39: Drawing Profits & the Business of Caricatures (w/ Robert Bauer)

Foreign welcome back to the Naaman and Creative Show. I don’t do this a lot but just to remind you, I’m your host John Josh Naiman, CEO and founder of Naiman Creative. And we have the Name and Creative show have all sorts of cool people on doing really amazing things both in the professional world, the creative world, the business world, you name it. And today’s guest is someone who goes right along that this is someone who has drawn over a hundred thousand smiles.

Robert Bauer is the founder of Goofy Faces, a nationwide caricature caricature art company that represents over six hundred and fifty artists and operates at zoos, aquariums, amusement parks all across the U.S. robert is a graduate of the prestigious and a favorite of mine, Ringling College of Art and Design.

And he’s been a professional caricature artist for 40 years. He sketched everyone from kids at birthday parties to Sylvester Stallone and even former President George H.W.

bush. He’s also served as longstanding president of the International Society of Caricature Artists for a few years and was featured on Art Detroit. Whether it’s traditional caricatures or digital sketches and we’re going to learn more about this.

Robert blends his wit, artistic mastery and a real human touch in what he does. So we’re going to dive in. Welcome Robert to the Name and Creative Show.

Appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much Josh. Thanks so much for having me.

It’s should be fun. Yeah, absolutely. It’s cool because you know we’ve had like two doctors on and then magicians and but sometimes it’s not always a creative.

So it’s always good when I get like someone in Hollywood or work for Pixar or yourself. You’re in the creative realm. Yeah, the non grown up crowd.

Yeah, basically. And exactly. But maybe we can start with going back to the beginning on what made you fall in love with art.

What gave you the bug? Good question. So I’ve been fortunate that I could draw at a very, very early age. I was considered sort of advanced in being able to draw like going back to like first or second grade.

So from that point I felt that I would eventually someday do some sort of career in art. You know, by high school I was taking every possible art class I could take and then there was even a career preparation 3 hour class per day that they had in my junior and senior year. Pretty unique for the school district I was in at the time and that was like college level art classes.

So got a really nice boost out of things like that. And then eventually Went to a community college for art. And.

And early on, I realized I was never that interested in being a fine artist. I wasn’t gonna paint or draw to express. I was more intrigued at creating things for commercial purposes.

Logo design, you know, or, you know, print design or video design, animation, things like that. That was just what got my juices flowing. So that’s where I kind of went and took classes at community college immediately.

Got fortunate enough to find work as a graphic designer. Early on, I hadn’t even started with caricature. I was heading to be.

I wanted to be an art director, like, at a big ad agency. Okay. I lived in Detroit.

I wanted to be, like, the madman kind of guy. But they had really high standards, and they wanted degrees, and you got to be on a certain track. And no matter what doors I knocked on, it never quite happened.

I worked for some smaller agencies and did that for a little while until one of them fired me. And then I was out of work. I was out of work, like, right after New Year’s, a company had fired me.

That was kind of like the bottom. I was like, man, I’m 20 years old and I’m washed up. So I. I was in between work.

I was collecting unemployment. And in Detroit, back in that day, that meant you actually lined up at an unemployment office and stood in line with all these other old guys that were all from. They’re all union people that were laid off.

So they didn’t care. They were just picking up their check and moving on. And here I really wanted work.

Anytime I got up to the front desk, they were like, we don’t have anything for graphic. We don’t even know what a graphic designer is, let alone. Yeah, finding stuff.

So a friend of mine was another graphic designer. He freelanced, and he says, hey, I got a client. They want some caricatures.

And, you know, I know you’re in between work. You want to take a stab at it? And I said, yeah, sure. So I met up with him.

He came to my apartment, and he dropped off five photos because this was, you know, 1985. Okay. So no Internet, you know, no.

Hell, I’ll email them to you. It’s like. So he gave me these snapshots, and I got to work in my apartment over a weekend and delivered to him on Monday.

And I just. You know, I could draw. He knew I could, like, cartoon and stuff because we went to high school together.

And I just kept working on these five drawings until I felt they were satisfactory. And then he gave them the client. Client Liked them.

They paid me 25 each. So it was $125 and I wasn’t gonna starve. Yeah.

But you know, it’s like anything you get that little tug of, oh, hey, I could do this for other people and they’ll give me money and I won’t starve. Literally wouldn’t start. So I started going to bars and coffee shops anywhere where I could get like some free food, like a happy hour or something like that so I could snack on something.

And then I, I would try to leave that venue with more money than I came with. And one of the venues was a huge suburban Detroit bar, like two story bar, you know, back in the day where everybody would hang out at these large, loud bars with DJs in the center stage doing all sorts of stunts and everything. And I was drawing in there one night and the GM caught me because some of the bars were encouraging and some of them threw me out.

Yeah, I was wondering. Yeah. So it was hit or miss.

You just didn’t know. So this guy took me aside and I didn’t know what he was going to do. He goes, hey, how’d you like to come work for us? I was like, really? And I was like, I knew I was going to go back to school or something.

I said, I’m here for the summer. So he, he said, tell you what we’ll do. We’ll pay a minimum.

Like you’re a waiter, we won’t tell anybody. We’re paying you. And you just, you work, you keep whatever tips you want.

I was like, cool. And I said, what are the hours? He goes, I don’t know. Like you start at 9 or 10 at night.

Cut off when you want to cut off. Oh, wow. So I was like, yeah.

night. Because then I would cut off and they’d say, so which girls did you draw and which ones can we go talk to? It was like I was like a scout. Oh, wow.

In addition to drawing caricature. So, yeah, at being 21 at that point and doing that, that was, that was kind of unique. That’s really neat.

Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of. It was. I always treated it kind of like as a, as an additional little hack, you know, like a little craft.

I could doodle out these caricatures real quickly and people like them and they give me money. But I’m going to be a serious designer, so I’m going to keep that focus. And eventually I Went.

I realized I needed more schooling. So I enrolled at Ringling because my parents lived down in Englewood while I was up in Detroit. So I applied, they accepted me, they transferred my credits, they looked at my job, work history.

They said, we can put you into second year. And it was a three year course. They said, she only have to go for two years.

They said, you can go into graphic design or we got this new thing, computer graphics. So I said, let’s shoot for computer graphics. So that was like 1989.

So this is pre Pixar. Like we’re watching student videos of John Lasseter. Oh yeah, that everybody’s going, this guy’s really going to go somewhere, check out what he’s doing at this lab out in California.

And then eventually he becomes, you know, the John Lasseter who directed Toy Story and all that. So we really got to see stuff like right at the cutting edge. So that was pretty cool.

But at the same time, when you’re in a program that’s cutting edge, there’s just a lot of stuff nobody knew. Like we were learning computer graphics software that nobody knew how to apply it and the teachers didn’t know how to teach it because they, they never used it. Yeah, it was so cutting edge that they didn’t know the, the application in the real world of it like, or how to monetize it.

How could you monetize a. Well, I mean they, they was, it was, it was an animation modeling and animation software. So somebody knew what the end result was.

But the only people who knew how to use the software was the salespeople who sold it to us. Sure, sure. So they’d give us a little tutorage and the rest of us, you know, God bless the other art students I was with because we weren’t afraid of anything.

We would just tinker around with this stuff and try to make it do stuff. And that’s when computer graphics really started taking off at Ringling and their, their program boomed and they bought a lot of equipment. We didn’t have a huge program back then, so there weren’t that many students.

So any of us could be in the computer lab until midnight. And I was back in the day using Mac2CXS, which is really old machines now, but I’d have a room full of nine of those that I could. Each one of them, I could put something on it and start rendering something.

Right. Because it wasn’t. You had a farm.

Yeah, they were all. Yeah, exactly. Because that whole room full of computers is probably a tenth of the Speed as these iPhones I have sitting on our table.

Yeah, if that. So, yeah. So that was pretty cool.

Getting into computer graphics and stuff. And then after graduating, getting moved back to Detroit and found work doing multimedia. And I was doing, you know, software related animated graphics and things and then fell into freelancing for about the next 14 years doing big three, you know, big automotive graphics and animation.

And a lot of it was referred to as speaker support. All these executives would want flashy graphics during their presentations, during their live presentations in front of an audience. If they’re at an auto show or if they’re at a conference, they don’t want to just stand there in their tie, suit and tie.

They a graphic over their shoulder that looks, you know, dazzling because they’re really boring people and they can’t keep anybody’s attention. So they counted on, they go, can we get some visual people to create some visuals that will make people interested in what we’ve got to say? So me and this like crack team, like a handful of us, we were all independent artists that just were. We knew the software, we knew how to create nice looking graphics and we understood PowerPoint and all that kind o
stuff.

So we really got good at it. And to the point where we were getting sent all over the world with these executives to prepare their graphics. I got sent out to London in Germany because I knew PowerPoint back in the day.

