We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Manelle Oliphant a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Manelle, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?

I manage my own social media. When I started it didn’t occur to me that such a thing as social media managers existed. I was just an illustrator wanting to post my art and give people the chance to see it. But social media can be hard so I started taking classes. The first on I took was on instagram and it changed how I thought about what I was posting and the purpose of social media. Since them I’ve taken more classes and learned more about social media marketing. Now I really enjoy working on my social media. It’s like a creative project of its own.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m an illustrator. I do fantasty art and children’s books. I went to school at BYU-Idaho and got my bachelors degree in illustration. To learn more about the children’s publishing I attended a lot of conferences about writing and illustrating for children and they helped me learn how that industry worked. Now I teach a class to help new illustrators find their way around freelancing and children’s publishing.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I have always loved to draw and tell stories. But as an adult it got harder to justify spending time on those activities especially if I was creating art for myself rather than doing freelance jobs that were earning me money. But, I’ve learned over time how valuable art and storytelling is to our lives. I started to see how stories have changed who I am, helped me learn, connect with people, and made my life better. This gave me more drive to create great stories that can help other people too. I don’t feel guilting for making art now, or spending my time that way, because I know what I’m doing can make a difference.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

When I was in college learning about illustration there was an unspoken rule that working for self published authors was a bad idea. It was the early 2000’s and platforms for self publishing, like kickstarter, didn’t exist yet. Books that were self published were usually poorly written and poorly illustrated. So I left school thinking that working for an independent author wasn’t a good idea. But the business has changed since then and I’ve found some great clients who are authors. A lot of my favorite freelance jobs have come from authors publishing with out a traditional publisher. There are a lot of authors publishing now and they need illustrators for their books. In many cases my negotiations with them include a lot of education about the illustration process and cost. But if I do that part of my job right we have a great time making awesome books.

Contact Info:

• Website: talesfantastic.com
• Instagram: talesfantastic
• Facebook: talesfantastic
• Youtube: talesfantstic
• Other: tiktok: talesfantastic

Image Credits
Darian Oliphant Manelle Oliphant