The bad experiences - Character design - My Artwork Pt21

in #art7 years ago

And now about a not-so-pleasant experience, as opposed to the one in my last post. I kept avoiding writing about this one, but it happened so can't go ignoring it.

Success in life is often two steps forward, one step back, and this is a story about one of my backsteps, which I occasionally think about, wondering whether my life would have been much different now if I was to make a different decision then.

Screen Shot 2018-01-24 at 21.38.21.png

When I was in my last year of university, I had a profile on the Elance website, where artists can find freelance work, and was contacted by a creative director of one Russian company in Moscow. He was developing a mobile app game for kids which he later wanted to make into a cartoon if i remember correctly. He asked whether I could come up with the character design and draw the storyboard of a script he would send over to me.

Screen Shot 2018-01-24 at 21.38.42.png

Although on one end excited, I was also quite fearful since the only experience I had was the one I got at university (which right now makes me think was probably the best one - I had my art college professors right by me to go for advice to and my mind was fresh, having only just learnt these things).

In addition to this, I had no idea on how much I should be charging for this job (again, now i think that any payment would have been good payment as the experience coming with it would have been golden).

Screen Shot 2018-01-24 at 21.39.16.png

After doing the research and speaking to a bunch of people, i found out that the amount i was being offered is considered as an underpayment for the amount of work asked from me. Feeling very uncertain, I went for advice to my mom and her friend who was pretty savvy about business matters. The two of them went on about how talanted I was (of course, what else was a mother to say!) and how the guy was taking advantage of me. They assured me that I will find better deals and that I shouldn't let people use me this way.

Screen Shot 2018-01-24 at 21.39.35.png

Sigh.
A note for starting out artists: Sometimes mom's want good for you, but they just don't know...
Another note for starting out artists: Money is not essential at the start of your career - build experience and reputation first of all...

So you all guessed what I did. In the end I rejected the offer. The guy was not happy, first of all for wasting his time as we had already discussed the project and I had already made several sketches of the characters.

Screen Shot 2018-01-24 at 21.39.28.png

Life went on, and I was not contacted by a creative director this randomly any time soon.

P.S. All images in this post are the character design sketches I made back then for this project, they are all watercolor drawings.

So Sad
Screen Shot 2018-01-23 at 12.44.46.png
^ that's me when I was like 2

Sort:  

Yeah, sounds like it wasn't a great decision but good learning experience. On the other hand, you knew your value an stuck to it.

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.25
TRX 0.25
JST 0.039
BTC 95803.39
ETH 3334.91
USDT 1.00
SBD 3.31