Mind Your Business: Christmas Gifts for Artists
'Tis the season to be jolly... jolly that we're about to get a lot of great goodies.
The problem is when the getting's not very good. What do you get for an artist anyway? We can be kind of fickle. Do you ever have those years where you don't get what you want?
To help you, your friends and family, I asked hundreds of artists what they want for the holidays. Some of the results were expected, but a number of them were rather surprising. Use this list to plan both your gift giving and your gift getting.
A few things quickly became clear. According to the survey, we want more things as we get older. The most responses I got were from people over 40 and the least were from people under 20. And we thought kids had large shopping lists. Wait until you see mine!
Over two-thirds of the responses also came from men, which I can only believe means that we're more needy than women. We constantly want more things.
When I asked about what DVDs you wanted, I expected to see great movies like The Simpsons Movie and Transformers top the list. Not so much. A few of you want movies, but most of you can't wait until Christmas to own them and buy them for yourselves. That leaves your friends and family without a clue what to get you. (Although 300 was the most requested movie, along with the Pixar Short Films Collection.)
The most requested type of DVD was training videos. A lot of you requested the Gnomon DVDs along with other "How To" discs, including how to cook and play the guitar.
The second-most-requested DVDs were TV series box sets. Evidently all those late nights you spend pretending to work while you're really watching crappy TV shows when no one else is around isn't enough. You have to own all the crappy TV shows too.
There wasn't a lot of commonality among the responses for specific books that you want. Evidently you all want to get better at what you do because most of you want more reference, "art of..." and "how to..." books.
I saw everything from Star Wars books to the classic Illusion of Life to Leo Tolstoy.
The winner of the best kiss-ass answer goes to the respondent who wants the complete works of Socrates and anything written by Mark Simon. (I like those books too.) I believe this may be the first time my name has ever been said in the same breath as Socrates... and it may be the last.
Adobe Photoshop CS3 still stands out as a favorite software. The funny thing is that all of you already own Photoshop. We just can't get enough of buying newer versions of software. Zbrush and Corel Painter X also made good showings on the list.
It's also become clear that many of you have overloaded your computers, as I have, to the point where you can't install any new software. This survey also turned into a forum where you announced your lack of time to learn new software. As much as we all love great software, none of us likes the uphill battle to stay up-to-date with new updates. But then again, the newest Photoshop was still the most popular choice. What's wrong with us?!
The biggest winners in the computer hardware category, by far, were the Wacom Cintiq and a new laptop. The Cintiq, in case you are the only artist alive not to know what it is, is a computer monitor where you can draw directly on the screen. It has revolutionized the debt artists carry. This $2,500 unit is pricey, but every artist who uses one swears their first project with it paid for the unit. Even if that job was only for $15.97.
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