What is working freelance like?
polycounter lvl 10
I'm currently managing a restaurant and want my "in" into the video game industry. I was just curious as to what working freelance is like? Preferably environment artists. But feel free to share your stories, thoughts and advice regardless of job type.
Replies
(other people seem to enjoy it though!)
It's generally stressful due to the need to look for new work. If you're not constantly looking or simply not having much luck, you'll likely have big gaps between work. So be sure to save as much of your money as you can, and set your rates accordingly to account for lack of work.
Working from home is a very solitary thing. Depending on how social of a person you are and how much you need every day human interaction, it may not be for you. I've been working freelance/remotely for about 6-7 years and it's weird. I'm used to it for the most part now but I do feel like sort of a hermit. In general, there are pros and cons. Once you get over the initial "I'm working from home I can do whatever I want - proceed to watch porn all day" phase it can be very productive, as you don't have all the distractions that working on site typically tends to provide. Co-workers bothering you, endless meetings, etc. On the other hand you can easily give yourself endless distractions as well, so you really have to learn to manage your time. I set work hours, and my office is in a different part of the house, when work hours are over, I force myself to get out of the office (unless I'm in a groove or have an important deadline). This was hard to get adjusted to as well and when I first started freelancing I was probably spending 12+ hours a day in my office, now I try to limit it to 8-ish.
I've very happy with where I'm at, but currently I'm in more of an offsite employee situation rather than a freelance artist, so I don't have to worry about finding the next job or meeting insane deadlines that usually comes with contract work.
But aren't there great advantages from it?
You can take nap, breaks, stroll in the parks whenever you want? Waking up in the morning early, get stuck in the subway and going back home sleeping in the bus tired is not something people enjoy daily.
I mean as long as you get the work done form the client, did you feel constrained? Is there a lot of stress?
All my issues with freelance have more to do with me choosing to help family out with their problems when doing freelance is a big concern on it's own. I could make a whole post about doing that and I haven't hit a bad enough spot to say no yet and kick them out my apartment so I can work in peace among other issues they cause at mostly my expense...
Don't expect to be able to help other people is what I'm saying I guess. I'd be fine and prepared otherwise.
I can do all those things at my office. I can take a nap at lunch in my car (or an empty conference room). I take a stroll around the block and go get a coffee when I need a break. There's no one hovering over me that yells at me if I take a break.
As far as a commute, well that depends where you live. My commute is pretty short.
You can't really do those things if you want to maintain a healthy work-life balance. You'll end up working stupid late hours or falling wayyyyyy behind. The best advice is to keep a normal 8 hour work shift and treat it like work. Get up at roughly the same time every day, get dressed like you would to go out to work, make your coffee, work, and when evening rolls around you stop working and do something else. Also if your buddies, spouse, life-partner, children, parents, etc work a normal work day, they will probably plan activities in the evening and you won't be able to attend because you were goofing off all day. So now you have to crunch though the evening hours and into the late night to play catch up.
Plus, your clients will be on a normal work schedule so expect them to come contacting you in the morning and during the regular work day. So you might as well adopt a fairly regular work schedule.
Fair enough.
It hurts my heart that it's like that, and I wish it was otherwise. I can see myself freelancing fulltime because I want to, but right now, it definitely feels like if no one is willing to pick me up for onsite work, I HAVE to freelance.
The waiting between work is the killer part. There's other Polycounters I share the pain with, but it's a personal weight when I'm home alone.
I wish someone could provide a soluton for me to gestate, but most of this just seems to be praying and aggressively waiting by applying to as many jobs as I reasonably can. Networking helps to keep me sane, but even driving out to those is a calculation against my budget.
I totally agree with this. I worked freelance for arch vis/training sim type 3D work for little over a year, and I honestly got the feeling of being very cooped up often. I personally am very much more inspired while working in a studio environment, nothing better than accomplishing things as a team effort IMO and growing from it.
Plus, you can just grow so much when you are challenged by those who are one step ahead of you. If you are at home freelancing, you don't have that constant surrounding push to really build your skillset. Working in a team environment has opened my eyes to learning FX and really push me to better my lighting skills, and get one on one tips and tricks from coworkers on different aspects of development.
surely you spend the time between work to improve your art skills? praying and waiting dont seem very useful. hope i dont come off as i douche, i was in a simular situation a year ago.
