover design.

Don’t forget that up until the launch date the book is available for a special discounted pre-order price of $14.95 so make sure you get your copy on order before it goes up to the full price of $24.95 on September 1st.

Introducing…The New z2i Clubhouse

Jonathan — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:00:10 +0000

If you’ve seen the messages in the existing Clubhouse, you’ll know that Ning has got rid of their free networks and started charging for all of their networks and online communities. This isn’t ideal as it means we either have to start charging for membership to cover the costs or cover them ourselves, which at $20 per month soon adds up.

A while ago, I asked you guys for feedback about what you’d like to see us do with the forum – whether you’d be willing to pay a fee to cover the costs, whether you’d prefer me to keep it free and whether you liked the Ning functionality.

Many of you said you’d be happy to pay a small fee for membership of the Clubhouse but you also said you weren’t sold on the Ning functionality, especially the way the forums work. Lea also runs a Location Independent clubhouse on Ning and since the announcement we’ve spent hours & hours discussing what to do, researching the different options & alternative software and trying to come up with a solution which works for everyone…

The challenges…

What technical platform to use: there are plenty of free ones but trying to decide which would be best, offer the functionality we want and be simple to use & install has taken lots of research & testing. We’ve considered some premium ones too but can’t justify paying for them, when many of the free ones do a great job.

Whether to charge for membership: although many of you indicated you’d be happy to pay for membership, I’ve never wanted to charge for this. It doesn’t sit well with me and I’d constantly feel like I’d need to be adding extra value to justify charging for access. If we’re moving away from Ning, we’ll only have to cover web hosting fees and one-off costs to set up/brand the forum ourselves rather than an ongoing service fee.

How to migrate content out of Ning to a new platform: this is the biggest thing we’ve struggled with as Ning don’t make it easy to do this and in some cases in order to import content to a new platform, it would require a custom import tool to be built.

The solution…

I’m really happy to say we finally made some decisions and have now built a brand new forum. You can find it here.

The goods news is that:

- It’s free now and will continue to be free for all members. In time, we may implement some private parts of the forum which may have a fee attached but it won’t be mandatory to join these. If you’d like to contribute something to this project, I’ve added a “donate” button in the sidebar of the main site.

- The Clubhouse functions much more like a standard forum which many of you are used to so there’s no big learning curve and it should be far easier than Ning to follow conversations and join in.

- The Clubhouse is now much easier to find and sits “within” the main zero2illo site (see it up there on the nav bar) so it’s easy to find. This is thanks to some custom CSS help from Hanna who did this at a great price and within record time for us.

The not-so-good news is that:

- We haven’t yet managed to import the member data which means you’ll need to sign up for the Clubhouse again. You can do that here.

- We can’t import the existing content/threads/discussions from Ning unless we want to pay someone to do this for us and build a custom tool or figure out a way to do it from a hotch potch of existing tools. While this is really frustrating, we hope that the fresh start means we can all create some great new content, share new resources & provide useful critiques in the new Clubhouse.

IMPORTANT ACTION REQUIRED: As I asked in the message I sent out to all existing Clubhouse members, it’s really important that you log into the Ning clubhouse and download any of your content you’ve shared that you need & don’t already have a copy of. If you feel so inclined, please re-post this content in the new Clubhouse.

Thanks for your ongoing support & I hope to see you in the Clubhouse soon

zero2illo Asks For Your Help!

Lea — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:45:54 +0000

Hi folks, this is Lea here – Jonathan’s wife. If you took part in the 12 week challenge, you’ll have seen me in the video for week 2 talking about OGSMs and how to plan and strategise for your illustration career.

Here’s the thing…Jonathan doesn’t actually know I’m writing this post and he’ll probably be a little unhappy with me when he finds out (he’s currently taken Mali – our 1 year old – out for a walk so she can nap & I can do some work!).

