Let’s imagine such a situation: you are an artist, and you draw not only “on the table” and for yourself, but you are already earning money with your art. It doesn’t matter if it’s freelancing, working on projects, working in an office, or just a part-time hobby. Drawing brings you some sort of income. It would be cool if that income increased even more, wouldn’t it?
Let’s turn the topic around and talk about the CG artist skills that will increase your income from what you love to do.
1) Curiosity and willingness to learn new things (all the time).
The world of CG is very fickle and is always evolving: new programs, updates, techniques and methods are emerging. So even if you’ve honed your skills in one area, you can and should look to other areas as well. For example, if you’re cool doing character concept, you can learn how to do UI. Or if you are creating 3D models, learn how to work with textures as well. 2D artists should know 3D, and vice versa. Versatile specialists are quite scarce, and naturally they are valued.
2) Adherence to Pipeline
Every creative profession is often associated with chaos and disorder. But it is following a clear payline (sequence of tasks) that makes an artist’s job so much easier. First, you understand what you need to do at this point and what action is next. And secondly, it is a significant time saver.
Following a plan doesn’t kill spontaneity and creativity: on the contrary, it makes it easier to work, because you don’t waste energy trying to figure out what to do next, but free your mind for cool ideas. As a result, the quality of work improves, time is saved, and cool projects are added to your portfolio.
3) Ability to present the work in a cool way
A portfolio is your business card, personal exhibition and one way to interact with the world. Therefore, it is important that your work is designed to be “tasteful”. Often, even if the work is average in terms of performance, but designed in a spectacular project, it will cause interest, draw attention to itself, collect more “likes” (and this is, first of all, a tool to promote their work). Conversely, cool quality work can be ruined by a bad pitch – it just won’t get noticed! So, it’s important to turn on designer mode and work on the design before you post projects on different sites.
4) Activity
Yes, yes, it just so happens that most artists are introverts. Though it’s such a time now that this statement is becoming a stereotype. In the age of social media, you can connect with just about any artist from anywhere in the world. You put your work out while in Russia, and it gets noticed, for example, by the Japanese. And it’s awesome! It is important to forget about shyness, be active online. And not only to post their work and wait for likes, but also to be interested in what is happening with “colleagues”: to look for new interesting artists, to communicate with them, to find their community, to tell fascinating stories about their work – in general, to be active. This can bring both useful acquaintances and offers of cooperation.
5) Ability to objectively evaluate one’s labor
It’s important to both not overcharge for your work and to set aside unnecessary modesty. Find the middle ground. Not agreeing to work for pennies (unless it’s projects for the sake of fanfare), but also not hogging the price when artistic skills are at a basic level. If in doubt, find an expert in your field to whom you can show your portfolio and consult.
And of course, the most important thing – don’t stop, keep drawing, keep adding to your portfolio, participate in Challenges and practice all the time. Any practice leads to better skills, and skills always work to a plus. Including revenue enhancement.