[TeTsUo]

I have been drawing since I was little...doing fantasy style things, etc. Decided to go to art school and obtained a degree in Studio Art (concentrating in painting/drawing). My skill greatly improved...but what did not improve was my outlook. Instead of my school giving me a sense of challenge and anticipation...instead it brought me down and into the dumps. They were very bad at supporting me in what I wanted to do (the professors wanted me to do things more from their mindset...instead of techniques to help me along with what I wanted to do) and instead tried to push me more towards the "fine art" realm. I have no problems with fine art and the way that it is done. However, trying to push your style or way of making art on another in my eyes is a bad thing. It should be more of a free exploratory process. It didn't help that the school I went to was more into modern/contemporary art and scoffed at fantasy art/illustration/and or anything of the like. So nevertheless I came out of that school with less than high expectations.

I found a job doing "graphics" for an codec company called on2 technologies. But it soon turned into a drab and boring Video Engineer job all relating to compression. Yay I have a lot of free time to surf the web, read, etc. But if you ask me idle time is time wasted! So after being here for 4 years thinking that something will get better...I am trying to kick myself in the a$$ to get my portfolio cleaned up and on the road again towards what I really set out for. Monkey is right when he says that programming sucks your soul out. Thank god I take martial arts in the evening or I would prolly have gone off the deep end.

I am also in the process of putting a strip up on keenspot for view. Wish me luck all and a good year is coming for all

[del3030]

OK well if im going to start hanging out here, i better tell alittle about myself.....
ok, i grew up around computers nd i made my first web site in 6 grade, i taught myself html. Then blah blah blah i moved around abunch, then i got back to houston, and my friend did web design for a salon, and he got me a job at this place called sourcevital, doing there web site along with another one called sanctuarydsante, co-owned companys. And so now i am a IT guy and web guy for salon and day spa companys. I also do this side project called spawebs, which is owned by sourcevital but i get commision, on these instead of hourly on the others, here are the sites if you wanna check out my stuff:

http://www.sourcevital.com
http://www.sanctuarydsante.com
Spa Webs:
http://www.bergamossparetreat.com
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dank orchid is coming soon

[Meaty Ogre]

Just wanted to poke my head in and say thanks for all the replies in here. It can be hard to get a sense of how other artists/freelancers/people are getting along without meeting them face to face for a real conversation but this helps. Thanks.

[sam r. kennedy]

I graduated from BYU in '98 and got an art job at a local game company. I pixel pushed in the day and painted/animated at night for myself and an occasional client. The art director told me that I had more talent as a character animator, and so I started doing more work in Max2.5. When that work was seen by guys on a different project, I was invited to be a full time character animator. And so my meaningful career began.

I kept painting at night and eventually helped in the concept art dept. Then the company started going south, and I moved to Tulsa, OK and started working for 2015, Inc. I'm just finishing the animations for Men of Valor, the follow up to Medal of Honor. I've also gotten to do concept art for MOV, and one painting I did got posted on Gamasutra's home page for a week. I also got asked to be a spokesman for Corel Painter, and you can see some of my work there. D'artiste Magazine from Ballistic Publishing(Expose' I and II) will be carrying a few of my pieces too. Even though I've had this success and have done a few mailers, I still don't have any regular clients. Bummer!

In the last year, I've begun to change my focus from improving my art skill to investing and building a business that includes art. I hope in a few years to support myself and family with the income from my investments and business. Then I'll paint a little more and maybe try to do book covers just for fun.

[urbunner]

Well right now I'm working security and going to school full time . I feel like I'm starting a little late in the game but I've always loved to draw and create things it just took time to get the motivation to actually make a career out of it. Plus I think any other jobs you do in your life only add to the creative side of coming up with ideas. I personally am glad I spent 4 years in the military because I have real world experience if in the future I have to come up with ideas for a military themed project. I think sometimes you get kind of trapped in a vaccum if all you've done in life is art and that's all you know. On the other hand I really wished I would not have waited till I was almost 30 to start my artistic career. Oh well better late then never.

[Socar MYLES]

I'm an illustrator, mostly for small-press books and comics. I was doing rather well for a while, because of the high USD/CAD exchange rate, but since the downfall of the artificially inflated US dollar, things have become very difficult. US companies (who comprise most of my clientele), of course, are still paying the same rates, but in terms of CAD, I'm now earning a lot less. Since my bills are paid in Canadian dollars, this is a serious problem. I tried the obvious solution (asking for more money), but I had only limited success with that. Currently, I'm working more than I really should be (generally at least 12 hours per day), and financially, I am not in good shape. Man, you'd die if you could see my Visa bill. Then again, maybe you wouldn't. Most people I know owe more than I do. I guess I'm just a spaz.