It’s quite a long post but I’d really appreciate it if you stick it out to the end because it’s got some good stuff in that I hope you’ll appreciate…

As you know Jonathan started zero2illo as a way to chart his progress in becoming a full time, professional illustrator in the hope that it might help others to do the same.

It’s been a while since he’s done an update on that because there’s actually not been much progress! He’s been so busy running the challenge, running zero2illo and in his day job as a graphic/website designer.

I hate being the nagging wife…

Unfortunately, that’s left me playing the role of nagging wife (which, by the way, I do rather too well!). I love the fact that he’s passionate about helping others achieve their goals too but it doesn’t pay the bills – and he’s spending more & more time on this which leaves him less & less time on the stuff that actually pays & puts food on our table!

There’s a reason you didn’t see much of him in the z2i Clubhouse during the challenge – he didn’t actually get any time to do the tasks himself – which was totally not the point of the challenge .

Coupled with the fact that Ning have started charging for their networks, we’ve spent the best part of a month or so discussing what we’re going to do with the Clubhouse, what he’s going to do with zero2illo and how the hell he’s going to find time to make progress as an illustrator.

Something’s got to give…or he’s going to have to find a way to start generating an income out of this side of things. That’s basically the ultimatum I gave him a while back.

Here’s how you can help with that…

As you may know, Jonathan asked for your feedback about what to do with the clubhouse & whether to implement a small fee in order to cover the costs of keeping it on Ning.

He has been pretty much adamant all along (despite the feedback) that he wants to keep it free. That’s cool – and we’ve decided to migrate away from Ning so we don’t have to be out of pocket.

In fact, he’ll be announcing the all-new clubhouse soon (I can’t tell you how difficult it’s been trying to decide what to do and all the parameters we’ve had to consider – but I’ll let him tell you about that!) which *will* be free and which we’ve also had to pay for to be customised & branded .

But that still doesn’t solve the problem of Jonathan spending too much time on stuff that doesn’t put food on our table! So, here’s where I’m asking for your help.

We’ve got a ton of cool stuff coming up for you at zero2illo, including:

An all-new Clubhouse which will remain free for you to join & use
An expanded 12 Week Challenge kit with lots of additional resources focusing on some of the bits many of you found the most challenging
New tutorials coming up including:
- How to get the most out of WordPress for your portfolio website
- An introduction to using Headway for your portfolio website
New articles scheduled including:
- How to use your creative skills to create additional income
- How to get more done with the time you have & other creative time management strategies
- How to design your illustration career to fit your ideal lifestyle

With the exception of the 12 Week Challenge Kit which will be the first product Jonathan will release at zero2illo, everything will remain 100% totally & utterly free.

But if you’ve got or get any value at all out of the zero2illo resources & community, here’s what I’m asking you to do in the hope that we can keep everything free & most importantly, keep it running:

Donate

At my nagging, Jonathan just added a “Donate” button in the sidebar of the site. If you’d like to donate anything at all to help keep this going, please do so – any amount will be gratefully received & put back into the pot to re-invest in the site.

Pre-purchase

The 12 Week Challenge kit will be ready to ship within the next month. We don’t even have a sales page for this yet nor exact details of what’s included (except in our notebooks!) but if you liked what you saw in the challenge (or heard about it), then this will be like that but even better.

At the very least, it’ll include extra resources on how to create your OGSM and more in-depth WordPress & Headway tutorials to create your killer portfolio websites. If you’d like to pre-purchase the kit, $14.95 is a pre-purchase price which will go up to $24.95 once the kit is released.

Spread the word

Jonathan’s currently on the lookout for sponsors/advertisers for the site. There are 2 ways you can help with this:

Let him know of any services, companies or contacts you might have who’d be interested
Spread the word about the z2i site & community, the bigger & better it is the more attractive it’ll be to sponsors

Ok, so that’s it from me – I think I’ve nagged quite enough for today and if you’re still with me then thank you for listening. This site and community means an awful lot to Jonathan and it’s something that he cares about deeply so I’d rather not be the nagging wife anymore