I never feel isolated as I have my family around me. I do sometimes miss working for an organisation, but it's not something I have considered for a long time.
Maybe not learning stuff from co workers is the hardest thing, takes me a lot longer to research things on my own.
Freelancing can be hard but it's rewarding as well. And personally I find it exhausting working with other people around. Meetings, time wasting, being blocked waiting for other people to finish their tasks, commuting, more rigid hours etc. Freelancing yeah you can easily find yourself working longer hours, but they're your hours, you can do whatever you want. Work at 4am if that's when you want. Take a nap. Cook yourself lunch. It's extremely flexible. Nobody cares what you do or where you are as long as you're hitting your milestones and making good looking stuff.
Anyways yeah I love it. It's like Dustin says though, you don't turn to freelance because the bar for entry is lower, that's a quick way to find yourself in money problems. Freelancing is just another route once you've hit that quality bar and you know you can succeed in helping make games. Freelance is if anything more competitive and more cut throat because there is typically no reason at all to keep a non-performing artist around.
with my clients usually trailing me by an hour (UK) or half a day (US) and me starting my work day between 4 and 5 AM most days, i am usually at least half-finished with whatever task by the time they queue in the office kitchen for their morning-coffee.
sadly i've never worked anywhere yet where you'd get that quiet corner desk, the aeron chair, your choice of fast machine, screen sizes and light setup - and the balcony for sunny breaks and the ability to just pop out and go shopping for a break (i live like a 5 minute subway ride from downtown).
if there is a studio offering all that without much of a commute in a livable country where they don't require you to sign up to some slave-labor-visa then we can talk.
my experience is just that sitting all day at work and commuting with the sheep means you work against your natural rhythm, never get to make the most of the day and you come home rather tired. my day feels like it has a lot more hours left to me now.
but yes, lack of colleagues beyond a skype chat can be a bit of a bummer at times. also if you'Re the type who needs to be really invested in the overall project, this will not be for you. to me it's my task that is the center of my world, i hardly see the projects.
The flip side of this is that you will feel a lot more financial stress whenever your are getting close to finishing a contract. I have been really lucky and have managed to stay full time employed as a contractor for almost 5 years without a gap of more than a month in my schedule. To do that you need to be willing to post your work everywhere and sell yourself.
Also I agree with what some others have said, if you don't feel confident about getting mid level studio jobs then it probably won't go well.
If you're going to do it you absolutely need something to do that'll get you out of the house and around other people. A hobby or sport or whatever. I recommend board games, personally. If you don't you're liable to wind up an isolated, depressive mess. I can tell you, that's not much fun.
Definitely am working on personal projects in the mean time. "Aggressively waiting" as I'm calling it now.
this... is really subjective to be honest.
I become a worn-out permanently depressed mess when I have to interact with too many people at once (by some reason, this issue surfaced pretty awfully since moving to North America);
in my experience, if one can get a decent stream of clients to cover costs of living and have an extra distraction budget planned in advance, this could be fun, provided there's enough effort put into time management, and pushing yourself to work a certain minimal number of hours every day.
mixing work marathons with regular short travel trips is one of the things I personally want to focus on next, so that's it.
being freelancer and not working from home are totally not exclusive, besides our own office some of our freelance artists from all over the world work in shared offices.
Yea, I would be totally down for that. Especially if I could collaborate with other people when needed.
The work wasn't really flowing in though, I found it easier to get studio jobs than freelance.
But I hope someday I can stay at home and work as I like to focus on making that one thing really pretty more then running around on meetings, just waiting for myself to magically mature.
I think thats this shitty time every freelancer has to go through. And as an individual iremember panicking after every single job... "what if i will never get work again" than a shitty job comes in you just take to keep working and then the next good one comes in and you either have to turn it down or crunch your ass off. But this settles after a while, and i guess it is also due to the studio that formed out of this freelancing, but right now we got steady jobs coming in, long gigs for great clients - i guess you just have to stick to it to make yourself a valuable asset for clients.
Ultimately it's about doing interesting projects.
Ultimately, I find I'm a LOT more productive at home. I don't need to send my work through anyone for approvals or crits, I don't need to attend meetings, I don't need to try and block out noisy co-workers, etc. I just work.
