Non-videogame art jobs?

[Fueras]

I understand your post and I agree with it to some extent, Monkeybread.

But listen, yes, we can theoretically do whatever we want. But when you work 40 hours a week, maybe have a family, etc, are exhausted from your job, maybe worried about bills, need to fit in exercise, seeing friends, traveling a bit, things that make life worthwhile (for me anyway)..honestly? You probably will NOT have a lot of time or energy for art.


So what are our options? Stop doing art and be jealous of other people with a creative job? (This is what happened to me when I was preparing to get a PhD in biology.)

Or, start ....6 years behind the top art school grads, have no life or money for 3-4 years while you try to catch up. You are then almost 30 years old with a crap studio job with crap pay, no benefits, where you are overworked, disrespected and have no job security? Without savings? Never taking a vacation? Stressed out constantly? Unable to start a family due to your financial situation? Is it even worth it at that point?

It just seems like you really can't win, sometimes. Although what you're saying is true, there are other jobs out there.

Can I just throw a spanner into the works here. I used to think what job I did defined me and what value I had to give to the world. I have since realized that this is complete bullshit, including art related jobs!!

I don't work in a full time art job. I have a physics degree and a comp. sci degree. I now earn a 6 figure salary. I only do art when I can and I would of course like to dedicate more time to it during my waking hours and it won't matter to me that my earnings will likely be halved if I did get a studio job. Having said that I used to think life wouldn't be worth anything unless I was doing art. Bullshit!

Yes to some degree we have to do things to earn money to live. (in this current mainstream system anyway) but it is by no means a fundamental to human experience at all. Your job is NOT 75% of your life and I think it is a sad view of the joy of living. Your life is a sequence of experiential conscious moments. The job is a very crude human concept of what gives your life meaning and perpetrates social and political systems as they stand. It's fine to have to work within this system because we are born into it, but please don't mistake this mythic construct as having real value to you as a conscious human being. You can do whatever you want to do.

To some degree we would like to do things we enjoy that also bring us this money to enable security and survival, and bringing together these two things can be hard. But what I have realised personally, is that just because they don't doesn't mean you have failed in any way. Most jobs are actually just taking you away from anything you would be doing yourself creatively. I'm not pooh poohing art jobs, I just wanted to take some of the mythic aspect of them away.

SO all that weird ranting is just to say that I believe what school you go to, what choice of discipline you decide to go with, what form of self expression you wish to go with means nothing if you don't realise you can just do whatever you want right now at this moment. I believe that if you have something to say, you want to create, you want to express some aspect of your conscious experience with the rest of the world in a unique way, as seems to be the drive for most of us artists, then the choices I mentioned before don't matter at all and only serve to get in your way.

Just do what you want to do, the rest of that shit will fall into place. Sorry for the slightly abstract philosophical angle here, but I truly think not very many illustrators and concept artists think very deeply about this, in the goal towards getting "the right job" and we all should. The real question you want to ask yourself is "why?" not "how" or "what". This might not become clearer until you get a bit older it seems.
So you can be a writer, you can illustrate your own stories, you can create your own worlds, you can become an illustrator for other people's worlds, you can do web and mobile UI design, you can do infographics, visualisations, web design. Game design, tabletop, video, card. Hell you can even do fine art, sculpture, pottery, fashion, architecture, product development, industrial design with creative artistic skills.

So what I'm saying here son is don't pidgeonhole yourself at the onset in the way I see a lot of people doing to themselves repeatedly in the "learning" art world. You are a multifaceted being capable of adapting and changing to the situations that come up for you, and I am confident you will find your way foremost if you are true to yourself and your own creative expression and not be tied to the idea that a job is the only means of having fulfillment in this arena!