Becoming a Freelance Illustrator for Marvel, Disney and DC: Doaly

Right.

Didn't mean for it to happen.

Studied graphic design at university, majored in multimedia.

Got out of university.

The first career was web design and UX.

So that was about 15 years of doing that.

Towards the last couple of years of that career, I found myself, okay, I'm comfortable in my position.

I'm a team lead and all that sort of stuff.

Got to like a senior position, very happy with what I was doing, still enjoying the day job.

but then I was like okay I need something for myself something that the the client briefs aren't necessarily answering so loved illustrating drawing as a child it's why I got into design in the first place so I was like let's pick this back up it can be something you do on weekends something you do after work and it's going to give you that you know scratch that creative itch and it will balance balance the day job nicely so the first year was just like okay I haven't drawn in so long let's just start getting good again like any other skill if you if you don't use it you end up losing it so It was just like, let's start drawing again.

Coming back to it so long as I, oh, also there's, there's graphic tablets and stuff like that.

So let me buy a very cheap one of those.

I think it was 50 pounds.

Bought that, started to learn digital illustration, illustration total, just like pencil, pencil.

Any, any point I got a chance to draw, I would do my post-it notes at work.

on the train anything else it was just about let's start getting to a level that I'm happy in what I'm doing so after the first year or so I was like okay I'm getting better the designer in me set myself a brief because you know we always love doing that love movies grew up with cinema in the home so I was like let's let's design a movie poster for the films you love so my very first project was like let's design a minimalist movie poster I picked three films and did the posters put them on social I think they got all probably five to six likes something around that but those like five to six likes and a couple of comments were enough for me to say one I was enjoying what I was doing but also people are liking what I'm doing let me share this and let me do more of this so over that next year was just me I guess reacting to the latest trailer creating artworks based on movies i love and it very much was like this is how i see it this is my my lens or my voice in storytelling also trying to get good at drawing also not great at drawing people so i couldn't rely on let's just do loads of people let's do portraiture no let's find a different way to tell that story there's definitely different mechanics that i can use that i The designer in me will find my place.

So that kind of got my work noticed because it was different from everyone else's.

I wasn't just trying to draw Trump Cruise because as wonderful Trump Cruise is, I wanted to find a different way of telling that story.

So my work started getting reblogged, reshared, different things like that.

One, it was a Saturday morning, I woke up to an email and it was from a movie studio.

I said, hey, we've been following your work.

Would you like to do an alternative poster for a film that's about to come out? And I was like, pinch yourself moment.

It's like, unknowingly, it was like, oh, this is the dream.

This is what I'd love to do.

So yeah, double checked the person was who they were, jumped on LinkedIn, did all that sort of stuff.