Tyler Downey is an illustrator and storyboard artist from America, currently living in Whitianga, The Coromandel. Most of his work is oriented towards digital design, storyboards and children’s books.
With over twelve years as an artist, Tyler has won commissions for the likes of the Ministry of Education, New Zealand, and has recently been working for TVNZ series, ‘Kiri and Lou’. Before the pandemic hit, Tyler was a ‘digital nomad’, a freelancer working from wherever tickled his fancy, his own boss.
Aside from his skilled illustrations and storyboard art, proof of many years of exercise, what we found particularly interesting when doing this interview was Tyler’s vast experience working within the industry and with various clients. A lot of interesting stories and lessons came up in the conversation. If you are a graphic designer or freelancer working with any kind of clients, this interview might teach you a thing or two.
You don’t sound very Kiwi. How did you end up in New Zealand?
No, I’m not very Kiwi! My wife is from here. We live in Whitianga now, But I am originally from the states; I’m from Iowa in the Midwest. I was pretty bored of that at a young age, so I packed up a bag and travelled the US. I met my wife, Elly, in California and we went globe-trotting together for several years until all this COVID stuff happened. This is probably the longest we’ve ever stayed put in one place.
Did you study art or were you self-taught?
More or less self-taught. I did go to school for a year and a half for printmaking and graphic design, but I would say I’ve learned more just from other artists and from my own exploration and personal education. I travelled and picked things up as I went, I worked with other artists and learned from my mistakes. I’ve got such a diversity of experiences in my portfolio, because I wanted to dip my toes into different types of art and see which ones sang to me.
I definitely found myself in the storytelling realm. I do a lot of book illustration, storyboard art and TV animation, so I guess I fell into the story bucket. More art for youth – I prefer to do stuff for kid’s books and young readers and viewers. So, I find myself there a lot more often.
I still do murals from time to time, but I take on all sorts of projects when they pop up. I just did a really fun one for the Ministry of Education for the upcoming Matariki. When things come my way, I jump aboard and just go wherever it takes me.
Any bad experiences with clients? You’re so chilled – probably not!
I feel like every artist goes through a stage in the beginning where you are just learning how to navigate and work with clients. Sometimes they don’t pay you enough or you end up doing way more work than you signed on for, but to be honest, I think it helped me to grow as an artist and to learn how valuable my art really is. For younger artists, I would recommend putting together a contract. Then you can specify exactly what a client is getting from you. The biggest hurdle that I found was revisions. If you’re working, especially if you’re working with a flat price, you need to specify that they only get a certain number of revisions. Clients aren’t trying to be fussy, they just see it as, “Wow, I have so many ideas and I want to try them all!” If you don’t clarify or set boundaries, then you’re just going to be working for free by the end of it.
Where can we find your murals?
One of my favourites is the giant pizza slice inside of Slice, Slice, Baby. There’s also one inside of the Earth Store which is tied into their menu and has a sort of half earth – half flower arrangement.
Another one I actually painted on the side of a garage for an awesome couple – Sharon and Terry Bates. Sharon saw the one in the Earth Store and loved it and got in touch with me! That one was a lot of fun, and they gave me quite a bit of creative freedom on the design. It’s a really fun arrangement of native plants and birds and fairies and I took a lot of inspiration from some of the art they have collected in their home.
What did you paint it with? Graffiti style spray paint?
Those ones are just acrylic paint. I have done graffiti style painting. I used to do more of it in the States. I haven’t really done it as much over here. The paint is way more expensive on this side of the planet, and I’ve come to love the brush!
I hope you weren’t doing anything illegal…
Oh, well, I was young. We did paint on trains and things. It was a boring town, so there were a few abandoned buildings and things that everybody would go and paint on. It definitely wasn’t in the realm of legal, but it was fun practice! I had a really supportive art teacher who was like, “Okay, that’s great, but we need to get you off of the street and onto canvas.”
You were on the pARTner Up Artist Mentoring Programme. Tell us about that.
I LOVED it! I had an amazing experience. I had Sally Tennent-Brown as my mentor. She is an incredible person, an incredible artist. And a really, really good mentor. I would suggest her to anybody. She’s a rockstar, for sure.
She was really good at not giving you the answer, but helping you come up with the answer. I really appreciated that because I think a mentor and teacher kind of get blended sometimes. A good mentor doesn’t give you answers all the time. They just guide and nudge you to find it for yourself.
We tackled a lot together. I’ve worked in industry arts for a while and was used to changing styles a lot, so I didn’t really have my own creative drawing style. She really helped me to find that and foster it into something great.
During Partner up I focused on developing a project that I’m finally nearing the end of now. Over a year later, but without Sally it wouldn’t even be half of the book that it will be. It’s called “Starmaker”. It was actually something that I created years ago but when I was a bit novice as both an artist and a storyteller; I didn’t feel it measured up to what I wanted it to be, so I decided to go back and recreate it.
It’s a story about a boy named Thomas that wakes up to find that the stars are missing, and this strange boat crashed in his front yard. He goes on this wild adventure through outer space, making friends and battling a dragon. It’s a lot of fun. It’s very close to my childhood. I’ve pulled a lot of elements from my hometown, and even modelled his house after my mom’s house.
If I could work on it every day, I’d be about a week from the finish line, but realistically, I’m about a month away from finishing it. From there I’m going to start submitting to publishers and agents. The ultimate goal is to turn it into a feature length film. I’m hoping to use the book to leverage and pitch it to some film production companies.
We hear you did an NFT project – that’s pretty on-trend.
Yeah! I’m all over the place. That was a fun little project, I wanted to do something based around another childhood love. I was really into bugs as a kid, I used to collect them and draw them, and I really wanted to be an Entomologist!
The project is called ‘Crittlers’. I did these cute, quirky little bug characters. They all had their own little back stories that were usually tied to crypto lingo. This guy Gary Vee, who’s a major social influencer and personal development guy happened to like my work and he ended up buying up a couple pieces. That gave ‘Crittlers’ quite a bit of popularity there for a while and traded 10.3 Etherium which was huge for me. I split half the profits with a charity organisation: Operation Underground Railroad to help stop human trafficking. We’ve raised over $15,000 for that. I really wanted to donate to that particular cause. Human trafficking is probably the darkest underbelly of humanity and it felt really good to be able to give back from my art in such a big way.
Stay tuned.
