06-22-2016, 05:05 PM
iamorim Thanks man!
Piotr definitely!
Artloader Thanks a bunch. Will see how it goes!
Client: Storium Games
Cost: Can't remember, about 400 or 600 USD for all of them.
Kill fees, and 50% up front. Their contract was a really artist centric one. They paid quickly. These guys were without a doubt my best clients at the time, and I was also doing work for FFG and an animated movie at the same time.
This gig was probably the third client I got when I first started; I had done one banner piece for them earlier (the scrapjacks piece earlier on in this thread with the two figures running towards the ship in the hanger)
The process for that illustration was awesome, I was only a couple of days late, and the AD loved it. So they asked me to do 10 character avatars for the same storyline.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
I had spent almost 2 years doing pretty much 80% on environments. To say I failed hard was an understatement. I had at least a month and a half, I took almost 3 months to complete it
Value sketches: Felt relatively ok at this stage.
I just wasn't happy with any of it. Perfectionism caused me to go nuts with this. I repainted the characters at least 3 to 5 times over, each! And my discipline slowly tanked. Already weeks too late, I provided the client with half assed half done colour wips
Feedback, meant repainting some others again, but also they weren't that happy with some of the worse ones. Fair enough. They even offered to get someone else on board to help me at this point because I was clearly faililng. I declined the offer and started to heavily use photo reference at this point. Eventually two months too late, with not enough contact, I delivered a product that took way too long, looked pretty shit, and blew their deadlines out of the water. I think they probably even had to get another artist on after me to fix up the worst ones. This entire process actually made me seriously consider quitting freelance, it was that hard and frustrating. And right on the heels of a process that went very smoothly and was so much fun, on the same IP!
So, did I get rehired to do all the tons of work they had up and coming? I'll let you guys guess.
I still like a couple of these...probably the trader one the most of all, and possibly the ambassador, but yeah pretty shit otherwise.
Major learnings.
Piotr definitely!
Artloader Thanks a bunch. Will see how it goes!
Client: Storium Games
Cost: Can't remember, about 400 or 600 USD for all of them.
Kill fees, and 50% up front. Their contract was a really artist centric one. They paid quickly. These guys were without a doubt my best clients at the time, and I was also doing work for FFG and an animated movie at the same time.
This gig was probably the third client I got when I first started; I had done one banner piece for them earlier (the scrapjacks piece earlier on in this thread with the two figures running towards the ship in the hanger)
The process for that illustration was awesome, I was only a couple of days late, and the AD loved it. So they asked me to do 10 character avatars for the same storyline.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
I had spent almost 2 years doing pretty much 80% on environments. To say I failed hard was an understatement. I had at least a month and a half, I took almost 3 months to complete it
Value sketches: Felt relatively ok at this stage.
I just wasn't happy with any of it. Perfectionism caused me to go nuts with this. I repainted the characters at least 3 to 5 times over, each! And my discipline slowly tanked. Already weeks too late, I provided the client with half assed half done colour wips
Feedback, meant repainting some others again, but also they weren't that happy with some of the worse ones. Fair enough. They even offered to get someone else on board to help me at this point because I was clearly faililng. I declined the offer and started to heavily use photo reference at this point. Eventually two months too late, with not enough contact, I delivered a product that took way too long, looked pretty shit, and blew their deadlines out of the water. I think they probably even had to get another artist on after me to fix up the worst ones. This entire process actually made me seriously consider quitting freelance, it was that hard and frustrating. And right on the heels of a process that went very smoothly and was so much fun, on the same IP!
So, did I get rehired to do all the tons of work they had up and coming? I'll let you guys guess.
I still like a couple of these...probably the trader one the most of all, and possibly the ambassador, but yeah pretty shit otherwise.
Major learnings.
- Perfectionism is fucking idiotic and a total waste of time if you let it control your better judgment, especially for client work. LET the client decide what is good or not good enough.
- ALWAYS deliver on time...no exceptions no excuses.
- It's a good thing to tell clients you are having problems early on that will affect your ability to deliver, and be honest (first with yourself) and then with them. Clients want the work done, so they will do whatever they can to help you...it's not like you are submitting homework to your crabby nasty english teacher or something.
- It's a good idea to challenge yourself in areas you might not go yourself, but be wary of optimistically biting off more than you can chew.
- Properly using photo ref saved my life when trying to do everything from scratch out of some stupid principle failed.
- Practice faces more you asshole before accepting money to paint them!
- As a result of this I did way more face studies, and I'm now more comfortable taking on character gigs and see them through but I still need a lot more work to bring them up to standard of my enviros