About the Artist - Emma Anderton.
Emma lives and works in the in the North-West of England and has been a professional freelance illustrator since graduating in 2005.
She has a passion for animals, is a bit of a tech-geek and also a big tomboy at heart! When she is not drawing cartoons, she enjoys tidying and organizing stuff, making lists and then lists of those lists… and then lists of those lists etc… whilst also extending her collection of novelty toys, music, computer games and films.
She and has often been described as a combination of Phoebe Buffet and Monica Geller (Okay, so you’d have to be a Friends fan for that one!) and she is also now wondering why she is referring to herself in 3rd person?
What is your life goal?
To save the world from horrendous clip-art!
How did you get started as a cartoonist?
From a very early age! I must have tried every extra-curricular activity going but the only thing I kept up was cartooning! 
I started by constantly copying my favourite Disney VHS and Mega-Drive covers before making my own little paper figures to play with. (I was/am an only child!!) Not that I didn’t have regular toys, I just preferred to make my own!
I then went on a 20week cartooning class when I was about 11 and from there I chose Art and Graphics as my GCSE options at secondary school. I opted for an AVCE in Art and Design at Bury College and finally went for a degree in Graphic Design at the University of Bolton where I eventually achieved my 1st class honours.
I always seemed to fall into an odd year group and it turned out if I’d have been born a year later I could have opted for the ‘Illustration/Animation’ course they invented after my graduation…(Typical!) However, I have never regretted a minute of my chosen course as it has given me a much wider range of practical ‘Graphic Design’ skills as well as the ones I picked up on the illustration and animation modules within that degree.
When and why did you start your business?
1 year after graduating from University I began working for myself by freelancing on the side of my part-time job as an in-house illustrator/animator/graphic designer for an established education e-commerce company.
I started with my unique ‘cartoon-cature’ wedding stationery, which quickly became popular amongst friends and family. As word-of-mouth spread I then ventured out into creating illustrations for all types of occasions before taking on commissions from all kinds of different creative projects.
How Many People are in your Company?
One. Just me.
Where's your office?
I have an office hidden away in a secret location... It's filled with toys, books, computer stuff and cartoony memorabilia! (With a place for everything and everything in its place naturally!) I love it there.
What's the toughest part of running your business?
Not having enough hours in the day!
What's next on the horizon for you and your business?
I’m continuing to expand both my client-base and online presence, and will eventually split my time 50/50 between both design jobs. I wouldn’t want to completely cut out one job as there are elements of both that I cannot be without!
Along with doing all this fun stuff, I also have a passion for teaching and exercise this by occasionally helping out with a fantastic company called E4A (Enterprise for All), who host ‘enterprising challenge days’ to secondary school year groups. I love these classes as they are so varied and cleverly planned. The kids are *generally* fantastic and get so much out of them in terms of team building and work experience preparation. In my portfolio, you'll also find a few educational resources that I've designed to support this and hope to be able to produce more like it in the future.
What advice do you have for others? Discover your style and get comfortable with it. It’s great to have influences, and whilst I was growing up I found my love for cartooning by constantly copying my favourite characters for my friends. However, copying someone else’s work and passing it off is your own = NOT GOOOOOOOD!!! Find your USP (Unique Selling Point) and get some decent business advice. It doesn’t always have to cost the earth, I couldn’t praise enterprise academy enough!
What’s in your digital toolbox?
Although nothing can beat the pencil and paper bit, the rest of my day-to-day office runs using my 17” MacBook Pro, which doubles up as my main desktop computer now my ol’ G4 is tiring a little…
After scanning in sketchwork, I use a simple wacom tablet pen to trace into Adobe Illustrator. Sometimes i’ll ink entirely in Illustrator, or take it into Adobe Photoshop depending on individual job specifics. Illustrator and Photoshop are both part of Adobe Creative Suite. 
Skitch – Fantastic app for taking a quick screenshot and uploading it instantly to a public, or private URL. Great for proofing with clients when both of you can jot notes on the image and send it back and forth in an instant! 
Twitter – Micro Blogging - I’ve met a few good friends here who help me keep right upto the minute with design-type news. I get a little lazy with blogging sometimes but Twitter fills the gap for me. It’s a bit like working in a virtual office if you’re connected with other twitterers in the same field and I’ve heard it described as water-cooler type chit-chat... which pretty much sums it up I guess. There are also lots of 3rd party clients for using Twitter away from the original web interface. I’ve tried a few, but found Tweetie to be by far the best! 
Flickr – Share photos and artwork with the world. 
Dropbox – is available for both Windows and Mac and lets users access files from the web or from any of their computers. I use it every day and love it because I can shortcut my Dropbox folders into my Mac dock at home, and then easily pick them up on the office PC (or visa-versa) as though they were just desktop folders. I can’t remember the last time I found need for a pen drive! Changes to your files are instantly synced across your computers & all of your stuff is available via the web, so you can get it no matter where you are. You can also put files or photo albums into shared folders for easy collaboration with clients, friends or family. oh, and it’s Free! 
De.licio.us – Social book marking. No more having to ‘favourite’ sites within each separate browser... With Delicious, you can organise (tag) and get access to your favourite bookmarks from any computer with web-access. The great thing about social bookmarking is that it also allows you to tag pages for friends, and people with similar interests. This means that if you search for something within Delicious, then you will only see results that others have taken the time to ‘tag’ meaning much richer content.