Wow. We’re going to make changes and we can’t hire somebody there. Language barrier.

So you, you and you, you’re going with us. So I got to go overseas just because I could do the visuals. That’s awesome.

Yeah, it was pretty neat to be in your early 20s and have that kind of experience. And the money was really good, but the pressure was unbearable. It was really because this was automotive industry.

And one thing they don’t take is excuses. It’s like, we need these 10 things redone by the morning. And you’re like, well, I’m gonna have to charge.

We don’t care. Anytime you try to hit them with a price, like I have to charge you double for that. They were like, just get it done.

Okay, okay. They really were back in the day for everybody. Back in the big automotive industry thing, you couldn’t hit them with a bill that would make them blink and all.

And all you did after that is they approved like, so you do this again. So. So if we.

You usually try to give somebody a higher price so that they learn plan this better. Yeah. So that way we’re not stuck working A weekend.

Because you didn’t make any preparations. No. All you did is prove to them that you could.

You could deliver in such a short notice. So now we’re just going to keep doing that every time. Yeah, yeah.

And that’s what would happen. So the money was really good, but the stress was really tough. And eventually it almost came to a head.

But then what happened? 911 happened, and then all of that work just went over the cliff. Really? Why didn’t. I mean, obviously 911 affected a lot, but why specifically what happened was that because we were constantly working on visual presentations for General Motors and all of their Pontiac and Chevy and all that, and they took a breather from doing anything because, you know, the industry got so affected after 9 11.

If you remember, a lot of things were wondering if, you know, are we going to get back up in the sky with our planes or is anybody going to buy anything right now? So they just in. So they said, instead of us traveling and trying to pitch cars during this crisis, we’re just going to lay low. We’re not going to send any executives out.

We’re just going to focus on, you know, what we got. So that meant that we didn’t have any visuals to prepare. So that went away.

And then as they started to come back, we used to all joke with each other. It’s like, this is crazy. They could get a secretary to put together a PowerPoint deck and be done with it.

And they’re paying us this ridiculous amount of money to make all these visuals that are. They’re seen for a matter of moments and then they’re never seen again. And that’s kind of what happened.

Most of them just thought, yeah, we’re not going to bother with all this extra bells and whistles. The secretary will just put together the visual. I see.

So it kind of, you know, kind of like they woke up from this weird dream and said, why are we spending all this money? So some. Some of the. My peers were able to continue on because they had certain execs that insisted on it.

But a lot of us that were on the peripheral just saw our work really, really decline. So that was. That was, you know, I was able to continue working, but it was at a much less pace up until about 2004.

So I’m watching my freelance work, which now I’ve got a. A house and a wife and a kid, and. And I see the work declining.

And now I’m in my 30s and stuff, 40. I need to figure out what I’m gonna do with the rest of my life, I can’t count on this visuals thing. It’s not happening anymore.

So there was at the time, this was pre Facebook. They had user groups for different activities and interests. And there was a caricature bulletin board called the Loop, and all these caricatures from all over the world were on it.

Now, all of this time that I’m doing all that freelance stuff, I’m doing caricatures on the side. I KE doing it on the side. Agents would call me up.

I would draw a wedding or I’d draw at a corporate event. So it was a nice little additional income, but it was kind of separate from the daily freelance graphic stuff. Sure.

So I figured maybe this I can do with the caricature thing, since that’s not going away. I just got to figure out how to ramp it up and make money doing it. So this group was really excited because they were talking about the ncn, which was the National Caricaturist Network.

That’s what ISCA used to be called. And they were excited because they were talking about the next convention that was taking place in Orlando in 2004. So I went on the board and I just said, hey, you know, newbie here, been drawing for a while.

Talk me into going. And they were all very supportive. You should come to the convention.

And one of them said, go to the convention. It’ll change your life. So I attended the convention, and that changed my life.

Yeah, I’ve been there. Siggraph. Well, Siggraph is.

Yeah. Seagraft is. Yeah, that’s another one.

You go to these. You go to these things, and they change your life. They are.

It’s not just like a cliche. It really. Yeah, yeah.

And almost anybody who attends afterwards does the same thing. Like, wow, that was an eye opener. I say, yeah.

I think the only hesitation that people have from attending these things is not worrying that something is going to happen. I think they’re concerned that something will. You know, it’s like, I don’t know if I’m ready for that much change.

Sure, yeah. Yeah. But I was at the time.

So I met all of these fascinating artists from all over the world. What was cool is, like, they put on their own awards banquet. So they had a PowerPoint, and they were presenting what was fascinating to me because I just came from this corporate world where all these stiffs were in front of a mic having to read from a teleprompter, and thousands of dollars were spent just to make the guy look average, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

These artists were up there on the stage, they were riffing it. They had no visuals, they had no prompter, and they were so much more interesting. Crushing it.

They were crushing it. Now part of it, I’m sure, is I’m biased because they’re talking about what I’m interested in. But I said, like, this guy’s not stumbling, he’s not stuttering, he’s, he’s engaging, he’s funny.

And, and I thought, man, I really want to get involved with this. So by the next year, I was helping out and I did all of, I said, hey, I can, I can offer visuals. I know how to do visuals, you know, because that’s where I come from.

So I started doing all the PowerPoints. So when they did the awards, they would actually have the category come up on the screen and then they would actually have a picture of the winning piece. They never had done that before.

Oh, cool. So by that time I ran for the board, I became its treasurer and got really involved with it. We, eventually we had so many international members that got tired of its name being the National Caricatures Network.

Parentheses, an international organization. They said, can’t we, can’t we shorten that and make it something different? So me and the, my, my staff or the, the board that was with me at the time, we came up with a new name. So we came up with the International Society of Caricature.

Isca. Ah. So I’d like to take credit for helping come up with a, with the new name.

So it’s been Iska for 10 plus years now, and there’s people from all over the country that attend it. It’s a week worth of drawing. You show up on Sunday, you’re assigned a wall space, a column in a ballroom with a number that matches your badge, and you have a week to fill up that space with your artwork.

And the ballroom doesn’t close, so you can go into that ballroom at three in the morning and it’s like walking into a ball. A busy trade show. It’s just like all these artists on the floor at tables, drawing each other, drawing from their phones, drawing live, some sculpting, just, just this mad buzz room of creativity.

And if you come from a creative background and you appreciate that, it’s like, holy cow. There’s just so much focus and energy going on in this room and they’re doing it for nothing. There’s no pay.

They’re just, they’re generating. And the contest rules are you can draw anybody who’s in the ballroom. So you can draw me or my guest or you and your guest.

And then the last day, all of the members who competed. Now you have to go around the room with a ballot and choose the different categories and pick which ones you think are the best. It’s extremely democratic.

So, like, if you win something during the banquet, it’s extremely humbling because it wasn’t like some panel or some number you reached. Everybody in that room thought your stuff was better than somebody else’s. That’s cool.

So it’s powerful. It’s extremely powerful. I’ve never won a thing, really, in all the years.

There’s a good talent out there. Not to say that you’re not. Clearly you are.

It’s humbling, but it’s also inspiring because it’s nice to be involved in something that doesn’t seem to have a ceiling. Yeah. You know, there’s certain industries that you.

If you’ve ever endeaviled in, whether it’s a sport or a hobby or a profession that you top out. It’s like, I can’t get any better at this. This is all there is to it.

And all I. All it is is rinse and repeat. Well, with something like art, especially with caricature, which is about exaggeration. It’s like they just keep.

Every time I think they’ve gone as far as they can. We go the next year, and somebody pushes it even further and does things. We’ve had, you know, the exaggeration level, that you can exaggerate a face and still maintain a likeness.

That’s sort of the constant drum beat. And you see it there, and it’s kind of like when you go to a high fashion, somebody that goes to a fashion show, and you realize, man, there’s some great talent coming across that Runway, but nobody outside this room would get this stuff, and it would never get sold to the public. It’s too far out there.

Right. It’s sort of the same thing with a lot of the caricature work that you see at the convention. It’s.

It’s so high brow or low brow or just abstract or. Or out there that other artists really appreciate. It’s like, man, I see what you’re doing there.

That’s really cool. That’s something I hadn’t thought about. And then the person doing it says, oh, yeah, you inspired me, man.

I saw what you did. And I thought, I took that idea and I extrapolated and I did this. So it’s exciting.

But anybody that I’ve ever brought into it or I’ve shown them photos of it. You know, they’re just shaking their head and tilting their head and like they made his nose really big. That’s horrible.

It’s terrible. You know, it’s, it’s. And yeah, it’s just like, oh my God.

Yeah, that’s the point. That’s the point. And that’s, that’s what I love about caricature is hits upon two things that are extremely dear to individuals and it’s art and it’s themselves.

