The Discipline of Getting Your Shit Together — Davonne Dupart
Davonne Dupart is a self-employed animator with a quite a repertoire in the animation and visual media industry. Her experiences range from Adult Swim to LowBrow Studios to BentoBox Animation to many many other companies in the animation industry. I recently listened to her speak about her experience as a black entrepreneur in the animation and interactive media realm on the ASIFA South podcast Labor of Love and Black History. What she had to say about being her own boss as well as working as a minority in the industry was very enlightening.
She started by talking about being in control of your work and what being your own boss means. After working for animation studios she realized how much more she has to do for herself which bubbles down to about everything. Finding your own clients, delegating work, choosing your own hours, making your own schedule, doing your own taxes, and so on. Because we are humans and we are perfectly imperfect to a fault we cannot not be one-hundred percent accountable one-hundred percent of the time the question came up as to how Davonne can get past the idea of procrastinating and dedicate time properly. She simply said it’s all about how you look at your situation. Being truly responsible for every aspect of her life she realized that by not working and seeking out opportunity to get work she was actually loosing money, so the dedication to her craft was very important.
Along with understanding your source of income Davonne also talked about understanding dedication to her craft, but a safe healthy dedication. She talked about how she loved her work and how much she would work. To the point that she was getting less than a couple hours of sleep. She had to sit down and think to herself what the best way to work was. Her conclusion was that she could work herself to the bone and let herself suffer, but realized that in doing so she was unable to produce the quality of work she wanted. Though she wanted to dedicate her time to so many things, she knew that she had to get her full 8 hours of sleep in order to work they way she needed.
On top of all that, Davonne talked about pricing and selling herself as an artist. As many artists do Davonne really does love making art. As artist who love to make art the passion seems to numb the need for proper payment. Just as she did, artists very often undersell their artwork. She had to have someone sit her down and tell her how valuable she was and gave her a flat rate that she needed to start charging for her work. After this Davonne started to understand that being freelance and owning her own relatively new type of business makes her responsible not only for her worth but also the worth of others who want to do similar types of work in the same industry. It was remarkable and enlightening to hear how something that seems so common and usual about the business of animators carries so much weight across the industry.
The thing that is really troubling about the visual communication industry for artist trying to work entrepreneurially is the fact that artist don’t typically have the knowledge, tools, or allies needed to work on the business side of the industry along with their artistic prowess. Davonne was pretty adamant to express the need for freelance artists to become more business savvy. She expressed how important it was to be able to write up a contract with clients in order to express how much an artist is able to produce and how much they can handle at once with clients who are involved in different amounts as well as being able to strike a deal with how much an artist should be paid for their work.
I wholeheartedly agree with and and appreciate what Davonne had to say about artist becoming more “businessy”. As the animation work, projects, products, world, and industry involve, so should the artists.
To be continued…
