HOW TO MAKE A LIVING AS A CHARACTER DESIGNER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qbTlxkOCzk

Kinds of Careers

You can make a career as a character designer, firstly by working for an employer, with long term work at one company. You will report to someone in charge and you may be working on projects that could take weeks, months or even years to complete. You could be working in a team of people and report to the art director for guidance.

The second career is as a freelance character designer. You will receive work from a client that would typically last between a day to a few weeks depending on the scale of the project. You will likely get repeat clients who are looking to do more projects but thy have no ties to you if they don't need the work since as the designer you are not their employee. A positive of that is you have more free reign to create what type of characters you want.

The third career is an audience supported artist, where they gain income from a large enough audience that will buy their products, through subscription services (patreon) or even through an advertising domain.

Getting Work

It not an easy pathway to get into but it's still doable with the right level of skill, determination and notability. You ideally want clients to be contacting you, they need to know who you are since you'll be doing the legwork for them.

It's important to market yourself with a strong portfolio with the type of work that you want to be doing. You just need a small collection of refined finished work, and as you make new work and improve your skills it is important to update your portfolio and get rid of the ones that don't meet standards.

Working in a kind and professional manner can go a long way in people wanting to work for you. Oversharing on social media can cause a backlash if you mix your personal life with your professional life, try and keep them separate.

The aim is to also keep sharing new art, it could be client work, it could be personal work, rough sketches, anything to keep the audience engaged and show that you are current.

Also market yourself in person to different clients, there are a lot of opportunities that are not online, and also going in person shows them that you have put in effort to go and see them and they get a sense of your personality. Human interaction can be a powerful tool when finding clients.

Stick with a day job when starting out cause it may take years to build up enough clients when in this type of job, having another job can help you build yourself up, improve your skills, fund your work and get you prepared.

Value Your Work

Beware of freelancing sites where clients post job listings and artists bid on those listings. The issue with these kinds of sites is that the cheapest bid usually gets the job. Another problem is that these sites are global, so for example people in Western continents like North America and Europe have a higher rate of living costs compared to those Eastern continents like Asia where living costs are a lot less. Being on sites like this will devalue your work and the work of the community as a whole.

Protect Yourself

There will be clients that will try and take advantage of you, so you have to make ways to make sure that you don't get ripped off. Make a policy where you receive some sort of payment up front, between 25%-100% of the final cost. Make sure you are paid in full by the client before sending them the final work. To show them proof you have done the work, send a low resolution image with a watermark over it so they can't take the content. This is also sent with the final invoice and once they've paid in full you can send them the final work.

Value Yourself

Show your clients that your time has value and that your work has value. They are not just paying you for your time, they are paying you for your experience and knowledge. Give them a rough idea of how much goes into the project and how time intensive it is. Also figure out if you will allow any changes once the final piece is sent and if so include that in the price.

This video gave me so much insight on how to protect myself if I want to work as a freelance artist especially the part about protecting yourself, it makes me feel more at ease having the knowledge and could help excel my career in the future.

Reference:

Eggleston, B. (2017) How To Make A Living As a Character Designer. [Online Video]. 2 February 2017. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qbTlxkOCzk&t=105s. [Accessed: 17 March 2020].