Have you ever wondered how someone gets into making art for video games as a freelancer? Well today I have an interview with @IroPagis for you an up and coming video game artiest.
Hey. So alright, I’ll tell you about my journey, even though it’s kinda all over the place.I started drawing early on and kept at it. I wanted to make games, then I wanted to make traditional art, then I wanted to make MANGA~ So I was making manga when I was 12 years old all the way to 19 yro.
When I was 18 I finished highschool, ran away and started working as a freelancer doing the cheapest jobs. My best jobs were usually comics since I was half-decent at that. These were some lazy years filled with pointless drama, playing games and feeling overall demotivated, manga projects never succeed, mine didn’t , my clients’ didn’t. Then, when I was 20 I discovered a Youtube guy called Borodante who explained digital painting in such a way that I was instantly good at it, somehow! That became my new thing! I was still lazy and not motivated to make money, being artsy and just drawing what I wanted. I decided even regular freelancing is a bother so I started selling adoptables on Deviantart, just drawing what I want and selling the designs. It wasn’t a good idea by any means but it paid the bills.
Age 20, in 2019 I quit working at all and started on the biggest journey – to create a webcomic! I had 3K$ in savings and that would last me 6 months. After 6 months instead of getting that message telling us Webtoon is interested in featuring us… our chapters got taken down for having some gore. We messaged Webtoon asking what we can do and we never ever heard back…… and so a huge project ended in the dumbest way and I began rethinking my life. I started aggressively seeking any jobs, working all day and somehow I’m enjoying life a lot more. I quit League of Legends too. That brings us to the present day. I’m putting together my website, working/ looking for work opportunities all day long. It’s tiring but more fun than any personal project ever was. I also invest 1-2 hours a day to learn 3D, hoping to reach a high level by the end of the year and create a bunch of useful assets. I feel I finally got my life together and know that I’m getting somewhere.
I still dream to work for Riot tho~ but until then, game projects are the most exciting… but I would prefer not to discuss my current clients for obvious reasons!
So what do you feel is the biggest challenge with doing 3D vs 2D art?
Hm. I found sculpting to be very easy and similar to my 2D workflow. Everything else always makes me wonder “is this the correct way to do this” since there’s so many ways to go about the same thing. 3D is a huge world really.
Biggest challenge would be to create my first full realistic Character from scratch.
What’s your favorite 3d project so far?
https://artstation.com/artwork/XBL5Onhttps://artstation.com/artwork/bawevv
Cool. So why is that one your favorite?
(it turned out better than I deserve)hm..Not sure!J
Pretty good. Have you animated anything yet?
Tried, failed. Haha. I’m not being much help here, I guess. I’m mostly a 2D artist, hoping to get into the game industry as a concept artist/ illustrator.
So do you have any unique ways you market yourself since the concept artist/ illustrator market has quite a few artists in it?
To rephrase the previous question do you have a unique style or theme to what you tend to do? Aka do you specialize in dungeon crawlers or sci fi or …
Marketing. When my schedule isn’t full I look for jobs on Reddit, Twitter, Guru, Upwork, Deviantart, Artstation, hell, even discord servers. I find everyone looking for art and drop my website. I also make posts offering my services to people.I do this because unlike for other artists, my art is not the kind to bring in a large following, it’s not very marketable as an end product. There’s literally no good reason for people to follow me or say they’re a huge fan of my work except that I make decent stuff.
Whatever people want- that’s what I’ll make. It’s not a great selling point but it’s what I have, versatility.
Every 2D art job nowadays seems to be “we are looking for a Senior Lead artist, must have 6 yr experience as a Senior Lead artist and must have worked on at least 3 AAA games, must be familiar with multiple game engines, 3D workflow in all the industry software.. oh and architecture, they must be into that. “
For the sake of your readers, I’ll be honest and say – I applied to ~50 game studios with my current work and haven’t heard back. Either my art is not good enough or 2D art really isn’t in demand anymore, make of it what you will.
So then you’ve been focusing on the concept art more so?
And have found it to be super saturated. Have you tried doing UI design or anything like that?
Haven’t had the opportunity but I love it when the jobs I get allow me to try new things and learn on the go.
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