tk www.​tom​mykane.com

Hey Tommy thanks for doing this inter­view! To start of with I would like to know how you have sur­vived in the adver­tis­ing indus­try over the last 25+ year and how much has the indus­try changed since you started. Ohh… and do you have a Wacom pad and an iPod?

The thing about the adver­tis­ing game is that they pay you very well. So for a guy like me who barely made it through school, it’s a good way to make a living doing some­thing cre­ative. I ini­tially wanted to be an illus­tra­tor. After arriv­ing in New York City as a young pup, that dream didn’t seem fea­si­ble. I landed a job at an adver­tis­ing agency doing magic marker illus­tra­tions.

Before the advent of the com­puter, adver­tis­ing agen­cies used to present ideas to clients in the form of magic marker ren­der­ings. So I felt lucky to have a job where I mostly drew pic­tures all day. I learned all the tricks of the trade and became quite good at it. When I started out in adland I didn’t know any­thing about adver­tis­ing. I never took a class in it at school. Basi­cally I was clue­less. I learned that the art direc­tors were the ones who thought up the ideas and then pre­sented them to the clients. They hired the pho­tog­ra­phers, direc­tors and illus­tra­tors to exe­cute them. I thought maybe I could do that.

At one point a crisis arose at the agency I was work­ing at. Their biggest client at the time was tobacco giant Brown & Williamson. The client was unhappy with the ads they were being shown and they threat­ened to hire a new agency if they weren’t shown some­thing they loved, and pronto. The agency had pitched idea after idea after idea. All the cre­ative types in the agency were work­ing round the clock. One of the cre­ative direc­tors of the agency men­tioned to me in pass­ing that even if lowly me had any ideas they were will­ing to look at any­thing. This was on a Friday and they were des­per­ate. I spent the week­end coming up with ideas. I then drew them up per­fectly; after all I was the staff illus­tra­tor. I had about twenty five in total.

First thing Monday morn­ing I went into the cre­ative direc­tor and told him I had some ideas. He had for­got­ten he even men­tioned it to me. When he looked at what I’d done he nearly fell out of his chair. He made me present my ideas to the client. I was not too pleased about this, being a scared kid. To make a long story short, the client bought all my work and the agency was saved from embar­rass­ment. They pro­moted me to art direc­tor and my career in adver­tis­ing was born.

Maybe it was a bless­ing I had no adver­tis­ing train­ing. My work was a bit uncon­ven­tional. I did photo shoots around the world. I hired great illus­tra­tors like Guy Billot, Wilson McLean, Greg Spalenka and Matt Mahurin to name a few. I made con­nec­tions and ended up art direct­ing videos for MTV. Lenny Krav­its, Robert Palmer and Buster Poindex­ter to name some. Like any­thing it has had its highs and lows over the years. Adver­tis­ing has changed so much since I started. Now with com­put­ers, the ideas we present to the clients look like fin­ished ads. We spend all our time look­ing for swipe mate­r­ial and then pho­to­shop­ping the hell out of it. The clients have trou­ble look­ing at the idea, they get lost in focus­ing on the clothes some­one is wear­ing or the hair­style in the swipe photo. They think they are look­ing at a real ad. I mostly look for­ward to get­ting home and doing my own draw­ings for my blog. I just want to work at an ad agency that doesn’t break my balls. Get out at 5:30 and week­ends free. I don’t take it seri­ous at all.

People always feel the grass is greener on the other side. There are a lot of people out there who would kill for a job like mine and others who would hate to be in my posi­tion. So I count my bless­ings. I do have a Wacom pad that I inher­ited from a friend but I haven’t plugged it in yet. I’m a bit intim­i­dated. I’m not great with tech­nol­ogy and yes I have a 40G i-pod and a shuffle.

You men­tioned “they pay you very well”. I want to know how much and by who, and have you ever been paid in any­thing other than cash?

When I started out I was making $12.000 a year now I make $175,000 a year. I have never taken any­thing under the table. I have never cheated on my taxes. I don’t want extra. I want to be paid for an honest days work. I have never cheated on my taxes, even by a nickel. One time I did a lot of work for some­one and they gave me a new Harley David­son motor­cy­cle. But I really lost out on the deal but I didn’t care. I was having fun.

So in answer to your ques­tion I was always at a level where I made good money and never had to par­tic­i­pate in hanky panky. I never would because I am an honest guy who cares about those things. You cannot bitch about George Bush and the con­ser­v­a­tives and then say I took money from under the table. They try to make it seem like they are for hon­esty and Jesus yet they rob us blind. I am demo­c­rat and the oppo­site of them. I am honest and want to do what’s right even if it hurts me. Hon­esty is the best policy.