Yeah. Two things that they’re fascinated about. And most people, I’m very fortunate.

Like when I draw at live gigs, I rarely get pushback where somebody’s extremely disappointed at what I’ve done. I usually get very good reactions. If you go to my social media and my TikTok page or my Instagram account, I have Reels and TikTok videos.

It’s just reactions to me turning around the drawing. Love it. Yeah.

And most of them, all of them that I post anyway, they’re all extremely positive. They’re like laughing out of their chair or they’re delighted and all that. What a good feeling.

Oh, it is, it’s, it’s, it’s a, like a dopamine thing. Yeah. You know.

Have you ever gotten somebody who’s pissed? Yeah. Back in the day. It’s been quite a while.

But yeah, when I used to draw some questionable bars that I probably shouldn’t have been drawing faces at because there was alcohol involved and some narrow mindedness involved. You know, I learned. But I never, it never turned violent or anything.

Oh, that’s good. Yeah. And almost nine times out of 10, like if I were to draw and go too far with a guy, and most guys are not like, I don’t want to get drawn and then if I draw and they’re kind of like, oh man, that’s stupid crazy man.

That’s funny. They’re pretty good about it. It’s.

When I would draw female. Yeah. I was wonder.

There’s a sensitivity there. There. Well be.

And again, what’s fascinating is that you start getting into the psychology of it. There’s, there’s a huge psychology in this caricature because you’re, you’re digging into somebody’s face. Well, what if she was self conscious of the size of her nose.

Yeah. For her whole life or whatever and now you’ve exaggerated it. Those usually will not sit.

If they’re that self conscious, they won’t sit. Or Right. Or they sit and they tell you.

Yeah. And in A lot of caricature artists myself include say, oh, don’t tell me what bothers you because I may not see what you see. And now you’ve pointed it out to me and you now unsee it.

Yeah, I can’t see it. I was wondering, do you walk around like you’re looking at me? You know, can you. Obviously you’re analytical and you’ve got to see like, oh, okay, your eyes, you know, droop down or you got these thick bushy eyebrows when you’re walking around.

Because like for me, when I look at billboards or design or websites or logos. Yeah, I’m just analyzing. Yeah, you’re in the trade, you have a trained eye for it.

So you’re going to see that. Yeah, it’s very similar. I’ve spoken with some other well experienced caricature artists and one of them named Roger told the best story he talked to when he was getting trained.

He says, you know, you’re going through trying to understand how to look at a face and evaluate it and there’s some formulas that are basis. But after that you just get a knack for it and everything. He says, you just, one day you walk out of training into the amusement park and you look around the faces, all of a sudden you’re like, oh my God, oh my go.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Because you all of a sudden it pops in your head what you would push, what you would exaggerate. Right, Minimize.

Yeah. And it’s pretty fascinating. And then of course, the cool thing is is that’s just one artist.

The next artist next to them is going to play upon it slightly differently. So it’s like snowflakes or fingerprints. One of the competitions during the convention is a likeness competition drawn from generic photos.

We try to use non celebrities, people faces that the crowd. And there’s usually about 200 artists competing and we use faces that they’ve never seen before. So they’re projected up, you got 10 minutes go.

And you’re drawing them in black and white only. And then after 10 minutes, time’s up. Pass your drawings up.

All the drawings are put up around a print of that photo face. And it’s fascinating, especially for the newbies because you just see 200 different versions of the same face. None of these caricatures look that much like each other, right? Maybe a few, but most of them, like there’s, there’s a range that you wouldn’t believe.

Yeah. And the newbies who’ve never done that competition before, I organized it When I was on the board and I was like, so what’s. What are you thinking? And they’re like, none of these faces look like each other.

And I go, but he goes, but they all look like the photo. I go, bingo. I go, that is.

That is an epiphany. Yeah. We all have.

And it’s important to express that to the public because those are the ones that are hung up on how they’re going to look. And when I explain that story to them, I go, look, this is just how you look at this one moment. To me, if I had another artist drawing at the same time, it would not be the same drawing.

And if I draw you tomorrow, it’s not going to be the same drawing. You do not have a definitive static look about you. The angle changes, your expression changes, my interpretation changes.

It’s kind of fluid. Yeah. So.

And even it’s. And a lot of that’s. Even with photography.

I mean, how many times does somebody doesn’t like their photo, retake it. I don’t like the way I look. Well, just turn your head a bit.

Okay. That one’s much better. It’s like it’s the same person.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, people get caught up on certain things and so.

Yeah, it’s pretty fascinating. Absolutely. I. I don’t think a lot of people, number one, appreciate all that goes into a craft like that.

And, you know, if you’ve ever tried to draw or paint or what, design, you know, have fun. It takes years. Yeah.

So many hours. Yeah. To do that.

But the nuance of it’s really, really interesting. So love the groundwork you’ve laid. So where does goofy faces come into it? Where.

When was that business born? So while I was still freelancing. And when you’re a freelance artist, you try to have as many hats as you can. You know, I’m not going to just do print design.

I’m going to get into web design. And at the time, we’re Talking early aughts, late 90s, HTML was the thing. You know, if you could learn to design via HTML, you could have another source of income by designing websites.

So I started learning HTML, and at the time, digital cameras were just coming out. Like Apple had a digital camera, but nobody knew what to do with the images. They weren’t as fluent as they are now.

I mean, I can do anything with them. But back then they had no reason to exist. So I thought, well, maybe if I made a website, because I like to do caricature where people could upload their Photos.

I would draw them from the photos and then I would email them the caricature. I would scan it in and email it to them. Brilliant.

That was the whole idea behind Goofy Faces. So that’s initially what it was going to be and it was a sideline business while I was a freelancer. And you can still do that with Goofy Faces.

I still do to this day. We still do it. Yeah, it’s still go there and upload.

You can go to my website anytime, day or night, and you can order a caricature online. That’s so cool. So from that point, I had the, you know, the concept and one of the people that I was doing freelance for was an IP company like a host, and they hosted websites and they did design.

So they would contract me to do some work for them. So then I did some trade with them. It’s like, hey, I want to.

I want to host a site, I want to build a site. You know, back in the day there wasn’t that much money to, to buy a domain and everything. Sure.

Okay, so what do you want? The domain called and I said, well, I’m interested in Silly Faces. And they said, okay. So like, they got back to me and we didn’t secure it.

I just said, check on it. And they said, yeah, it’s available. So I said, let’s secure it.

And then by the time that I got back to him, they go, it’s gone. Oh, wow. I go, really? He goes, yeah, that’s the problem.

If you do. This was back in the day. So if you search out a name and you don’t nab it, somebody else does because they think you want it.

And now they. It’s available for sale. I said, well, Dan, I haven’t even started.

I’m not gonna pay somebody for it. That’s stupid. So literally on the fly while they had me on the phone and they said, Silly Faces isn’t available.

I said, what about Goofy Faces? It’s better anyways. Goofy’s much better. Oh, it’s much better.

I’m so happy that that happened because, yeah, it. Yeah, it’s got a better sound to it and everything. So that’s.

It was kind of born completely accidental that it became Goofy Faces. Wow, that’s cool. Yeah, it’s a brilliant idea.

And. And so then what was. I mean, obviously, I would imagine it’s a long trajectory to now having 650 plus artists that are represented, you know, through your business that, that, you know, people can access and hire.

Right. And so what. How how did you start to gain all this momentum? I would imagine it’s that international society of character artists that might have helped boost that or connect you with artists who are looking, and now you’re making connections that people are coming to you to hire someone in a particular state.

Can you walk me through kind of how that grew? Sure, yeah. That. That.

That’s pretty accurate. I mean, once I got involved with. With Iska, I met some other agents who booked out nationally.

Now I had just. I. I’m. I’m winding down my freelance business, trying to figure out what to do next with this caricature business.

And my idea was to do place. People would place orders. That’s when I went to my first convention.

And then it was, like, mind blowing because they all talked about retail, which I go, what do you mean by retail? And they go, you know, when you buy a caricature? Oh, like my website. Well, not quite. We’re talking about, like, when you go to an amusement park or you go to a fair or festival.

That’s. That’s retail, I think. Okay, so that’s what retail caricature is.

Exactly. Well, what about if they book me? I said, yeah, that’s like entertainment, or they call it party business, the live party business. So there’s party artists, there’s retail artists and all that.

So I was like, so maybe we should do something with the retail. You know, maybe that’s the way to go, because I’m only one artist, and there’s only so much trickling into the website, so maybe that would help opening things up. And then I was starting to book out my local artists.

I had, you know, when you draw caricatures, you meet everybody else who can do it in your market. Sure. So we all knew each other, so we’d get each other work.