Anyhow, spaz or no spaz, I'm not saying this to discourage anyone. I wouldn't trade this job for the one I had before, that's for sure. But the freelance industry can have its ups and downs. If you can keep a day-job for the first few years, you really should, to cover the rough spots.

Even if you work constantly, you may not get paid constantly. I'm currently waiting for almost $4,000 from publishers. I have absolutely no idea when I'm getting any of that money. In some cases, I don't even know IF I'm getting it. I try and only take jobs from reliable companies, but there's no way of being 100% sure. "Payment upon completion" can mean 12 months after completion. "Payment upon publication"...well, you might want to avoid that, if you can. Yikes.

Here's a small cautionary tale, in which I will not mention any names. There is a company out there, a reasonably large company, which publishes RPG products based on a very well-known brand. Their talent roster is impressive. But here's what happened when I worked for 'em: I finished the first assignment they gave me, and they paid immediately. They also gave me a new assignment, which I completed. Then, I didn't get paid until they wanted me to do something else, which turned out to be months later. I couldn't get in touch with them at all during this time, although I sent e-mails and telephone messages to everyone I could think of. When I completed the new assignment, the entire fiasco was repeated...but this time, I did not take the next assignment that was offered. As a result, I was not paid until I phoned the art director AT HOME at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning. By that time, the payment was several months late. WTF? Needless to say, I won't be working for THEM again.

And that was a HAPPY ending. Because I try to be cautious about who I work for, I don't get ripped off as much as some people do, but I've had my share of it. Just about everyone in the freelance business has a horror story or several. You cannot rely on money being there just because somebody SAYS it'll be there.

Also...be very, very careful about who you free up large blocks of time for. Some jobs fall through, and you can end up scrambling desperately at the last second to fill the timeslot (and the paycheque) you so painstakingly carved out for some damn assignment that never came to fruition.

Oh. And one final word of advice--doing private commissions for friends or family is not always a good idea.
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Dignity isn't important. It's everything.

www.gorblimey.com - art

[ceenda]

I'm a Research Associate (yes, like Gordon Freeman, but without the cool suit).

Whilst the job would usually involve lots of tedious web-based programming, I'm lucky in that my boss knows about my arty side, so I get all the jobs we would usually outsource to others, which in turn means I get to play around with 3DSMax, Lightwave, Photoshop etc. at work. I'm not building spaceships or painting cool game designs, but it puts bread and butter on the table quite nicely (though I do tire of nothing but bread and butter after 5 years...). I also get a ton of discounts in shops and restaurants thanks to the University too.

Of course I would rather be working full time in games design, but things are going nicely at the moment.

[henrik]

adding a few things:

I work as a conceptual artist/matte painter. Somehow I ended up working on a small independent low budget bay area project...Star Wars something...

Freelance illustration seems to work very well if you can market yourself. I think the hardest part being an artist is the promotional aspect of the business. Being a great artist is not enough, you need a little bit of luck and a little bit of elbows. The nature of the work you want to do might vary alot from person to person, but in the field of illustration (or digital illustration to be specific) is wider than I expected when I first started out. You need to find areas where you can go and do "your thing" (hate to use the term). Find something you do very well and push forward in that direction, and you'll do fine. Don't go into areas where other people will regard you and your work as part of a big fat cliche. Find your thing and be smart.

Try freelance illustration for a short period of time. Set up a pipeline that seems to work for you, get an agent if you know someone you trust.
The important thing would be to get some experience and learn from that.
It doesn't matter how many times someone tells you this or that, it helps, but the knowledge comes from mistakes and (bad) experience.

good luck.
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http://www.somniostudios.com

[tayete]

I am a Process/Operations designer. In fact I am the chief of the department, but it is boring as hell. All I do is workshops and brainstormings, paint flowcharts, and lead projects which usually end with my nerves broken.
CEENDA, I envy you!
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_ _ _____ _ _
http://tayete.blogspot.com

[Artifex]

I got a fine art degree from Georgia Southern University here in the US, and I've been working almost exclusively since graduation as a web designer (no thanks to the worthless BFA degree). Through a lot of hard work on my own, I picked up all the skills I needed to compete. I even managed to hold down a design job through the dot com crash. One of the benefits of being full time with a fortune 500 company, I suppose. :]

Most of the work I've done involves coding front-end web tech, rather than actual design work. Whoever it was here that said programming sucks your soul is correct, but it does pay the bills. That's pretty important when you have a three-year-old depending on you.

