Becoming a professional artist: Tips

[darkshark]

Re: My understanding of the world of Graphic Media

If you feel unsafe about your work being stolen, you can always just watermark it.

Those are a few good points Mythix, however, none of us are on the sort of level yet, and an entry level graphic designer should have absolutely nothing to worry about when it comes to thievery, as long as you aren't the one doing the theft.
Online portfolios are the main way to show them to a business these days.

Once you're an established artist, I would assume you could just bring your laptop or something to the interview, seeing as you will have the experience and credit to be able to get to an interview for a higher company in the first place.

[Mythix]

Re: My understanding of the world of Graphic Media

If you feel unsafe about your work being stolen, you can always just watermark it.

Those are a few good points Mythix, however, none of us are on the sort of level yet, and an entry level graphic designer should have absolutely nothing to worry about when it comes to thievery, as long as you aren't the one doing the theft.
Online portfolios are the main way to show them to a business these days.

Once you're an established artist, I would assume you could just bring your laptop or something to the interview, seeing as you will have the experience and credit to be able to get to an interview for a higher company in the first place.

I were actually aiming mostly on the .3ds~ file, or whatever extension you use, not the render picture, unless the render picture is to be submitted to something, but there are render pictures people take too.

I found an entire Bugatti Veyron and Mercedes SLK with a modelled garage with cracked vRay, downloadable, for free, and they were completely photorealistic. I'm quite sure whoever made that is not THAT generally generous seeing there were no credits to any artists. (Found it browsing ads on 3DM3, and yes, it had a trojan)
And the biggest scare isn't that someone might steal your stuff, but the company/host might think you have stolen it, I'd be pissed off if people said "you didn't make that, I saw it on YouTube"- and believe me, once people find something they like, it ends up being hosted everywhere...

[darkshark]

Re: My understanding of the world of Graphic Media

Why would you post your raw files unless you WANTED people to mess with them? I think you had just be able to back up whatever you say you can do. Period. If you show off this awesome cityscape to your employer and be like "YEAH LOOK WHAT I MADE" and when he asks you to do something similar and you can't.......well.....we all know where that road will get you.

[darkshark]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

Ultra bump.

Times are changing, and we've all grown since this thread was written. Many of you srtists reading this are ready to take the step into the real world, and get paid to do what you love. You guys have come a really long way, we all have. Spenner, Renevatia, Makdaddy, Spitfire, Mythix...You all have great potential, and have the skill that it takes to make it in this industry. Even up-and-coming artists like midnightraver show great potential.

Time to get active!

Just thought I'd throw this list out there:

http://freelanceswitch.com/finding/the-monster-list-of-freelancing-job-sites/

It's a compilation of a ton of freelance websites, and since you guys are able to produce great quality work, I say go for it, make the jump on your own into the professional world.
Be active with it, search out new clients, retain old ones, and NEVER sell yourself short.

Even though I work a full time job in the design field, I still constantly have freelance projects I work on. Salary and freelance combined, I'm now averaging about $70-$110 an hour. I definitely know that all of you can get to that point too, and even exceed it. I want to again congratulate Spitfire for getting that internship, that's a great foot-in-the-door you've got!


SO GET TO IT. Freelancing is great money, and is your portal to better skills and a better life.

[rushyrulz]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

Holy walls of text :O

[sakura080789]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

awesome love the advice

[Nullifidian]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

Thanks for the mention, means a lot to me.

I'll check into the freelancing stuff, would be great experience and great for connections.

My contribution of tips for to this thread is to take everyone's opinion at heart. Take everyone's opinion in consideration and do something with what people say. Even if they know jack shit about art, if they spot something iffy, that's an indicator something is wrong (unless you can justify this really well). Any constructive criticism is there to help you, not to insult you.
Especially for a client or boss this is crucial, since it's their call in the end.

And in reply to mythix' post. Don't worry too much about theft of your final works (if it's a personal project that is). Just don't ever post source files of your works because that's your proof it's yours.

PS. Shameless promotion for our project which is nearly done.
It's called awesomenauts (www.awesomenauts.com) and is gonna be a MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) game on xbla and psn. Can't reveal much more just yet but more info will be given at E3.