So I was trying to get them more and more work. And then after meeting all of these artists from all over the world, I thought I could probably start booking out some of these other guys too. At least the ones that are in the United States.

And one or two other individuals were already doing that. So I, like, in my second or third convention, I said, hey, guys, just want to let you know, I’m gonna start doing this too. I’m gonna go national.

And they were pretty cool about it. They didn’t, like, you know, they didn’t say, hey, man, you know, back off. They weren’t territorial.

One of them said, hey, man, it’s a big pie. Totally, totally big pie. Said, said, you know, now there’s three of Us, There’s.

There’s hundreds of artists and there’s millions of possibilities of bookings across the United States alone, and there’s three or four of us. It’s fine. You’ve.

You’ve hit a. A particular niche where, you know, like, for instance, David went. You know, our teammate went to a networking event and met you.

You, by the way, you left a. You have the coolest car because you do it. You have your information, but you have this blank area and you do a caricature.

You did a caricature of him. And he was so stoked about that because you got to meet this guy. And I was like, that is brilliant.

I don’t want him throwing it out. Exactly. Like, how do you make a business card for us? It’s like a cool design, super badass design that feels good.

It’s rage. You massage it. We have some new cards that are.

That are coming that are super cool because we have an AUD signature on them. Spoiler alert. Yeah, exactly.

So, but, yeah, it’s like, how do you make an impression? But what’s cool is you’ve, you’re. You’re in a niche that is special and fun and unique. But, you know, there aren’t tons of people that you run across who not just are a caricature artist, but have a business that can facilitate these, These kind of.

We all know each other. Yeah, it’s that. That intimate that we all know each other.

I’m going to see one of them later this afternoon. A competitor slash peer. And we’ve all played nice together.

You know, that’s important. We’re professional. But, you know, I, I think we always try to put friendship first, which is prevented a war from breaking out.

And it would be unnecessary. It’s just not necessary. And I think the others that I’ve been.

I respect greatly, and I call them all friends, have been all adults about it. You know, they’ve been very mature about it. So it’s because we all book the same artists.

Yeah, you know, we, we. Very few of us make anybody exclusive because the, the biggest challenge, and it’s the obvious question anybody would have out there. It’s like, well, it sounds like you’re doing something that’s really fun, but how can you sustain yourself on that? How do you make a living doing that? And if I was just doing gigs, you know, getting booked at parties and weddings and birthdays, it still probably would not be enough.

It’s like, so then you add the commission work. You know, I’ll do studio Stuff, somebody will order through it. Okay, that helps out, too.

But that can get patchy too. You know, you don’t get. It’s not a constant flow.

And how do I reach these people? I got to spend, you know, ad money and search SEO money to make them reach me, and that cuts into your profit, so you got to offer both. And then the retail part that I was brought to by going to the conventions, that’s when it was like putting the foot on the gas. Because I started at the Detroit zoo, like in 2005, and it was a mediocre setup, but because you were open every day, there was just this constant cash flow coming.

Sure. Yeah. Something that as a freelancer, as most creatives know, we don’t know what that’s like.

Yeah, you’re just living job to job, and some of the jobs are very lucrative. But as soon as it’s done, you got to find another. And then if you take a break, there’s nothing coming in.

Sure. So that’s just the lifestyle that we’re all accustomed to. You know, I. I have to eat, you know, now, because I’m not going to have it later.

I got to stash some money away and all that kind of stuff. So this was a new concept. It was, wow, this stand’s generating money and there are artists there and I’m not there.

And the money’s coming in even when I’m at home. I’m kind of digging this. So branched out to Toledo, then ended up getting.

Making some connections, and opened up at the Florida Aquarium, which is still open to this day. We’re still at the Florida Aquarium. Awesome.

Overall, over the past 20 years, we’ve gone through about 30 different stands across the United States. Some that still are running, many that your contract ends, and for whatever reason, they end. But we currently have seven locations.

We’re in la, we’re at the Aquarium of the Pacific, which is technically Long Beach. We’re at the Los Angeles Zoo. We’re at Ilitch Gardens Amusement Park.

That’s in Denver. We’re at the Pittsburgh Zoo. We’re at the National Zoo in D.

C. we’re at the Florida Aquarium, and we’re at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans. A lot of zoos and aquariums.

Yeah. Amusement parks. Yeah.

We kind of fell into it, you know, because caricatures at family venues is nothing new. Yeah. And there are some large, very large competitors out there who got into the amusement parks decades ago, and they’re not letting them go.

And so I was very small at the time. Like, that’s okay. I’ll just do zoos and aquariums.

And zoos was kind of a new thing. There weren’t that many of us at zoos, and now it’s very popular at zoos. And we’re lucky, you know, we’ve actually, you know, scrapped a little bit with some of the bigger competitors out there, where I’ve seen them take over some of my stands, but then I’ve taken over some of their stands.

Sure. Yeah. That’s business.

Yeah, I guess. Yeah. But I’m.

I’m proud of. The fact is, as tiny as I am compared to them, that we’re, you know, still able to. To put up a fight.

Absolutely. But the stands we have, you know, they have managers. We paint faces, we draw caricatures.

They’re open daily. Some of the locations are open year round. Some of them are seasonal.

Right. I hired a general manager a couple years ago, so she oversees all of that. And then I’ve got a booking manager she sees.

Oversees all of the entertainment bookings. I’ve got an account to make sure everybody gets paid. I’ve got a gentleman who does our SEO and ppc.

He’s very good, based out of Detroit. He has his own podcast as well, and a company called Great Scott Media does the Facebook blog, newsletter, all that kind of stuff. And he gets along well with my SEO guys.

So they’re. They’re great. I can pick their brains on ideas and things.

Cool. Small but mighty team. I mean, I guess that’s not small.

I guess, but I agree. Still a mighty team. It’s a mighty little team.

We meet once a month on Zoom. We. Everybody has their.

Their silo, Everybody has their lane. Sure. You know, and we cross pollinate whenever we can during the Zoom meeting.

You know, the people ask each other questions. The best days I have is when I’m doing that Zoom meeting, and like, my GM and my accountant or them and my booking manager are talking about something directly to each other during the meeting, and I have no idea what they’re talking about. Totally.

Oh, yeah, that was like. That was like another epiphany. Like, I’ve reached the point now where I’m now the business owner and the business is taking care of itself, and I’m not in that position.

That many of us, when you have success is, how do I get above this now? Yeah. How do I get out from just walking through the woods where I’m above, looking down at the forest? And I can make other decisions because the trip through the woods is taking place. I don’t have to do the day to day.

So preach. I’m working on that right now. It’s a very difficult thing to get to or.

Yeah. And many. It’s a long path.

It’s a long path. And many. I think there’s many business owners out there who.

Who feel that. Because that’s any of those business seminars you go to. Now, those people you talk to, they’re always talking about, you know, you have to get to a point where the business is running itself.

You know, otherwise it’s not a business. You’re just. It’s just a job that you have that you like a lot.

You know, that kind of thing, which is. There’s nothing wrong with that either. But there are a lot of people out there who.

That’s where they claim they want to be. But it’s like in order to do that, you got to let go. Yep.

You can’t micromanage. Delegate. Yeah, you got to delegate.

You got to trust other people. And I was very fortunate in that. I always consider myself somewhat lazy on that.

That’s where it’s like, no, you take this off my plate. Please do this for me. I don’t want to do it anymore.

Well, do you want me to check in with. Hell no. Don’t check it with.

Unless it’s a problem. Yeah, no. If you can make it run and you got a way to run it and nobody gets angry about it, it’s yours.

You run it your way. Which turns out to be very fortuitous because then you get people who are really invested 100%. Yeah.

They want to be there, they want to stick around. Totally. All right, don’t go anywhere.

We’ll be right back after this quick break. A major point we continually emphasize at Naming Creative is that we build legacy websites. This means that we create websites that last long term, scale infinitely as your business grows, are dynamic, effective marketing tools, assist in business operations, document the history of your company, and are valuable assets to a business.

Business. So is your business looking to build a legacy? Contact us today at infonaymancreative.com or visit our website at namingcreative.com to get started. We’re back.

Thanks for sticking with us. Now back to the conversation. You know, my business is set up as an LLC.

It has one employee, me. Everybody else is 1099. Oh, wow.

Still all of the artists, all of the retail artists, and all of my staff. Half or all 1099. Even my accountant.

And, you know, I said, hey, should we start actually making Employees, she goes, not if you don’t have to. And if everybody’s happy, yeah, everybody’s happy. And you know, I look at the hours that a lot of them put in, it’s like, yeah, it’s not really a full time job.

Even my booking manager, who can get really, really busy, you know, she’s, she’s, she’ll bill me, you know, 40, 60 hours for the month. Okay. Versus 40 hours a week.

