This is a weekly recap of the goings-on in my professional life – to keep track of what I’m doing and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independant creative.
This last week has been mostly been about flipping out.
Inherent to the life of the freelancer is not having a steady income, but I haven’t really been in that situation yet since I started to pick up steam a few months back. And so after a few days where I had to both pay some hefty incidental costs aswell as suffer cuts on income that was taken for granted, I saw the fictional line in my head where I feel comfortable with my bank balance approach. Which is nonsense because I have several thousands left in my buffer and a payday coming soon, but that immediate feedback of dipping below what I’ve marked as ‘doing well’, together with winding down some assignments caused me to get nervous.
What helped me was remembering the independant’s motto someone once imparted on me: ‘If these are my problems, I will take em’. Which is to say that worrying about getting paid for drawing, something I already like to do, and I think was made to do, is still infinitely better than worrying about long meetings, getting up at 7 AM, and deadlines on projects I don’t nescessarily like. It’s easy to forget that sometimes.
It also jolted me into looking for new opportunities. In my quest to ‘add legs under this table’ I started a webshop, wrote to a few potential clients, explored other avenues where I could use my talents, found that I could cut my healthcare costs considerably etcetera. And that, mostly, the feeling that things are happening, is what got me comfortable again.
So don’t be scared of being scared!
Anyway, that was like a day or two. The rest of the week I was working on the final designs for the second mascotte I was commissioned to draw, and got Unity to the point where it does all the things I want from it. Having my character walk around in the same space – properly scaled and interacting with the environment – in both engines was good to see. ‘Advanced scripting’ is the only thing left on my test checklist before I can seriously consider porting the whole project over to Unity. In the meantime there is a lot of background art and animation left to do which helps keep the project going outside of this engine stalemate.