[darkshark]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

Are you going to E3? I was going to see if I could get off work next week and attend. Would be pretty badass.

And yes, critiques are a massive part of the job, get used to making revisions, lots of them! By no means does a harsh critique say your work is bad, so you still need to be able to take things lightly and not get discouraged by it.

[Nullifidian]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

I'm not going to E3 myself. A couple of the founders are going to talk about the game there.

[darkshark]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

Now lets look at the type of freelancing you need to STAY THE **** AWAY FROM.

This is a perfect example.

http://www.freelancer.com/

Lets look at this main page and break it down for a second. For starters, this is the type of freelance site where the designer is the one bidding for the job in which case 95% of the time, the person who bids the lowest amount gets to do the project. This will likely end up earning you somewhere around $3-8 an hour for the work you end up doing.

Look at the statistics they put up in the mid-right of the page. 2.5 million users, $91 million in earnings, 1 million projects. So the average amount earned by anyone per project is only $91. Your time and effort is worth more than that.

If you were to get hired on at a company as a graphic designer, they can pay you less of an hourly wage, because it is a stable salary. As a freelancer however, you can expect to easily earn at least DOUBLE what any company would normally pay you as a regular employee. Most graphic designers who are employed make around $13-$17 an hour, a freelance graphic designer should make $25-$45 an hour, simply because it is an on-demand, one time job.

As a newer person who is looking at this type of site for the first time, you might think "holy crap this actually seems awesome! Look this one is liek $200!". Some of the listings will be reasonable, but those will also be the ones that have the most competition from other fellow artists. Look at one listing from my side of the industry, animation.

http://www.freelancer.com/projects/Video-Services-Animation/Video-animation.1082866.html

If I didn't know any better, I would just say WOWWWWW $750 for a 45 second animation!!!!!! Luckily I'm no noob. Look at the video references that were given. Those types of animations not only take weeks/months to complete, but are also usually headed by a team of animators, not just one. So let's say you're fast at drawing and animating...like REALLY FAST...and you can get this thing done in under 3 weeks. That's 8 hours a day, for lets say 14 total working days (9-5 m-f), and we're going to assume you get the maximum amount offered (LOL). 14 days, x 8 hours per day = 112 working hours. $750 / 112 = $6.69 an hour. You can go eat a dick because I'm not working for less than minimum wage on something like that. Not to mention, you will not get the maximum, because some kid in China is going to love working for 6 bucks an hour.


Now lets look at the type of site you should probably use often

http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/categories/1

This type of site immediately lists the price each company is willing to pay for the project, and is usually going to be a fair amount. These are the companies that know the freelancing industry well, and are willing to compensate you for your hard work. All you have to do with these types of sites is show them your portfolio, if they like what they see, you're hired.

Lets break this down a little further.

http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/jobs/12106-infographic-designer-needed

This is a great example of what to expect from a company that you want to do a project for. The pay is $250 per infographic. (if you don't know what an infographic is click this http://www.dzinepress.com/2010/03/40...ping-analysts/ ) Now if I were to make an estimate of how much time it would take me to design a graphic like this, I would put it at about 6 hours or so. $250/6 = $41.66 an hour, which is right on par with my earlier statement about how much you should be making.

The only drawback to this site in particular is that it does require a $7 a month subscription, but many other sites do not require this at all.



The biggest underlying statement I'm trying to make here is that you need to always be paid for your skills. If you're new at the business, and just want some exposure, extra spending money, or practice in the industry (all of which are great) then by all means, a freelance bidding site is perfect, and should be used to its fullest. If you're confident in your photoshop and illustrator skills (if you think you could produce a graphic like those infographics I linked you to, then you are confident) then you should have no problem bypassing this entire bidding system. If you don't think you could design something on that sort of caliber...well...then I guess now you have a great goal to shoot for

I really hope some of this stuff I'm babbling about in this thread gets taken seriously. I love working in this industry, and I know once you take a step into it, you will too ;D

[Renevatia]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

As topic says 'professional artist' it has been mentioned various times that after one gets __insert art degree here__ credential then .....