Right. Because she’s able to efficiently book everybody with the system that we got set up. So we just keep it, you know, running that way.

But yeah, so it’s good to be at a point where I can just kind of be, step back overseeing the general operations and not be stuck in the day to day mire. And I would imagine then that allows you to maybe draw more, do your craft more, enjoy it more. And that’s the difficult thing is a lot of people who would go to a stand say you’re at one of those zoos that you mentioned and you’re, you know, you sit down and you get, you get drawn or whatever.

Not a lot of people are thinking about the business behind creative endeavors and artistic endeavors. They, it’s this interesting realm where people take it so for granted. The music that goes into your ears, the visuals that you see, the movies, the TV shows, it’s just like magic.

It’s in front of you. And I, I truly believe people take it for granted. And maybe that’s not the worst thing because it’s so ingrained in society now that it’s normalized, that we’re just inundated with entertainment.

Whether it be for my eyes or ears or my mouth, anything, my senses are exploding. But at the same time, it’s very seldom, unless someone indulges in a conversation like this or puts on a podcast or talks to a business owner like yourself, is thinking about how that caricature artist is getting paid in the system, the booking and all that. So it’s an interesting thing.

Well, and it’s real specific to our line of work. And every artist that I’ve ever worked with, caricature artists out there, we’ve all been asked the same dozen questions because you do engage with your guests. One of the things we really enjoy, and you nailed it when you said, you know, you’re not doing the day to day operations.

It gives you more time to be creative. Yeah, I still do gigs. Right.

I’m heading out of here to do one tonight. I love interacting with the public and drawing live. That’s my favorite Thing.

So I would have been fortunate to build the business up in such a way that it generates a successful amount of revenue. And I still get to do the part that I like the most. And I haven’t lost that with.

I can’t do it anymore. I got to run the things, like let the others. And I’m still, I’m still going to go out and play, so.

So I’m still drawing whenever I can. I do live events and we always get asked those same types of questions. The biggest one that we always get is like, so is this your.

What else do you do? Is this like your job? Yeah. Do you work. Do you work for this comp? Like, they.

A lot of times they think I’m like one of the people for that business they’ve hired me for. So, like, do you work for the tile company and they just found out you could draw? I was like, no, they actually professionally hired me from a company. And this is.

And you know, and I was like, so what else do you do? I go, this is it. This is. You just, you just draw a caricature.

I go, yep. And then the kind of like the same tagline that you said at the beginning when I hit him with, I got seven stands. I have a roster of over 650 artists that I represent around the country.

And I still do gigs. I live half the year in Florida. I live the other half up in Michigan.

Then they go, their eyes light up. Yeah. Then they’re like, oh, so you’re like the owner? And I go, yeah, I’m the owner.

Well, we got the owner. We got the best artist. No, no, you got the owner.

Doesn’t mean I’m the best artist. You just got the one that got to decide to be here, where maybe more talented artists couldn’t have been here, but I’m here and you will be fine. You’ll love it.

Don’t worry. Oh, that’s great. I. Yeah, I guess just like I had a Hollywood makeup artist on here and we, you know, we were, we were talking.

She’s done American Horror Story and Disney’s like Haunted Mansion and Black Adam. I mean, she’s, she’s up there. She like wins an award every year.

But one thing that I hadn’t talked about is because we were talking about her craft and things like that. But then it’s like we got into the day to day in the interfacing with, with the actors and I never thought about it that she is right in their face. These, these famous people that you otherwise would not have that proximity and that amount of time.

She’s closer than anybody, Anybody. And I didn’t realize that. And that part of that conversation was fascinating because she.

That is a whole dynamic that’s so important to her trade on top of being really good at makeup, she’s got to be pleasant to be around. Consider consistently with these people or know when to Talk. People at ease.

100. Because not only do I need you to hold still, I’m going to be right in your face here. So let’s talk about something so this doesn’t feel awkward.

Yeah, exactly. And it’s kind of, you know, you. You don’t think about that.

Okay. While you’re drawing, you’re. You’re also.

You’re concentrating, but, you know, silence can be deadly. So you probably, you know, talking like, oh, what’s your favorite ride here? Or, you know, what animal is your favorite? Or when I used to be training artists, I’ve got people under me doing that, but when I was doing it, half of the training was, it’s like, look, you have to be an authority figure. You’re not just drawing them, because if you’re hiding behind that board drawing them, it’s not going to be a pleasant experience for them, and there’s a good chance that they’re not going to like the drawing.

You could be a mediocre artist. But if you’re dynamic and friendly, engaging, not only would they like you better than a more talented artist who didn’t engage with them and who kind of kept to themselves, you’re also going to get tipped much better. It’s an experience.

It’s an experience. The drawing is a remembrance of that experience. A tangible takeaway.

Yeah. From that day. It is.

It is. And it’s. And it’s one of those things.

With everything that’s happening with technology right now, I feel somewhat confident in live caricature work because it’s something that can’t be replaced. They want that human experience. I saw you draw somebody else.

I thought it was funny. I’m interested in your opinion of what I like. So that connection is.

Is. Is so important. And like, when we had the pandemic, it was suicidal for our business.

We all shut down. I mean, all of my venues shut down, not knowing when they’d open back up. And then we lost all of the bookings because you couldn’t meet in person and stuff.

So we were so blessed and fortunate that once we got on the other side of the pandemic, not only did the business come back, it Came back like a whiplash. I mean, it came back like every gig that possibly got canceled and anybody who was going to spend money at an amusement park and a caricature, they decided to double down. And they all came out and like, they, they.

I kind of. It’s. It’s sort of an educated guess, but I looked at it as, man, people really went through a freaky experience none of like any of our generation have ever seen with a pandemic.

You know, we were all isolated and we’re pitted against each other. And things like caricature are about as wholesome, hokey, corny as you can get. It’s not threatening, it’s not alien.

It’s like, this feels familiar. I’m at a zoo, I’m at a ballpark, I’m at an amusement park. And I’m engaging in something that I would have done 10, 20, 30 years ago before we knew what a virus, like that even existed.

So I think it put everybody in a comfortable space between that and social media. Caricature is really seeing a golden age right now. Because when I was first doing it, we used to always tell clients that wanted to hire us, don’t have a start at the beginning of your party.

Wait until people have had a chance to drink. Ah, yeah. Or at least eat.

They’re not comfortable being stuck in front of somebody. And then everybody’s staring while I’m drawing your face. So we always said, push it back.

And then they’re looser. And that worked, but lately it doesn’t matter. And we kind of figured, like, why is it people are such more braver? Oh, they’re seeing it all over social media.

There’s so many people that when I’m drawing, they’ll mention somebody that they love. On social media, it’s a couple of great artists out of Hawaii, two different companies. Wow.

And people mentioned both of them to me and I go, yeah, I know them personally. I know who that is. One of them used to work for me for a brief time, like, really, you know, such and such.

She’s kind of like, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers. They go, yeah, she’s a sweetheart. She’s really, really talented.

She want. Similar to what we’re talking about. She want.

Her dream was to open up a business and work in Hawaii. And she did it. That’s awesome.

And she’s doing out there. But so many people have been exposed to caricature because of Instagram and TikTok, and they feel more comfortable with it because they’ve seen so many other people get drawn and they’ve seen some really exaggerated depictions that they’ve gotten a little desensitized to it. And then my style is not as exaggerated as many of my fellow artists.

So it makes it real easy for a lot of us that don’t exaggerate like that because they’re like, oh, heck yeah, you can start drawing anytime. None of this is going to bother us, Right. So it’s, it’s been a huge boost for all of us.

You hit on a couple things that I don’t want to forget about. Number one is, you know, after the pandemic and people, I feel like even now, you know, with just what’s going on in the world in general, people, you know, it’s like a movie or a, a concert or we, we had magicians on Zubrick Magic Theater. I mean, and we, we talked about that.

It pulls people away from the world for a moment. Escape and. Yeah, and there’s.

It’s positive in that way. You get to play and enjoy and forget if you’re going through a hard time. Well, I can enjoy this caricature of myself and laugh at myself or, you know, maybe I haven’t seen myself in that way.

I wonder if people get over their big nose or whatever it may be if they are uncomfortable with it. Seeing, exaggerating, they go, well, it’s not that bad. And you know, it’s like, let’s, let’s face this hang up.

You have let’s face it straight on, right? And guess what? You’re going to come out the other side and you’re like, realize, oh, I guess it really isn’t that bad. No, everybody’s flawed compared to everybody. Yeah, everybody’s judgment of their own appearance is far more harsher than anybody else looking at them.

Sure. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve drawn who said, please, please don’t. This, my forehead bothers me.

It’s like I didn’t even notice your forehead. I was looking at your chin. That’s what I saw.

