The Friday Five | No. 13
Five Newsy Nuggets in Five Minutes, Issued Every Friday
Welcome to The Friday Five, a weekly digest of 5 illustration-related things that caught my attention in the past week. Welcome to Issue No. 13!
01 Industry News
Fresco is Now Completely Free
As Adobe feels the heat of competition, particularly with Procreate, they have now made Fresco completely free to everyone. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, Fresco is Adobe’s iPad-based digital drawing and painting app. While they’ve been a leader in desktop apps like Photoshop and Illustrator, Fresco is their first truly iPad-native tool for digital artists. (Apparently, you can also run it on iPhones and Windows PC’s as well).
Up until recently, Fresco had two tiers: one that was free and one that cost $9.99 per year to access the full Adobe Fonts library and all their brushes, and other premium features. Now, as of October 23, 2024, there’s just one Fresco, with access to everything, and it’s completely free. That’s now infinity percent cheaper than Procreate, which still costs a one-time purchase of $12.99.
I think it’s hard to argue that Adobe makes a great product, and that they make a very compelling offer here. The question I have is how is it free? So far, I haven’t been able to find out what their new business model is here — perhaps that they will eventually go back to selling brush packs (rather than offering it free to to CC subscribers)? Or maybe they’ll harvest user data somehow?
I can’t say for sure, but I’ve heard that if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.
02 Worth a Follow
Vanessa Bowman
I love the busy, idyllic scenes of Dorset, UK-based artist, Vanessa Bowman. Add some joy to your feed and follow her at @vanessabowmanartist
03 Something I Learned
Clickbait is Over.
This tip is not just for content creators — you can transfer these principles over to any situation where you have a cover with content inside, be that a podcast episode, an online class, a book, or a client presentation.
It can take me hours to make a thumbnail for a video on YouTube. It always feels like a crapshoot, and I’m tempted to just do what everyone else does: put my goofy face with some kind of exaggerated expression and gesticulation, plus a big dumb red arrow pointing at something in the picture.
Lately, I’ve been learning just how much more straightforward making a thumbnail can be. While it’s still a bit of an art, there are some best practices that can help drive up your clicks:
Just show the thing. Is your video a product review? Show the product. Is it a Procreate art tutorial? Show the art on an iPad, preferably with your hand drawing it with the Apple Pencil. Is it a helpful hack? Show how it works with a before and after shot.
Treat the Thumbnail and Title as a Team. Think of the Thumbnail and Title as a one-two punch. As the more visual element, the thumbnail arouses your initial curiosity, and then the title comes in to tell you, in as few words as possible, what you’re about to watch.
Prove it’s not clickbait. The first few frames of the video should have immediate payoff. Don’t assume viewers will just trust you to get to the point eventually.
Cut to the chase. You have about 10 seconds to convince someone to keep watching. Use that window to tell people exactly what to expect in the rest of the video, and then get into it as soon as possible—and then deliver it.
Check out the video linked above for some super tips from a pro YouTuber, and if you have more time, I found this conversation with Chris Do and YouTubers Colin and Samir very insightful.
04 Unsolicited Advice
Be a Student of Inspiration
When I first realized I wanted to become an illustrator, I was overcome by feelings of both intense inspiration and absolute paralysis. My natural instinct, after seeing art that I loved, was to go and try doing that for myself. One moment, I’m looking at art saying “I want to do that!”, and the next, I’m sitting in front of my sketchbook or computer saying, “what do I do now?”. In our excitement, we might forget that there are many steps between initial inspiration and masterful creation. Sadly, many of us will assume that because we couldn’t channel that creative energy at first, we never will.
The good news is that we do have a way to channel our enthusiasm. Rather than going and making art, though, we can just bask in the art of others. Specifically, we can learn a ton about illustration by being a student of inspiration. By that I mean using that inspiration to lead us to learning more. Here’s how:
Find 1-3 pieces of illustration that deeply inspire you.
Describe in your own words what you like about them. You can talk about things that you see, or the way it makes you feel, or about things it makes you think about.
Next, find out more about the art. Who made it? What is it for? What kind of media or techniques were used to make it? Who did the artist make it for (who was the client)?
Then, go a bit deeper. See if you can find more about the artist and their art. Use search on YouTube or Spotify, for example, to see if there are any documentaries or interviews of the artist.
In this way, your inspiration will lead you to learn new ideas and language around illustration that at first you’d never even think to ask about. The best part about being a student of inspiration? It’s free!
05 Look What I Made!
Create a Retro Illustration in Procreate
At the risk of tutoring tooting my own horn: This week I published a full tutorial on YouTube: Create a Stunning Retro Style Illustration in Procreate. I show you how to use just 5 brushes (4 of which come with the app, and one that I made myself). If you want to learn how to make your work feel more analogue and inky, this one’s for you!
What did you think of this week’s Friday Five? Please let me know in a comment!
Tom Froese is an award-winning illustrator, a Top Teacher on Skillshare, and host of the Thoughts on Illustration podcast.
Indeed, “what’s the catch?” when it comes to Adobe Fresco being completely free. As with all of their products, it’s not like you can use Fresco without logging in. I pay for Adobe CC at work, and I’ll admit that I haven’t used Fresco much, but it doesn’t seem possible (or obvious) how you can save your projects exclusively on the local drive of your iPad as you can with Procreate. Your Fresco files are saved in the cloud by default. And I wonder if this is ultimately how the free app hooks in new users. You quickly use up whatever limited cloud space you’re given under your free Adobe ID account. As you create more projects in Fresco and reach those limits, you face the tough choice of either deleting or offloading your working files to free up space, or having to buy the Creative Cloud suite to access more storage. (Haven’t tested this theory, though).