When work­ing as an Art Direc­tor; how do you go about find­ing an illus­tra­tor or pho­tog­ra­pher, do you use agen­cies or sites like this site and do you ever take chances on newbie’s?

I mostly found illus­tra­tors in the Black­book or Work­book. I haven’t done ads with illus­tra­tion in a while. If I was to hire illus­tra­tors today I would cer­tainly use inter­net sites like LCSV4, Illus­tra­tion Mundo and DRAWN! I keep track of a lot of illus­tra­tors now. I believe in giving new people a shot. In my career I have mostly done that with pho­tog­ra­phers though.

Do you always have cre­ative free­dom when work­ing on a job? Also what do you do with your­self when you’re not being cre­ative? Do you have any kids? Are you married?

To answer your first ques­tion. I don’t always have cre­ative free­dom. But there are enough tal­ented people out there that if a client didn’t like some­one I chose, there is always another great artist to use. Adver­tis­ing is a busi­ness of com­pro­mise. Usu­ally they want me to work on their stuff because of the type of ads I’ve done in the past. Believe it or not I just got mar­ried in May. It took me a while but great things happen to those who wait.

No kids yet but we’re plan­ning on it. Soon. I pretty much create all day long at work. I illus­trate all week­end and draw in my jour­nals. I paint. Out­side of that I love to drink ice cold beer. It helps to blow off steam when you work so
 hard.

If you don’t mind me saying you have a very cool name Mr. Tommy Kane. Have you though about names for kids? What about Michael Kane or Kane Kane or would you prefer a girl?

It’s funny you men­tion that. I really haven’t been called Tommy since I was a little kid. When I made my web­site I went online to buy a domain name and the only one left was “Tommy Kane.” So I bought that. Now every­one calls me that. Before I was Tom Kane. So it was a lucky acci­dent but I like it a lot.

Maybe I’ll call my kid Candy Kane Or Sugar Kane or Walk­ing Kane. I don’t think I should answer the ques­tion of what I prefer to have. Once you write some­thing online it’s there for good. Then ten years from now my kind will be surf­ing infor­ma­tion online and come across what I had said. If I say I want a girl and it turns out a boy or vice versa then the kid will read it and feel really sad. You I’ll be happy to have a baby that is healthy.

If you have a girl please don’t call her Candy Kane, but on a seri­ous note Wal­ters a cool name! Anyway I started a thread on the Illus­tra­tion Mundo forum called ‘The Doo­dle­tas­tic thread’. I would like to put your illus­tra­tion skills to the test. Take this sketch :

It’s a sketch I did for the thread and do your own take on it in your style, show me how good you are. Also what do you look like?

Here is a photo of me.

Also the assign­ment you gave me. This is my take on your draw­ing. You’re right Walter is a good name.

Funky stuff!

Are you openly seek­ing illus­tra­tion work at the moment and how do you nor­mally go about pro­mot­ing your­self? You men­tioned the Black­book ear­lier; what do you think of these type of books as a form of pro­mo­tion in this day and age? And my son wants to know are you a Harry Potter fan?

I am openly seek­ing illus­tra­tion work. I just fin­ished a piece for a mag­a­zine in Eng­land and have an assign­ment to do a book cover right now and I sent out some mail­ers recently. A lot of places said they won’t look at work dig­i­tally. So I am making a bound port­fo­lio. I’m so busy it’s taking a long time to get around to fin­ish­ing it. Just putting my illus­tra­tion web­site together was a huge under­tak­ing. When you are not illus­trat­ing full time so many other things get in the way. I am always doing photo shoots and com­mer­cials at work so my time is eaten up. Plus it’s exhaust­ing too.

The Black­book is dead as far as I’m con­cerned. No one I know looks at any of those books any­more. They seem so ancient. I’d rather find an illus­tra­tor in Jux­tapoz magazine.

So I guess the trick is to get into Jux­tapoz. Plus it won’t cost you anything.

It’s very cool your son is into Harry Potter. I’ve seen all the movies. I had always intended to read the books but never did. Now it would be like read­ing war and peace four times. The type of things that influ­enced me when I was a kid was stuff like Batman, Green Hornet, Lone Ranger and of course Fire­ball XL5. Super powers are the best thing to dream about.