And I don’t even necessarily mean it in a bad way, but so many times we all have a hang up on things because you’re staring at it all the time and you’ve just become fixated on. It’s like you’re projecting on the rest of the world. They’re not seeing you the way you see you.

And most of us see ourselves in a more negative way than the general public does. It’s disappointing that we have such low opinions of ourselves. But at the same time, there’s a certain amount of narcissism in it, too.

It’s like, I’m worried that everybody’s going to see how my nose is, and I’m concerned about it. And I go, I got bad news for. It’s worse than that.

They’re not even looking at your nose. Yeah, they don’t even care. They don’t care.

Yeah, they’re not. They’re thinking about, I gotta go pick up my kid from school and I had a crappy day with my boss and, you know, I. I’m losing my hair. You know, they’re worried about their own appearance and stuff.

That’s the case in general. Like with a speech or, you know, Jordan and I here have performed live many times on stage and playing music and, you know, and people like, you hit a wrong note, people really don’t notice it. It’s.

If you. Oh, sorry, guys. I. I hit that wrong note.

Oh, now, now they know. They know. Yeah, but if you play through that, nobody knows.

You’re the one who knows. That’s. That’s one of the lessons that I have to give to the artist.

Like, I screwed up the nose. I don’t stop drawing. And whatever you do, don’t say oops, don’t say ooh.

Don’t. Don’t act like a surgeon who just cut the wrong vein or something. Just push through it.

You got 20 more people you’re going to draw today. You’re not going to remember that one weird line that you drew. And by the time you get done, there’s a good chance you’re going to doctor it up, and no one’s going to know.

Exactly. Person over there doesn’t know. One of the most important elements of when I would train with an artist, I said, you have to just exude confidence.

Yeah. You are the authority. You’re the bartender.

You’re the psychologist. So when you’re drawing them, have pleasant speech. You know what you’re doing.

You’ve got this in your mind. I made that mouth line too long. Oh, well, I’m just going to keep going.

And then when you turn around, don’t turn it around with the look of, sorry. Yeah, look. Because the first thing that they look at it, and then they look at me.

And if my reaction to their. Their. Their feedback is, it’s good.

It’s really good. They. Because they don’t always know.

Sure, sure. You’re the artist. Yes, it’s good.

And then they’re like, ah, it is. It’s Good. And everybody’s happy, and there we go next, you know, so you.

You. It’s. It’s.

The psychology is fascinating because this wasn’t something. This was something that just. I realized it wasn’t taught to me.

And it’s one of the things that as a company, my instructors know. I said, yeah, you got to teach that authority to them. It’s like they’re.

You’re in. When they’re in your chair, when they’re sitting in that guest chair that you’re in charge. Charge.

Yeah. And they want you to be in charge. Absolutely.

Yeah. That’s the thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Take me on this journey. If you come across like, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing, well, they.

Well, I certainly don’t. I’m not. I’m not an artist, or.

This would be a really awkward conversation. If I go, okay, what do I ask? Nice. Exactly.

Okay, next question is, what’s your favorite color? Do you have a favorite color? Because do you. Do you do most of your caricatures in black and white? When I’m doing live work as gigs, most of it’s black and white. When I’m doing festivals or retail, then you do color.

Today I’m doing digital. Digital. Almost always color.

Ah, cool. What do you work in? In digital? You have a Wacom or do you. Do you have a Cintiq? Used to do that.

I now solely draw on my iPad. Really? Yeah. The iPad’s pretty.

Most of us. Many of us have switched over to iPads once they got the pencil. And it’s extremely.

It reacts well. It’s got very low latency. Latency, and I wish it felt better.

It’s like drawing with a bone. It’s really, really hard. I was wondering if they have a different tip, because I have a remarkable.

And they design that tip to feel like pencil on paper. Yes. And I have a remarkable right here in my bag.

Next. Of course. Yeah, I’ve got the remarkable too, there.

You can use that to draw. Yeah, I do. I mean, remarkable hires me specifically to draw on their pad to show people that you can draw.

Oh, no way. They’re a client of mine. I have that remarkable because they were kind enough to give it to me.

Oh, that’s really cool. Yeah. So they.

In fact, I just. Just when I was. A couple weeks ago, I was in New Orleans for them.

They brought. They flew me out just to draw guests so they could see. Look, you can draw on this thing.

It’s so powerful. It is. It’s a great Table.

Yeah, they stopped doing the. The referral program. I don’t know.

And because I think they. They caught on that they’re selling enough, they don’t need to. Yeah, yeah.

It’s. I still prefer my iPad Pro. I use Procreate.

It’s a great drawing painting program. Many of us use it. It’s a very flexible, very powerful program.

And you can do so much on the iPad. And it’s so quick and it’s so light. Like, I used to have a Cintiq back in the day.

And they’ve gotten better too. But the one I had was heavy and it was. It was.

And it did one thing. You drew on it. You know, I can stop in the middle of my iPad and go, I’m checking my email.

I can watch a movie. Right. Everything on this.

Sure. And it’s light. In fact, I used to have a much higher end Cintiq bottle which was almost as big as this half table that we’re talking about.

You know, those big car doors worth of Cintiq. Love that thing. And then I got the iPad and I started working so much on the iPad and you could zoom in and out so quickly that I stopped using the Cintiq.

I ended up turning around and sold it to another artist who uses it for her comic stripes. Okay. Because I just.

Everything I need to do, I’m able to do on this iPad now. And it’s great. So that is my main digital tool for drawing.

And then now I’ve got the remarkable, which is kind of like, okay, it’s a little bit. It’s a lighter model. It can’t do everything that the iPad can do.

Sure. And it’s not meant to be. Yeah.

It’s supposed to be a paper like tablet for note taking with a pretty strong drawing capability. Strong enough that I can draw on it and you can draw on it really quick. Unlike an iPad, its charge will last two weeks.

Where my iPad’s going to be done after four hours. It’s like I got to recharge it. So this thing you.

So it’s great for like, I can just show up and walk around freely. And if there’s WI fi in the space where I’m drawing, I can turn the tablet around and hit email in the art program that’s built into it. And you can email the art totally off to people.

Yeah. That’s so cool. Yeah.

So it’s another. I would recommend it for those that are looking for something to tinker with or something in addition to a higher end drawing Tablet. This is a nice quick little down and dirty device.

You can’t print from it, you can broadcast it. So you could put it on a big screen. That’s what they did.

Yeah, yeah. But the down and dirty let me just scribble out some drawings on it and it feels like I’m drawing on paper. It’s pretty impressive.

It is. They did a really good job. I love mine and I use it for wireframing so, you know, I can kind of design the blueprints of a website or.

Oh, this print design or whatever it is. Oh, really? Yeah. And I can.

And you know, you can select things and then copy them and make them larger. And so I’m really quickly able to wireframe because I like physically note taking and physically drawing and so that thing was awesome. Yeah, I’ll show you some wireframes.

Yeah, that’d be cool. I’ve done on it. Keeps you kind of touchy feely versus trying to do it straight on a desktop.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s just different and I like that also. I can do it wherever. I can do it on the plane or, you know, in a car, wherever I’m at.

Right, yeah. Very mobile. Yeah.

Well, that’s cool. I didn’t know that your partnership with Remarkable. How neat is that? I mean, you never know where these endeavors are going to take you.

Last question before we go to a really fun part of our. Of our interview. Sure.

You had mentioned that you’re in a golden age of this industry. What do you see happening next? What’s the next level of character art? You know, is it. Is it mixed media? Is it, you know, where they send it? And now it’s a gif.

I’m just, I’m just curious if you thought forward on that. There’s a couple of different outlets regarding what people are doing with caricature. Some of it faster than others.

I mean, right now we see a lot of people doing bookings for different types of events. We draw and offer traditional caricatures, which is like on a card stock. We’ll draw singles or couples.

Weddings. It’s almost always couples. We also offer coasters, 4 by 4 inch cardboard coasters.

You can have a logo or graphic printed on one side and then we draw on the other side. So it’s the medium of like where it’s going. Yeah, well, it’s just.

What else can we. You’ve got all these talented artists that can draw and they’re very versatile. It’s like they can draw on almost anything.

What else can we draw on. So we started doing coasters. A client wanted it about 10 years ago, and now it’s one of our.

It’s almost as popular as traditional we do because we can draw faster. I can do a caricature on a coaster in about, well, traditional takes me about six, seven minutes. A face that’s still fast on a coaster.

I can bang one out in two minutes because it’s smaller. It’s smaller, yeah, smaller. So there’s not as much detail.

And people really, really like them because they’re especially at a very fancy swanky party or a corporate event because now they’ve got this nice little 4×4 thing. I think it’s slider right in their shirt pocket or their blazer or their purse. So they’re very small and they can get custom printed on one side.

