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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
^ that's me when I was like 2
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.