2015 Summary and Freelancing with Local vs Foreign Clients

Posted January 1, 2016

Happy new year everyone! !

2015 has been a year of transitions. I started working freelance full-time since March. The company I worked for changed industries and left the gaming industry unfortunately. This has been the main push for me and my colleagues to get out of our comfort zones.

I thought freelancing would make it a lot easier for me to do personal art but, it was the opposite and my schedule(or lack of one) got messed up way too easily. This is something I’m still working on.

I’ve also encountered all sorts of clients. I want people to get an idea of how this freelancing thing works so I’ve made a list below of my clients so far.

Foreign Client #1 – The client found me from a past client. The work was great but I had to do work that was not what I was aiming for but I learned a lot.
Local Client #2 – Got referred by a friend and did some stylized work for kids with the help of my girlfriend. The client didn’t pay in full and had lots of complications because we never had a contract which was my fault too.
Local Client #3 – Got work from old workmates. It was for a children’s book so the style was new to me. I collaborated with my gf again. It was fun and short but the style wasn’t for me.
Local Client # 4 – Got referred by old workmates. The work was what I really wanted but the communication and pacing was terrible so we had to jump ship eventually.
Foreign Client # 2 – The client found me from Artstation. I got to do lots of fantasy illustrations that I still can’t post. I’m still doing a lot of work for this client and hopefully I can post some stuff sometime this 2016.

Things would’ve been harder if not for my girlfriend. I got to hand it to her for always being there. <3

Basically, the lessons/highlights I got from 2015:

Local clients have not been ideal from our experience of 4 out of 5 clients. They want to meet up often which is a waste of time instead of just emailing comments. The pay is also not that great and most don’t know or want to do contracts.
Foreign clients have been better so far. Not only is it easier to talk to them but they also pay faster and better.
I finally registered myself as a professional freelancer. I will post a different blog post about this some time.
Get help if you think there’s not enough time. It’s better to get help from a friend instead of sacrificing the quality of your work
Scheduling is extremely critical. I’m working on this more now to get back more of my personal time. I use Google Calendar for repeating events, bills, etc and I use Google Keep for checklists.
Waiting on the right time to do your personal stuff isn’t going to work. It’s best to be strict with yourself and dedicate at least 30min a day on what you really want to do.

I guess that’s it. If you’ve read up to here, thank you very much! Now that being a freelancer has sort of stabilized, I’m sure there will be a lot more new stuff in store for 2016.

Cheers!

New Website!

Posted August 1, 2015

Hi Guys! You probably noticed that my site has a new layout!

It’s very hard to let go of the old website design since I put tons of hours into creating it. A lot of attention was put into the layout textures and details to try to emulate Blizzard websites. I think I sort of succeeded but change needs to happen. Right now, mobile has become the norm and websites need to adapt.

To create this site, I used a free theme called Bones. It apparently uses this new way to do CSS called SASS which stands for Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets! I threw the grungy look for a more clean and minimalistic approach where mobile comes first.

I really hope this works better overall to represent my capabilities. I actually added a few new images. Try to browse around and see them.

This is just the beginning and I can’t wait to create more art! Thanks for dropping by! 🙂

2014 Wrap Up

Posted December 31, 2014

Hey guys, I’ll just make this very short. Here are some stuff I did this year.

My last client work for the year below.

I also did a few speed paints that you can check at my facebook page.

Advanced Happy New Year!

The Sims 4! Finally!

Posted September 14, 2014

Sims 4!!

I don’t think I’ve really told you guys much about what I’ve done for work these past months/years so I’ll try to give more details now that the game is out.

I’m extremely proud to have been part of the creation of the Sims 4! I’ve been involved with it since the end of 2011 ’til March of 2014. I still can’t believe it was that long but it was definitely a fun learning experience! I’d like to detail everything out but it might bore you guys so I’ll just put bullet points of the highlights of production:

Did a few art tests and learned how to create design documents
Made props and room concept art using 3D as base
Learned the 3D hand painted texture style
First time to learn and use Zbrush for production
Lead a small team of 4 that eventually scaled up to 11 people
Thanks to these guys, I learned how to better communicate and how to organize things in excel sheets. Doing good art is one thing and managing a group of people to be consistent is a whole other level. My patience was tested but thanks to their support, we managed to pull everything together. Thanks to my teammates, Gizelle, Aaron, Anshelle, Marion, Maurice, MJ, Arvin, Emman, Mike, Nad, Teejay, JJ, Jackson, Chen, Jael, Noel, to the objects team, and to the rest of the crew at the office.
Our clients from EA visited us a few times in the Philippines and it was a memorable experience meeting them. Nothing beats getting feedback and lessons face to face. This was also the first time EA credited us outsourcers! Big thanks to Derek, Ti, Caiphus, Ethan, Alex, and Lisette! Thank you very much for everything!

Hope I didn’t bore you guys. Here are some of the 3D clothes I did for the game. EA did all the skin and most of the meshes so it was easier for us to put clothes on them. Cheers! (I don’t think I can release some concept art but this will do for now.)

PS: If you know me in real life.. these guys should look familiar. 😉

Diablo 3 Crusader Fanart!

Posted March 23, 2014

Hi guys! Sorry for the lack of updates! Too much work and life caught up… Anyway, the good thing is that I’m back!

Here’s my entry for the recent contest at Deviantart!

It’s just sad how DA poorly handled the contest. A vague rule apparently disqualified most entries and despite of that, some of the semifinalists they selected still violated this “rule” they were “strictly” enforcing.

Oh well… move on… More art to come!… soonish! 😀

The Last of Us Concept Art

Posted July 13, 2013

Hello again! Most of you guys have already heard about the masterpiece of a game, “The Last of Us” , by now. Yup, I was one of the extremely lucky ones to have contributed to it!

We were mostly tasked to create various product logos, store fronts, posters, ads, and all sorts of minor details of the game to make it seem real. I won’t post those stuff because it’s not really my forte.

These images which I just got the release approval to were my favorite contributions to the game. I haven’t played it yet but apparently, the firefly logo and group that I contributed to is an important part of the game!