We’ve even offered them. They make those corks, cork coasters. So we’ve drawn on cork.

Some even have some fancy glass tile coasters. So some draw on that material. I’ve seen some other artists, we don’t do this, but I’ve seen other caricatures who offer 3D caricatures where they will, like with Sculpey, they’ll hand sculpt them and you can order those.

And then some are getting into, you know, 3D printing and they do it like blender or something. Yeah. They’ll design it on the computer and then they’ll have their.

Their printer output it. And those are pretty cool. That’s neat.

Okay, cool. Yeah. All right.

My friends in Orlando, they do a ton of different products. They draw on corks. They draw on just about anything.

They have a team of artists that, again, the versatility. They, you know, it’s kind of neat to be at that frontier where it’s like, let’s sit down here and think of something that no one’s ever done before and then make it a product. That’s kind of how we felt with the caricature coasters is like no one’s calling it anything and no one’s really doing it.

But I’m sure there’s been a few random people that just drew on a coaster. Yeah. So then you just decide, you know, like Apple did when they go, we’re going to make a tablet and it’s going to be the tablet and before you’re going to forget every other tablet.

So it’s like we’re going to. We’re going to grab on hold of the coasters. We’re going to make it, you know, caricature Coasters.

We’re going to brand it, we’re going to sell it, and we’re going to get the other artist on board with it. And then they do it, too. And now it’s one of our products, you know, and it’s kind of cool that, you know, go to Goofy Vases.

They’ve got the traditional. They’ve got the posters, they’ve got the digital. So we have this nice span of product services that we can offer.

We also offer face painters because we’ve always had face printers working in a retail environment, so why not book them out? And they’re very popular. Yeah. Very talented.

So, yeah, we. Right now I see it. Just a nice, continual, steady growth, knock on wood.

One of the nice things that I’ve realized, you know, AI hasn’t affected us in the caricature realm because people want that interaction. Yeah. You know, so we’re not as effective.

We’re at the back of the line as far as going over the cliff. Whereas I know a lot of other artists are very concerned, and rightfully so, that they’re getting displaced by the technology. And then right now, everybody’s talking about, you know, the tariffs and everything.

So almost every industry where you’re reselling something is going to get affected by a price increase. So we have our retail stands across the country, and we’re trying to increase that and get more stands. And one of the appeals we have is like, hey, we generate everything on this site.

There is no import. Right. There is no tariff.

Unless you’re talking about the. Maybe the pencils that you use. Or paper.

Yeah, maybe the paper. But we can get that locally, no problem there. So, yeah, right now we’re starting to push a campaign as we’re trying to expand is like, we don’t get affected by these outside forces.

Awesome. That’s huge. Yeah, that’s powerful.

It is great. And it’s something that most artists aren’t going to think about, but we. As a business owner, I have to.

Absolutely. Well, it’s great to know how deep you are into the business side of things, the professional organization and the convention side of things, where you’re really deeply connected in the industry and you love the art and you. You are definitely good at the business side of things, which is not with artists.

Right. Always the case. And in fact, that’s the exception, not the rule, in my opinion, is.

Yeah, that’s. I totally agree that it’s. I’m very fortunate to have the creative side, but I might also balance with the business side.

And I Think it’s been beneficial for so many of the artists that we represent. Yeah. Because, hey, everybody’s able to run their own business.

Us, and we just like to be an additional revenue source for all these artists. Huge. So many of them have told me personally, they go, hey, dig what you do, man.

You and the other agents, you take a lot of headaches off our back. You find, you let us. Because any artist that comes to us, tell us what you want per hour, it’s up to you.

You’re an independent. So we’ll mark it up. Right.

We don’t charge them to be listed on the site. We mark up whatever it is that they tell us as a rate. We tell them.

Try to be competitive because you’ve got other artists in your market that are also listed with us. And anybody can go to our website 24 hours a day. You can punch in your zip code of where your party is taking place.

It will show you a list within a starting with a 50 mile radius of who we have. You’ll see their samples, you’ll see their hourly rates, you’ll see a bio about who they are. And then you can click and say, yeah, I’m interested in booking this artist.

And then we take it from there. Boom. That’s awesome.

Yeah. Well, cool. Well, we got that out of the way.

We’re definitely going to have link to that in the show notes, but really quickly. We’ve reached the rapid fire section of the interview. Thanks.

Thanks for joining me on that. We’re ready to go. So, rapid fire, I ask the similar questions, almost the same questions to all my guests to see the similarities and differences.

The goal being, try to keep it concise if you want to expand on it. All good. You just lose points.

Points. Oh, I’ll try not to lose points. Okay, you ready? Be my guest.

Okay, you’re my guest, so. Oh, I’ll be your guest. So we’re gonna start.

What’s your biggest source of inspiration? Apple and Disney. Love it. Love it.

I was wondering if you were gonna say faces. There’s a great book called the Pixar Touch. I don’t know if you’ve read that.

I think I. I may have. I’ve read quite a few Pixar books. Yeah, I’m a big Pixar fan.

Me too. Yeah. Hence Siggraph.

All right. You can listen to one musical artist or album for the rest of your life on repeat only. Who, who’s that? Oh, man, I think I’ve already done that because my wife appreciates him as Much as I do.

In fact, far more than me. It’s. It could be the Beatles because you’ve got quite a range and quite a large catalog.

Beatles are pretty good and the range is great. A lot of different flavors. Yeah, great.

You’re doing great. Do you have a favorite book? Favorite book? One that comes back to me. It’s a nonfiction book and I tell people to read it is predictably irrational.

Ah, what’s that about? They actually made a TV show starring the guy that used to be on Law and Order. I forget his name, but he plays this doctor Ed Mercer who uses psychology to solve crimes. It’s on NBC.

Anyway, anyway, the book is this gentleman who, who while he was in the hospital, he was a PhD professor type of guy. And he came up with these conclusions while he was in recovery. That too many times when you try to control the behavior of a consumer to make them enact with you or buy something from you, that they’re doing it in an irrational manner.

And he said no, most people make, make decisions that aren’t on a rational manner. In fact, they’re doing it in an irrational manner. They’re letting emotion control them.

And not only are they doing it in an emotional irrational manner, it’s predictable. It’s like you can see the pattern of this is how they’re going to do it. He talked about examples like a consultant confessed to him that they had a client that was making.

They had a bread maker, William Sonoma had a bread maker that wasn’t selling to anybody. No one was buying the thing. So the consultant studied the problem and discovery.

Because you need to make another bread maker because we already have a bread maker and it’s not selling because you need another one as a comparative to the one that you have. So we need like a starter model, a, a, an economy model. They said no, you need a high end model and then this one will sell like crazy.

So that’s what they did. They came up with a different model that was this super deluxe model. And then the one, the original model started selling like crazy because people needed that point of comparison.

Like they even talked about in the book. He goes, how much is a color television? What is the right price for a color television? There is none. It’s all relative.

It’s all comp. When you go to decide to buy a car or a TV or a computer, you don’t really have any absolute points. It’s just comparing to other prices.

Sure. Which really isn’t that rational. You’re just constantly trying to get A gauge and not be the person who spent the most.

Yeah, right, right. You know, you never get the super high and the most expensive one. And maybe I don’t want to go super cheap unless, look, I don’t care.

I just want the cheapest. We tend to kind of shoot somewhere in the middle trying to get that balance between value in performance and the book. I rave about it because, I mean, it helped me because we have to come up with pricing for all of our caricatures.

Totally. And I said, we’re enacting this. This is a good book.

This is a good psychology. And our pricing is in such a way, it used to be perfectly evened out. $5 more gets you this.

$5 more gets you. That’s like. No, you condense it towards the top.

That makes people think that the top price is the best value. You and they will aim for that. And then like, your lower end ones are your leader loss.

And they can still sell them, but they don’t sell as much. So it was a fascinating read and it’s, it’s a great audiobook. I, I, I need that.

Pricing is so difficult, especially what we do. You know, it’s like perceived value of the COVID that we designed here in this children’s book. We’re, we’re looking at the Alphabet head since it was like, what does that cost? Bust.

You know, it’s, it’s very difficult pricing for me. I just want to make stuff. I want to make cool stuff.

I want to produce. And. Yeah.

So I get very hung up. So I’m gonna check that book out. I appreciate the recommendation.

My pleasure. Fantastic. Just a couple more.

You’re doing wonderful. Okay. Who is the.

And this is a different than anybody I’ve asked. Okay. Who is the favorite face you’ve drawn? Did I word that correctly? No, I think that’s right.

Which is my favorite face that I’ve ever drawn? Yeah, yeah. God. There was quite a few.

I’m like trying to go through my head because, I mean, there’s been some obscure, like, customers that I could just say, you know, I did one for a corporate one that was good, but like, more trying to narrow it towards somebody that people would know I had. I needed a bunch of samples, so I drew all the late night. Excuse me.

