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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Freelancer's Guide, Part 3: The Caged Bird

The world of the freelance artist is alot of hurry up and wait, not unlike being at the front of a line to receive a punch in the mouth.

The interesting thing is that you never know when you're going to suddenly have a small gap of time where you've got nothing to do. You may have 3 projects going simulataneously, but there will be one day when one art director is out sick and can't give you any feedback, one is in hawaii for the week, and one is just a jerk who can't be bothered to answer your emails for days at a time. And just like that. you'll have a half a day on your hands.

You may be paralyzed by this new found free time, just as a caged bird won't immediately fly out of an open cage..you've both forgotten how to be free. At some point during the last 6 months of drawing zombie pirate robots, all those thoughts of doing a nice landscape painting or learning some new media have gone from your mind. So, the lesson for today is: do not waste these precious moments. They are sparkling jewels in otherwise muddy sludge of your schedule. Do some personal work...read some tutorials...figure out what on earth the high pass filter is for in photoshop and why anyone would want to use it. But regardless, do something.

 In that spirit, here's a rough study for what will hopefully become a polished matte at some point when my schedule opens up. one of the areas which I'm sorely lacking in is matte painting, so with any luck, that'll be my area of focus in the coming year.


On another note, for anyone that remembers this guy:


He's found his way into the latest edition of Exotique, from Ballistic Publishing. This is kind of odd considering these books are generally full of sexy robots and all, but go figure. Monstro, you've hit the big time!

3 comments:

David Ryan Paul said...

Nice matte Jim. And a big congrats on Exotique.

Armando said...

Damn! That looks cool. Alien invasions are always good subject for matte paintings. Also, Monstro is a hero. Did you provide them with a picture and a bio like the ones in the web page? I can already see it ~"Jim Moore in an old timey joik and artist that resides in the Bay Area blah blah blah..." Most awesome! Congratulations indeed.

Swede said...

Congrats jerk!! And oh, the high pass filter is one of my most used ones actually. Go figure :)

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