We were lucky to catch up with Scotty Roller recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Scotty, thanks for joining us today. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?
The first time I was compensated for doing any sort of art was in 1986. It was late into my freshman year in high school. I was given a set of used skateboard wheels, that I could never afford on my own, for drawing a keg party flier for this local band called Play-Dough Party. The first time I was ever paid any money for doing any art was that same year maybe a month or two later.
I grew up in Anaheim, California and during most of my freshman year of high school I rode the bus to school with the sister of one of the guys in a local punk band called Doggy Style. She and I were always friendly and she was always looking at the stuff I drew on my books and folders during the ride to school. She told her brother about the stuff I drew and then fast forward, she got me a gig drawing a flier for a Doggy Style show. All of it drawn and inked by hand. All the lettering was done by hand and then of course they Xerox copied the original and that was that. I made a whopping $10 for that flier. In those days I was broke with a capital “B” so I couldn’t have been happier to get the money, $10 was a lot to me. I can’t remember what I spent it on but it was most likely a cassette.
Those two fliers got my name passed around pretty quickly so I wound up doing several fliers for different bands. I have tried to chase down those fliers for years hoping to get my hands on one but I’ve never had any luck. I’ve asked guys I know in the bands and they don’t even have them. Chances are, there weren’t very many of them made and they never survived the phone poles they were stapled to.
Scotty, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m most known for my gig posters that I’ve done for rock shows. Reaching back to 1986 when I did my first keg party flier and then through all the years I’ve done countless posters for hundreds of bands from small local garage bands to country legends like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn and Mickey Gilley to iconic punk rock bands like The Misfits, The Descendents, TSOL and too many more to list. Some people know me for work I’ve done on album packaging for Junkyard, X, Jared James Nichols and others but I think primarily it’s the work I’ve done on posters that has kind of given me a name.
I think the thing that sets me apart from others, or what I should say makes me part of the small minority of graphic artists, is I can draw. I illustrate. I have a style sure, but ultimately it’s me taking their ideas and turning them into something with my own two hands that they can see and touch. The person that comes to me looking for my services doesn’t want the $50 online sweat shop generated clip art logo. They don’t want something that someone else has. They want what is uniquely theirs. The industry is flooded with designers and “artists” that are just lifting stuff off of the internet and passing it off as a finished product to their clients and then charging them either far less than market price, or overcharging them and either way there’s no substance to the work and the end-user is cheated. I price the client not the job. My approach is the same for everyone. I create original illustrations and art for people who want something awesome that is priced fairly. I make it super simple for them to understand the process, I walk them through it so it’s not intimidating and so they don’t feel less adequate for not understanding how it works. The client that comes to me knows that safe, sterile, pedestrian designs aren’t for them. They want to stand out. They want to be noticed and more than that, they want to be remembered.
The single thing that I am most proud of individually, and it’s something that I share with my business partner Suzi as well, is our sense of integrity. You can throw a bag full of money on the table and if the project isn’t a good fit for any reason or it’s not in our wheelhouse, we’re not going to accept it. That very scenario has happened before. Everyone wants money, especially if it’s a boat load of it. If you take that money though, and you’re now in the middle of a project you’re not into completely, you’re gonna only give it so much effort. You’ll be miserable and resentful. We won’t ever put ourselves in that position, and we won’t put our clients in that position. In the end, they appreciate your honesty and are more apt to respect you and even refer you to someone at some point.
Every day for years I have drawn, painted, screen printed, sketched, and tried to push myself to be better at what I do. Everyday I seek out inspiration that keeps me on that road. It’s a life I chose. All of that even when it’s not a money-generating project. My commitment to this life is what I put into the work I do for hire and always try to make it translate as such. That’s the value I give to our clients. I started it at 5 years old when I realized I was going to be an artist for a living. That was in 1977. In 2022 I’m as motivated and committed as I was then.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
Last fall I visited the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. It was a lifelong dream of mine to actually see some of the most famous pieces he ever made. I remember going inside one of the galleries and there was the famous Elvis series. It is roughly 6′ high and 36′ long. You can walk right up to it. When you do, you can see the parts of each print where he pushed the squeegee a little harder as he made the pass, you can see the degradation of the small halftone dot edges from where he crudely exposed his screen in the sunlight subsequently not giving him a high quality exposure. You can see the relation of the size of a person next to the canvas he printed on which gives you a feeling of how it felt to be producing such a large piece by hand. His two hands. His two hands that used a skill that took years to get to a level of proficiency that he was able to control the result just enough to make this concept a tangible reality. You can see dirt in the ink from what was no doubt a product of a less than sterile work studio. Ultimately there are countless signs of human involvement in the work itself.
NFTs are digital. Digitally created with no doubt a level of skill by someone. I don’t for a second question any of that. What I have a problem with is that you can’t interact with it the way you can interact with that Warhol piece I described. You can’t get close enough or see it in a way where you can see brush strokes that emote the artists intensity or the loose pencil under sketches that may show a window into their process. NFTs have eliminated the entire human part of the experience of art. They are a digital graphic image. Over 400 years later we can still go to the Louvre and see paintings and sculptures made by humans in person. Digital file support changes all the time. These digital files will not be here for half as long as a Rembrandt or Degas. They won’t survive because of the sheer nature of what they are, a digital file. It’s like investing money into a piece of meat with hopes it has an indefinite shelf life. It’s insane.
If you want to make a financial investment on something that no one else can own and that can live on past your lifetime as an heirloom or become a museum piece, buy a piece of tangible art made by human hands that a human can actually stand in front of and see with their own eyes how those hands made it. NFTs are the emperor’s new clothes plain and simple.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
The answer and discussion for this could take up countless pages. The long and the short of it is best illustrated in terms of bands. If you like a band the best way to support them is to buy a ticket and go to their live shows. Buy a ticket in advance. When you get there buy a t-shirt or a record, even if it’s only a $2 sticker, buy some piece of merchandise. All of this is a financial investment to keep the band you like in business. It keeps them on the road to play live, it helps fund making more merchandise and recording more music.
What you shouldn’t do is call or text someone in the band the day of the show and ask for you plus one to get in on the guest list. That right there just took money from the entire band and makes it harder to pay the musicians and the support crew that is required to make the live shows happen like merch guys, roadies, sound engineers, etc. Don’t get to the show look through all of the merch and then complain about the price of the merch. It costs much more to make that stuff than you think. The actual profit margins the bands are making are incredibly low. Don’t buy bootlegged music that the band hasn’t approved or worse yet, that they don’t get paid from. Buy officially released music from record stores or legit digital sources.
This entire scenario applies to all art and creative platforms. Fine artists, actors, writers, sculptors, all of them. All artists provide a skillset, a talent, an intellectual piece of creative property that you don’t have. When you start haggling prices and trying to circumvent buying quality from the source, you’re not getting a deal, you’re actually getting inferior product and hurting the original artists.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.714creative.net
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