Late night talk show. So I did Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel. I’ve got, I did Jon Stewart.

I haven’t done Jimmy Fallon yet, but I did like this. Oh, and I did John Oliver. Very happy with the John Oliver one, because John Oliver would be Great, because he’s.

He’s got a unique face. But what’s fascinating as a caricature is when you decide to attack a face, you get really intimate with it because you have to, like, understand the proportions. And, like, when I’m drawing, I don’t consciously make decisions.

Everything. I’m still befuddled with having to go step by step in my method of drawing. And it’s.

It’s taking the piece, the face apart piece by piece. So I don’t know where I’m going to end up until it’s almost done. And then I have to step back and go, does it look like him? And then, you know, if you’re drawing digitally, what’s nice is like, let me try moving the eyes further apart and see if it looks more like him.

Maybe they’re too big. Maybe they’re too small. You could sit there and what if it to death? And try to make it.

And then even then, it’s still just relative. Does it look more or does it look less like them? And I just remember drawing that one going at one point, it’s like, this doesn’t look like anybody. And then, like, I would move.

I remember I went smaller with the eyes. And it’s like, if I told you or if somebody even asked me before I drew him, it’s like, quick, without looking at a picture. Does John Oliver have large eyes or small eyes? Like, small.

He does, yeah. But I would need, like. I know he’s got a honker of a nose, but, like.

Well, what about his chin? Does he have, like, a real short chin? What about his philtrum, the space between the upper lip and the bottom of your nose. So you got a long filtrum or a short philtrum, something that only other artists can relate to what those terms are, but they make or break a face. If you give somebody too long of a philtrum, like Bruce Willis has a super long philtrum, all of that.

And then certain actresses and things have a very tiny philtrum. Their top lip is almost touching their nose. And if you just sit there and play with the facial features, it becomes the person you identify, or it becomes a stranger that you don’t know who they are.

That’s so interesting. Yeah. Likeness is a fascinating topic all on its own.

How your brain registers a likeness. Well, I. It gets me thinking. I didn’t plan to go here, but I have always been fascinated with, like, police sketch artists.

I don’t know if, like, there are people who work in both realms, but for me, like, if I were to have to describe you. I have a really tough time describing someone. I’ll recognize a face, of course.

Yeah. But describing people, it’s super basic. So for someone to be able to translate a couple different things that they might have seen a robbery happen quickly and then getting a face, I don’t know.

That’s just an incredible. I think, I think. I agree.

I think it’s extremely difficult. And I mean, I do this for a living. And if somebody said you.

You met that person for the first time, how would you describe them? I don’t know that I would have much better luck than the average person. Somebody would have to tell me to turn on. It’s like you’re going to see somebody.

I want you to draw them later. Then you’d have to be ready. Now I’m like, you know, the crosshairs are coming out and I’m trying to figure out, you know, where’s the figure 8, where’s the mass? Is it below or above the eyes? Is.

Is. Are the eyes, like you said earlier, they. Tilting out.

Tilting in. And it’s just. It’s like a list.

Sure. And, you know, over time, that list is kind of inbred. Sure.

But I have to turn it on and off. It’s not on 100% of the time. If you turned it on for me, what do you notice? Well, your face is actually quite symmetrical.

Oh, thank you so much. You’ve got real angle. You got the angle to your eyebrows.

Okay. I would say that your mass is more below your eyes. So you’re.

So what a caricature artist does is when they. They’re just making all these binary decisions. Right.

Big, small, close, far tall, short. And that’s what you got to do to be successful at. You can’t.

Kind of tall, kind of. No, no. You pick.

Pick one or the other, and you just go with it. And some artists will make opposite decision and they’ll still get to a successful drawing. So, like, if I’m looking at you, I’m going, okay, more mass below the eyes.

Which means that since I’ve made a decision to focus on from the eyes down being larger, you have to go relative. And that means I’m going to make the space between your eyes to the top of or the bottom of your hairline, the top of your forehead, I’m going to compress that and make it that shorter. You always exaggerate it.

Yeah, you. You’re exaggerating. A good friend of mine who’s an excellent instructor in caricature, his name’s Tom Richmond talks about, you have a hundred dollars to spend on that face.

So if I’m spending $75, because I’m giving you a lot of this space below your eyes, you know, I’m giving you large, you know, a lot of cheek area, mouth area, nose area. I’ve only got. Got 25 bucks left to spend on the forehead.

Ah, interesting. You can’t. You can’t make more that’s not there.

If you give somebody a huge forehead, you’ve got a decrease below the forehead to offset it. And the. And the best way that I can counter that or to support what he’s saying is when I was first drawing, I’d see some guy show up, like some, like, western guy wearing a cowboy hat and he had a big face.

I would try to draw everything big. You know, I’m going to give them a big nose and big cheeks and big chin, and nothing’s big. But then nothing that.

You’ve got it, you got it. You go back to Pixar. You know, if everybody’s special, nobody is.

Yeah. So if every part of the face is big, none of it is. You need.

It’s all about relations, all about relatives. So if I want to make your nose look big, I got to make everything else around it look. Look smaller, Right? Yeah.

Oh, cool. Oh, that’s fascinating. Sweet.

And it’s a principle of design, you know, it’s a principle of scale. You know, Boom, there it is. Scale and proportions.

Yeah, exactly. Last question. How do you define success? I would define success at being happier for a larger portion than being unhappy.

Aha. Yeah. So if you’re.

If you’re happy 51% of the day or the week, you’re not doing. You’re doing pretty good. Okay, I would think.

I like that. You’d be. Well, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised, but happiness is very common.

The word happy gets in there. So, you know, that’s. That’s really great.

It’s very rarely, if any, like, oh, money, you know, which is great, because that’s why I like asking this same question to people, people who are at a high level. You know, what. What is success? And money is the afterthought, happiness.

And then that follows, right? Yeah. You look at some of the most successful people, like a Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, they weren’t like, how can I make more money at this? The money came because they had these innovative ideas. They knew the value of money.

They knew the importance of it. They just didn’t make it the priority. I Kind of feel the same way.

I’m very, very fortunate to be where I’m at. I’m not trying to think of how can I maximize more and more money. I just constantly, how can I make this better? You know, And I don’t want it to cost more money, but how can I make this better? And maybe as a byproduct, this will breed more success and then eventually more revenue.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s huge. You have one rapid fire. Congratulations.

Oh, awesome. I can add that to my resume. Absolutely.

It’s on top of everything. Straight to the top. This has been awesome.

You answered some of the questions that I usually end with, like where we. Where we can find you and. And connect with you.

That’s goofyfaces.com. correct. Goofyfaces.com and you can usually find me on all the different socials under Goofy faces, All one word.

TikTok. It’s Goofy faces. TikTok talk.

Okay, cool. Last question. To end it out is advice for an artist, a non artist, someone young, someone older.

What’s the best piece of advice that you could give or that you’ve ever gotten that you’d want to leave people with? The best recent advice that I heard, I think on a social reel that was really good, was don’t necessarily follow your passion, Follow your skill set, follow your strength. What are you good at? You’re going to have a much better chance of succeeding if you lean into the things that you’re good at and most likely those things that you’re good at, you’re good at it because you l
it. Right.

And you can tolerate the bad with it. Because even in my profession, I love what I do. But there’s bad days, sure.

But because there’s so much upside, I. I don’t think about it. I enjoy it. So that’s what I would tell anybody.

Like, you know, there’s so many artists out there. In our mission statement of my business, Goofy Face’s mission statement with all the artists that we work with is we are trying to empower you so that you should be able to make a living just off of your creative art. You shouldn’t have to sell caricatures during the day at the theme park and then do Uber at night.

Right? Yeah. You should be able to generate enough money between working out at one of our stands. We’re going to get you gigs.

You’re going to get your own gigs. Other agents can get you gigs. You can do studio work.

You can do commission work. And if you take in all those three different elements and you build your business, you can be quite successful. You can live very successfully doing something that you enjoy doing on a daily basis.

Love it. It. That’s great.

I’m glad that we wrapped with your mission because I feel like that ties a really good bow on it. I really appreciate your time and you, you know, enlightening us with this realm that not a lot of people think about or experience. So it’s been a pleasure.

Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, it always is.

And to people out there listening, if, if you had fun, enjoyed this conversation with Robert, please be sure to subscribe. If, if, if you’re not subscribed. That’s a big deal for us.

Make sure to just hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And even better if you share it with a friend. Maybe you know somebody who’s an artist or a creative and you want to share this episode with them.

That would be great. And yeah, so that’s a. That’s a wrap on today’s episode of the Name and Creative Show.

Until next time, stay curious. Please stay kind and stay goofy here.