I'm not sure if I'd ever have the cajones to try out illustration as a career. It sounds like so many people here have had difficulty keeping a steady income while doing so.

I do love doing art, and I'm sure I'll keep working on my own projects privately until I judge my stuff to be good enough to try and get paid for it. I think it was Michael Whelan who suggested you wait to try your hand in the illustration market until you can stand your stuff up next to competing artists' work and judge it of like quality.
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Artifex

[Fobulous]

well i've always considered myself an artist, but the tragic flaw i have, is that i'm quite shy. (writing this actually scares me, i don't know why but its just in my nature not to converse with people). i hardly ever talk to anyone about art, and something that i've always done, actually it would be better expressed as: lacked doing, is saving my work. i would paint/draw something and just throw it away (well not really throw it way, more like put it aside permanantly). my philosophy was always "if i can do it once i can do it again" which is in some cases true, but i forget that i grow as an artist, so essentially "no" i can't create some that i've done. that piece of art work represented who i was then, and what i create now represents me now. i hope i'm making sense. i guess what i kinda regret is not being able to see physically, what and how i've progressed.

uuhhhh... so i guess after that self-reflective nonsense that has absolutely nothing to do with whats going-on in this discussion...

reading what everyone has written, it has actually been very encouraging... i always thought that being an artist you had to be alone and crazy, sorta like van gogh... and its because of what has been posted here that i believe i'm going to take art seriuosly and use it as a way to live on. financially and expressively. ok . ramble over

thanks meaty-ogre
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K.eep I.t S.imple S.tupid

[xheadinthecloudx]

I'm more of a lurker, and hardly a professional illustrator, but I'll throw in my 2 cents...

I graduated from a state college in 03, with a BFA in Graphic Design, and spent a year 'permalancing' for RCN, a cable/telecom company with their corporate HQ in Princeton, NJ. It paid -very- well (freelance rates for a 40+ hour/week job = a good think), but creatively, it sucked me dry, and made me miserable. I left a week before they declared bankruptcy, after a year of work. Now I'm Art Directing for a large ad agency, in the group that does beer of all thing (I don't drink, so it's a bit odd)... I get to do alot more cool stuff, especially for the Mexican beers we do stuff for (neon signs, illuminated signs, beer calenders [yes, the ones with girls]). And it's a much less stuffy environment.

I plan on hanging on here for a couple years, then perhaps moving on. In the end, it's still an ad agency, with lots of 'less than creative' stuff going on. Can't help it, but I want to do more high-end, conceptual design.
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They don't know who they're f***ing with... they're f***ing with a lean, mean, tattooed, rated-g boy scout.
-Henry Rollins

[MoejoeIC]

APOLOGIES THIS IS A LONH RANTING POST SKIP DOWN TO THE BOTTOM TO THE NEAR END SENTENCE IF YOU WANT THANKS
I fell into this industry, literally, after injuring myself in Desert Storm while I was in the Marine Corps.

I put myself through school doing graphic design getting my degree in Marketing about fifteen years ago at the birth of desktop publishing industry. I was the president of the advertising club and had all the contacts at my very large school. I was involved in everything and knew everything that was going on. I was visually hungry and thirsty for information. I worked in the trenches at Kinko's and learned as much as I could about art and becoming an expert in my field at photoshop and other design programs. I knew all the technical answers and could help the professors teach class. I had several job opportunities, could pick and choose and would hook up my friends with any thing I didn't want. My portfolio sucked at the time but I worked hard, very hard, improving it.

After graduation I worked at the world's largest advertising agencies doing media planning, unhappily. My days in the Corps hammered home the lesson of attention to detail and having a good reputation for diligence and a good work ethic with all my contacts I moved into the creative end.

It was great creating bitchin' art that everyone saw and affected culture and life around you and I won several award shows. I set my goals high and achieved them. The agency I worked at was an incredible mix of incompetence and brilliance - Incredibly clueless Account Executives whose only job is to sell your ideas and schmooze the client. Brilliance working with very talented sharp people your creative coworkers, doing on demand on the spot instant creativity. Incredible amounts of hard work and overtime, sometimes worth it, most of the time not. AE's ineptly, over promising the world and us delivering it. After being bought out by the world's second largest ad agency after someone lost one of our key accounts (probably because on of the AE's wouldn't sleep with a troll client - no joke) most of the staff was laid off.

