Inhouse game artist 17yrs experience - thinking of going freelance

[pixelworlde]

Hi

Been an inhouse game artist for 17 years in senior roles, thinking of going freelance so am putting the feelers out!

Worked on almost 30 titles (multi formats) including several No.1 AAA hits, on most systems since the late 80's including:
Xbox 360, Xbox, PS2, Playstation, PC, Arcade Coin-Op, Nintendo SNES, Sega Megadrive, Atari, Amiga.

Some of my titles include:
Crackdown (Xbox360), Driver (Playstation), Deltaforce Black Hawk Down (PC), Medal of Honor (PS2), Comanche (PC) etc.

Specialised in environments for several years but have experience with pretty much all aspects of game art development including pixel work.

Im interested to hear from anyone, and please dont be put off by thinking Im too expensive, Im open to all enquiries and I did start on the indie circuit many eons ago!

My website is:

http://www.pixelworlde.com

And I can be contacted through there or my profile here on indiegamer.

Cheers.

[Andy]

I have to approve pixelworlde: you've learned something in these 17 years...
Looked at your website - awesome job!!!

[lennard]

If I were you I would try a few contracts first and make sure that you can make enough to survive on. I left a day job 4+ years ago and I'm pretty happy that I went indie... but it was a slog financially and I had done an independant stint from 88-94 so I already knew what I was getting into.

Best of luck, it's worth it if you can figure it out.

[pixelworlde]

Lol, cheers Andy :)

Lennard, Yeah your absolutely right, the mainstream industry rarely uses freelancers nowadays. Although outsourcing/contract workers are now bieng used more and more it tends to be inhouse contracting and or outsourcing companies, not individuals.
Had to deal with some myself and Im 50/50 as to their competence/skills, some are decent others produce shoddy, poor work that in the end requires more work to fix than doing from scratch yourself!

Thanks for the feedback, glad things are going well for you! :)

So just to clarify if any indys are looking for work, Im open to it and doesnt mean Im going to charge a zillion. I think the indy scene is great for the industry and will help out where I can!

[michalczyk]

Hi pixelworlde,

I'm an artist myself and have been working in the game biz since 1996. In early 2004 I started freelancing again. It was OK the first couple of years but then things started going downhill. Partly due to me loosing interest in making graphics for big games. The process is simply not very enjoyable to me these days.

One thing is dealing with the overhead that the communication process creates when working off-site with people you don't know. This is especially bad when the person you interact with has little to no experience - both parties loose a lot of time on issues that should be a no-brainer.

The other thing is that the technology changes in such a way that a single artist has less and less control over how his work will look in game. I'm especially referring to texture work - now with normal maps, etc. I used to love doing textures the old fashioned way - painting it all on one bitmap. I could see it in game pretty much the way I painted. Today this is no longer the case. All the separate maps and rich engine controls, gives LD's and other artists ability to change the looks of each texture. Basically there are too many cooks involved in doing one dish and the end result is often less than what I expected - which too me makes it not worth my effort.

I also think that you are right about fewer companies hiring freelancers these days as I get fewer inquiries from game companies.

So about a year ago I decided to see if I can live from my personal art by selling posters, prints, calendars, screensavers, subscriptions, etc. Similarly to what digitalblasphemy.com (http://digitalblasphemy.com) is doing. So far I had little success, but enough to see the possibility of this happening within a few years time. I still want to do freelancing, especially for indie games, as I like their attitude better :) but as my income from personal work increases I will gradually down phase the freelancing.

BTW, since last summer I have taken a small side job ~15h/week at the local supermarket. This frees my mind from worrying about money (as it just about covers my costs of living, which are very modest) and gives me plenty of time to work toward my goal.

So for me freelancing have been tough lately but I think I found a good alternative. Maybe this could work for you too.

[moco]

Just to say, lovely stuff! I still remember the Baal cover art after all these years :)

[SMG]

I would like to get in touch with you...