Consequently, I can work LESS hours and get MORE done simply because it's nothing but pure focus. For introverts, like myself, it's ideal. So far, anyway...
There's ways you can break up the isolation like looking for meetup groups near you, trying to network more and using a collaborative workspace. The problem is trying to find regular meetups that happen often, since a dev meet once every month or so isn't gonna make a whole lot of difference. I'm based in London and still have a hard time finding these events, although meetup.com is good for that. Is anyone able to comment on their experience with a collaborative workspace, do you find renting the space expensive?
EDIT: Also, in case anyone missed this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
I'm back in a studio that does art for video game clients, so I only half gave-up on freelancing.
This is another thing I would like to do, have a job where I'm paid to freelance.
Let someone else handle finding clients...
Well kinda the same for me, tho it grew more into a company. To me not much has changed besides having to care for more than just me. Dat pressure >.<
Most artists are going to have a vastly different freelance experience than guys like Neox, Warren, who have multiple years of experience, plenty of shipped AAA titles a sterling reputation within the community, and a diverse portfolio.
Some freelancers have to turn away a LOT of work at a high $$rate on amazing projects, as there is too much of it offered, while others can't get a sniff.
yes and no, Warren was inhouse most of his career as far as i know? Out of 50 games i have worked on, only 2 have been as an employee and maybe 5 in total have been on site, all of them german productions almost unknown to foreign gamers. I worked alone from home for about 1-2 years, then jobs got bigger and i wanted to work in a team of 2.5 artists with settlers 6 and 7. Still VERY local brands, heck i worked on beautyhotel for pets and pony riding games.
It is this sucky phase you need to push through to build your reputation, I struggled, I ate shit, and in the beginning of Airborn Studios our neck almost got broken, several times.
Lot's of things to learn and adapt to, I HOPE we passed the worst, but I am still always cautios and try to stay humble despite the crazy projects we got to work on during the years.
Eh, 2.5 artists? Is one of them a dwarf?
Like landing and dealing with clients, billing, negotiating, taxes. Recently I was annoyed by a client request and I have to TALK to this person over the phone. I have to remind myself to put on my customer service mode and not lose a potential 16K job (spread out over time).
Lots of gigs arent strictly deadline dependent. Start with easy jobs you can do one day out of a week just to help build your confidence. And if you're starting just for the experience and you have a day job you're in a position to demand high rates and can quickly walk out of a deal if it doesn't suit your time and effort.
Some remote jobs posted here (if you can do work outside of gamedev): https://jobs.creativecow.net/search.php
2 fulltime positions one supporter
Now we also got quarter positions hehe
@MagicSugar: I think one should at least have some studio experience. In my case it was over 5 years prior to going freelance. Going from your studies to this, i would call insane. Get some proper pipeline experience. Even if the pipeline is not great, the whole interaction with teammembers and working TOGETHER is an experience every should make prior to freelancing. Imho of course, some might not have that luxury.
Also I think, it cant hurt to get broken in your first jobs. I destroyed both my hands from working too much, an experience that makes me treat stuff way more professional these days.
I have seven years of studio gamedev experience and one year of simdev on-site work. If status salary or career highlights is my priority today yeah for sure I'd still be in an office doing the same old crunch times.
I didn't plan my own career trajectory this way. A lay off, living in a city that's not gamedev rich, and parenthood have transformed me into the freelancer Dad
Although I'm not freelance now, I do work in a Games Hub (shared office) in Bristol. It's a good mix of small studios and freelancers. Freelancers get to socialise, share work, share knowledge and make new contacts. Pretty cheap as well, as monthly rent is less than what you would make in a day.
Unusual you get something like this (especially games specific), but there seems to be more of these shared office spaces and hubs opening. I'm sure there are similar spaces in London, although being London probably aren't cheap.
I recommend any freelancers that can afford it to have a good search in their city for any technology or games related shared spaces.
Just make sure your stuff is well protected, your data encrypted etc.
I've only had experience with long term contracts, but I'd say seek out long contract is if you can! As others have mentioned, looking for the next client is stressful.
edit: this has really turned into the freelancers thread.
Do you guys keep a laptop for on site work? or are you tied to your PC's? I'm waiting for the new Surface 4...