Feb. – Mar./1st quarter Recap

Time flew by in the last weeks. I’ve been quite busy, worked 7days a week mostly and of course let the daily sketch and many other things i wanted to do slip by. Sorry for that.

We still have a few days of march left, but i already know what i’ll be working on in these days and with that little room for suprises i can write up the summary for the last two months already. I’ll also add a few sentences of conclusion to my first quarter of freelancing after my employement.

In february i did some mood concept art for the same game that i worked on in january, i did some advertising work for a german car manufacturers trade fair booth, one book cover illustration for which Felix Mertikat provided the sketch and the contacts and one book interior illustration for a book due in the first quarter of 2013. A healthy mixture of jobs i’d say.
March however i did one major job for Bigpoint – my former employer. I did four illustrations supposed for Pirate Storm’s marketing efforts. Interesting job in many ways, i did more illustrations for Bigpoint in this month and as a freelancer than i did in my one year of employement as a Lead Concept Artist there.
Besides that job i also worked some concept art again (props for a new title) and will continue to do more concept art (but for another title again, character designs this time) in the coming days.
I won’t be able to show the concept art for years, I’m not allowed to say for whom or for which titles i work as well, sorry.
The book cover and marketing illustrations i will be able to show as soon as the publishers have shown them, in a few weeks i guess.

As interesting as it is to read my vague descriptions on what i worked, i guess it might be just as interesting what i didnt work on and maybe why those jobs didn’t happen.

I didn’t do:
A CD booklet illustration – got an e-mail, responded with a cost estimate, didn’t hear back.

4-10 frame Storyboard – I didn’t have the time for it, it was one of those “we need someone right now but can’t brief you until late this day and need it done tomorrow”-calls.

3-12 frame Storyboard – the agency didn’t agree to my cost estimate. As it is often the case the agency wanted to ensure my service for a job of “probably 3-12 frames” to be done “from thursday to monday morning” with the briefing “probably on thursday afternoon”. Now that’s a lot of variables and so i responded as i always do, that i would love to do the work but with such uncertain circumstances i can only offer to be booked per day. They didn’t want to go for that. They wanted to know a per frame price while all the details besides the deadline where entirely unsure. I couldn’t agree to that and so we parted ways.

An 8 frame animatic – basically the same issue as with the before mentioned storyboard.

A double page spread illustration for a companys annual report – the client decided to go with an photography instead of an illustration.

3 Advertising illustrations – another “can you start now, we need it on monday”-job, but i was again busy with something else so i wasn’t able to take it.

a board game illustration job – i only got rough numbers and theme description of illustrations that where to be created, it was something like 1 large box-artwork, 1 board field artwork, 12 card illustrations, 6 small artworks for promotional and game manual purposes, including all usage rights. I delievered a cost estimate for a good 16 workdays and got laughter in return. I was offered 2400$ for the job and decided to not take it.

A food packaging illustration – i can only guess that the client didn’t want to spend the money for licencing the artwork of a well known american illustrator that he favored and therefore asked to have it copied with as little alteration as possible. I explained that a slight alteration is basically fraud/art theft, declined but offered to do a new illustration in the style and as an homage to the american illustrator instead. I didn’t hear back from them.

Another CD-packaging illustration – i didn’t know them and they only offered fame and fortune and good karma in an e-mail that didn’t even spell my name correctly.

A staff-portrait illustration for a company – i unfortunately didn’t have the time for it.

Storyboard coloring – Didn’t have the time.

That’s it so far.

It was a good first 3 months and i wouldn’t mind continueing like this for the rest of the year. I like the mixture of doing concept art, some advertising and some other illustration work. I like the jumping around from project to project as well and the different things that i have to focus on. While doing concept art often requires me to do research and learn about culture, the print/fine illustration jobs require me to look at other illustrators works, learn from them and adapt. Advertising is advertising, not much to it.
I don’t regret going back to freelancing. After this first three months i still have to see a downside to it, everything is going well and i just hope that it continues to do so.

For april i don’t have any jobs in my schedule right now, i might be doing some illustrations for a website and maybe for another book, but that’s not sure right now. Also maybe some more concept art, but that also hasn’t been decided yet.
If i find myself with too much time at my disposal i want to work on my portfolio, start with the development of a small phone game and/or start reviewing some of the many artbooks that i have (i need to raise an inventory for the insurance company anyways, since the collection exceeds the coverage of the “usual insurance client”). And many other small or big projects that i can invest time on. It certainly won’t be boring, whatever happens.