I went into freelance. It was ok, heady times, feast or famine, constant worrying about money. I wasn't very good at freelance, terrible businessman, often I wouldn't charge my clients for a lot of little stuff, as there were my friends and still are these many years later. I tried doing it with a friend and that didn't work out either and wouldn't recommend it. Throughout the whole time, I again just concentrated on building my skills and portfolio and taking classes. Started going to Art Center in Pasadena but i already had my BA and honestly couldn't spend $72k getting another degree, I just finished paying off my student loans this last year. It makes me angry to hear them promising students the world there and other art schools, especially transportation design majors. They make it sound like * wave the magic wand * and you'll have this great paying job. You won't. Lot's of crap jobs sure.

Anyway, I had some good jobs in between and learned a lot, I won some big awards and built up an impressive resume and portfolio. We laughed, we joked, we worked long and hard into the night because that is what you did to learn, to get ahead, to improve your work to get promoted to make more money to get the next best job. Finally, after a lot of hard work I what is considered by most to be a great job, making good money; working at the world's biggest toy company. I don't want to say what brands because writing this kind of stuff down has away of coming back and biting you in the butt and some of my coworkers peruse these forums... But it was little toy cars and pink doll type stuff. Now some of you are probably going * wow * cool! toys and stuff oooo * clap clap * that must have been fun! Uhh, no.

Let me make it perfectly clear here, and take it for what it is worth, I will neither gloss this over nor paint darkly unnecessarily. Great company, shit job. Good money, good benefits, prestigious name on the resume. And don't get me wrong, either, I love and respect most of my coworkers, seriously some of the best, most talented people around but the place was a salt mine of stress and pressure and deadlines and idiotic or ill thought out direction and poor communication.

One of the things you should be aware of is that the non-experts around you will have no qualms about pulling off the wings of your butterflies. Everyone in this industry around has an opinion and the greater the importance of a project the more likely an unqualified subjective direction will be imposed on your creativity. Your area of expertise has little respect these days.

Second, for me and those of you out there who have read this far tell me if you disagree - There are several taskmasters working over your head who will have no problems wasting your energy on something to dismiss it with a haughty wave of their hands. As a creative, you are supposed to enjoy what you do and therefore many will take advantage of that. When you deliver miracles, they become expected and in this industry, well expect sainthood.

All of this leads me to what happened next - I worked for five years at that company, I worked hard. I put an exorbitant amount of blood, sweat, tears and love into the products that I worked on. I worked diligently, loyally and with passion. I sat behind the computer 10+ hours a day with an hour and a half commute each way eating fast food all day I gained 40lbs on and off and developed diabetes from sitting behind a desk at this "dream job" that many people would kill for. No social life, fat half blind from sitting behind a monitor all day I haven't had any since it had me. Foul and surly from dealing with Marketing ineptness all day long "our strategy should be to make it yellow" (If you can't see anything wrong with that direction you should not be in this industry, if you can you should not be in this industry.) I can't play well with others.

Because the job is in Southern California I couldn't afford to buy a house when I started working there, hence the commute. Now real estate prices are through the roof so even if I had enough to meet the down now I still can't afford it. I am a single guy and though I was making $70k the IRS considers me rich because there is some jerk in Kentucky making $7 an hour working at McD's and 40k sq ft house costs $35,000. After taxes I am really not bringing home that much more than my first job out of college. Don't get me wrong, I can live comfortably but you add up a car payment $300 month, insurance cause you are in SoCal $130mo. $1300 rent, utilities $150, food $250 etc Well good luck saving up for that $400,000 two bedroom condo, you know the one on the bad side of town.

Anyway, last April I was laid off with 300 others and my jobbed outsourced to China or to someone else at half the pay.

No. If you asked me if I would do it all over again, I would not. No, I would not.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE READ THIS SENTENCE -> In the early days of this industry most are puppets or mechanics at best, the higher you go you're just an art prostitute, make no bones about it at least in my humble opinion, just turning the most unpleasant art tricks around closing your eyes and hoping for the occasional art orgasm for whomever pays you the most.

No, I would have been a veternerian .

Meat Ogre go sell insurance and paint on weekends. My next job is going to be at Starbucks and I am going to move to some small town where there is nothing to do but drink and F***. Not that I want to sound bitter about it : ) In fact I have more opportunity now than I ever have. Everything in this industry is 10% what happens and 90% how you react - I am just going to tell you as I see it and hopefully I didn't hold back...