So are you look­ing for­ward to Spi­der­man 3, Fan­tas­tic four 2, and have you seen Ghost Rider yet? And before I forget have you ever shown your work in gal­leries or do you have any aspi­ra­tions to show your work in gal­leries or be part of a show?

Yes I’m look­ing for­ward to all those movies. But the one I really want to see is “The 300.” I have never had any aspi­ra­tions to be in a gallery. I rarely if ever go to any. I always loved illus­tra­tion. People always ask me about gal­leries because I have so many paint­ings. Some agents have come to see them; I let one person take a few paint­ings (ones I wasn’t so inter­ested in). They sold one for $4,000.00. Some­how it never inter­ested me. I would rather have an illus­tra­tion in a mag­a­zine than sell a paint­ing in a gallery. I would be part of a show of other artists. I see that a lot on the Jux­tapoz web­site. I would like to do some­thing with some­one like John Casey. He’s a friend and a genius.

Peanut butter and jelly or cheese and pickle?

This is easy. I love peanut butter and jelly. I¹m a huge fan of blue­berry. I get it at the farmer¹s market in Man­hat­tan. But my choice would by far and away be, cheese and pickle. I love pick­les to death. When I was a little kid my dad loved to get pick­les out of the barrel at our local butcher. I tasted one once and I was hooked. Ever since I have chased after the per­fect dill pickle. Orchard street in Man­hat­tan used to be where all the pickle shops were located. It¹s not to far from me. There is still one family left. You can get pick­led green toma­toes, olives and sauer­kraut. There is also another pickle store in New York. They have every kind of pickle from new, to sour and half sour. I buy them in giant plas­tic con­tain­ers. Great with grilled cheese. So a pickle wins every time with me. That salty crunch, there’s noth­ing like it.

VH1 or MTV?

Years ago I liked MTV. I was even on once with my friend David Johnasen of the New York Dolls. I had art directed a few Buster Poindex­ter videos. He hosted a thanks­giv­ing spe­cial and he let me and a few friends come on with him. I also knew down­town Julie Brown pretty well. We hung out a bunch. Then there was the whole real world thing. Now it’s 24/7 Real World, Road rules and Real World vs. Road Rules. Vh1 was also cool for a while. I loved all the behind the music stuff. Sto­ries of coke and booze ruin­ing the lives of guys with big hair dos. I also loved the Bands reunited series. Now I never go any­where near either chan­nel. I prefer to watch a cook­ing show over that garbage.

Nokia or Samsung?

That’s an easy one for me. SAM­SUNG. I do all the adver­tis­ing for Sam­sung in North Amer­ica. I am doing a big com­mer­cial right now with Bey­once. You will see it every­where. The next two weeks I am doing eight photo shoots for ads. Phones and flat screen tele­vi­sions. I def­i­nitely have the inside scoop on this. Sam­sung kicks Nokia’s ass. I’ve even been to South Korea where the stuff is made. Unfor­tu­nately I still have an old Motorola razor. And don’t tell anyone but I’m wait­ing for the iphone to come out. I love apple. Plus I own the stock. It’s trad­ing at 89 today. My wife made me buy it at 60.

Thank you so much for doing this inter­view! I would just like to finish off with what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given and did you follow it?

My mom always told me to “keep my head warm and if it rains or snows, don’t get it wet.” What kind of ridicu­lous advice is this you ask? Well. I used to be sick all the time. When I was in art school in Buf­falo, I would go around in the snow wear­ing just sneak­ers and no hat. I was con­stantly worn down and sick. I’d ear­aches all the time. It took for­ever for my mom’s dumb advice to sink into my skull. Finally while living and work­ing in New York I started to get it. I will dress sen­si­bly accord­ing to the weather. I started to not get sick. Now I have hats with ear flaps. Nice warm ones. I don’t care how stupid I look. I stay warm and dry. Now with all the work I have to do, I can’t tell you how valu­able it is to not be sick. I have friends that are sick all the time. Not me. I know the secret trick. So no matter how much adver­tis­ing work or per­sonal illus­tra­tion I have to do, it doesn’t matter, I can do it because I am healthy and strong.

Thanks Tommy! It’s been great! – By the way I’ve just started up a new project called MAiLmeART.com since I don’t think it’s really fair to post myself some­thing for the project I’ve stuck some­thing in the post for you to say thank you for taking the time to be inter­viewed. You can check it out by click­ing here!

You can see more of Tommy Kane’s work at
www.​tom​mykane.com

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