Here's the problem, what if I do not have any of such credentials nor the ways to get them anytime in the near future. I am currently going to college for biochem major and will not be able to attend any sort of art school since they REQUIRE you to quit your other school, and I am not willing to do that. Not to mention the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars I don't have.
I am a fairly hard worker in the field of visual art and am about to put in a lot more work into it as it is one of my major passion.
From the above post it seem to me that credential is what matters, even in art. Is this true? Am I screwed because I have no way of acquiring such educational degree (art 101 doesn't count I think). Either way though, I will work as hard as I can on it for as long as I can. The only difference this will make is if or not I will starve to death, or rather how much sooner I will starve to death if I don't have a paper saying I am an artist.

PS. I know op said degree is NOT needed, but is there a cap on non-degree people. Times are changing pretty quickly, all these sites seem to all have a 'degree' section for artists to present themselves as a graduate of so and so.

[Zageron]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

A degree means absolutely nothing if you are good enough. No matter what you are doing. The internet has so much more, and usually better, resources than a University or College. If you put massive amounts of time into it, which I'm sure you have, and create a very impressive looking portfolio I am sure you could easily acquire yourself a job in character concept design. Just look for a tiny and insignificant company, work for very little and create a base of 'credentials' for your self. Eventually you'll apply for a bigger company with "I've created character concept art for X different studios, who have created XX characters using my creations. X of these games were extremely successful, and X of them are available on Steam. ______ game won an award at Indie GDC, and etc...."

Really it comes down to if you get noticed or not. To get noticed, you have to start really small.

(I'm sure you want a professional opinion, but I can assure you that this is pretty accurate.)

[Spenner]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

It all depends on what you have exposure to, if you have the discipline for attention to detail that's been self taught, if you can understand methods and theory for marketing and have evidence to know that said techniques work-- a lot of the attention to detail parts that you wouldn't ordinarily know to look and seek out knowing is taught in school, which for me I found handy; I'm sure you could learn it all by yourself and if you do, sure, you're more than qualified.

And yes, now if you can make something impressive and get exposure, it's something you need in order to be a thriving part of the industry. It's almost a celebrity status among certain companies now, the art teams, so to be a part of a game that particularly stands out graphically, or anything for that matter, it's great to be a part of.

I think a degree is sometimes seen as a reassurance that the person with this good looking portfolio has indeed the knowledge to back up his or her designs or concepts.

[darkshark]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

It all depends on what you have exposure to, if you have the discipline for attention to detail that's been self taught, if you can understand methods and theory for marketing and have evidence to know that said techniques work-- a lot of the attention to detail parts that you wouldn't ordinarily know to look and seek out knowing is taught in school, which for me I found handy; I'm sure you could learn it all by yourself and if you do, sure, you're more than qualified.

And yes, now if you can make something impressive and get exposure, it's something you need in order to be a thriving part of the industry. It's almost a celebrity status among certain companies now, the art teams, so to be a part of a game that particularly stands out graphically, or anything for that matter, it's great to be a part of.

I think a degree is sometimes seen as a reassurance that the person with this good looking portfolio has indeed the knowledge to back up his or her designs or concepts.

The attention to detail you will be able to put into something derives from the passion you have behind it. If you have an undying love for art then you will become amazing on your own, don't bother with school at all. If you like to draw every once in a while and think art is just pretty cool, well, I'm actually going to tell you to pick a different career path because honestly only the ones who are truly dedicated and have that passion make it in this industry anyway. Schools teach you how to use the tools, not how to be creative.

[Reincarnate]

Re: Becoming a professional artist: Tips

"If you like to draw every once in a while and think art is just pretty cool, well, I'm actually going to tell you to pick a different career path because honestly only the ones who are truly dedicated and have that passion make it in this industry anyway"

This applies in just about every industry, and is the strongest advice ever, however obvious it may seem. You'll always do the best and earn the most doing what you love doing. Honestly I think there's no real difference between passion and obsession; you need to be obsessed. If you're half-assing it, you'll get half-assed results.