Howdy, ppl!

It's been a wild month and I can't be happier with the results so far. I'm entering my third month as a full-time freelance artist, having lots of requests on the way and this is awesome! I'm overwhelmed with all those awesome requests, amazing clients and by how happy they are when I deliver their order <3 Organizing all this to work properly is maybe the most challenging part of it, but I'm doing my best! I'm still learning, and I thank all my clients for their patience so far ^^

To help me organize better my work, one thing I would like to try for a while is to not work with slots, just the queue instead.

I'm trying this because I usually work with other commission types beyond illustrations. I also am a 2D and Pixel Art Animator and when those commissions come, they usually do not mind waiting a bit even when I say the queue is full. In the end, what happens is that I already have a queue before being able to open slots. Don't get me wrong, this is great! But at the same time, I feel bad for people who want to order arts and were told by me to wait for slots (sorry about that!). Most of my motivation with art is to make people happy, so I'm doing my best for that to happen!

So how the queues will work now?

Basically you will have to check my Trello to see how the queue is going. I now add a Due date so you can have an estimate of when each commission will be delivered. This is not written in the rocks so the delivery could be sooner or later than specified. I work with the queue order you see there, sometimes jumping to the next when the previous client still did not approve the preview I sent.

You will never open slots again?

I'd say they are always open! At least for now while I make some tests and see what happens. I'm still trying to figure out what works best for me and this is a part of the journey. I may open slots for specific art types I'm willing to sell/try, like animated icons and YCH (I have one prepared, I just need the time). "Never" is a strong word so let's see what happens tomorrow!

How do you work, actually?

Basically I work 6 hours a day with commissions, then 2 hours on my personal game project. At the moment I have a huge commission for a pixel art game project where I have to animate all the monsters/creatures. This will take a few months, so I'm dedicating 3 of those 6 hours every day for this project. This means that I work 3 hours a day on the commissions you see on my queue, and the other 3 on these pixel art animations. That's why the queue might look a bit slow at the moment, so I thank my clients for the patience!

And BTW, I am live streaming all my work hours!

I started doing that because I'm really bad with time management... Keeping focus is a BIG problem for me and lack of motivation is always lurking. However, streaming has been working great so far into keeping me on track! At the same time I meet new people, my clients can see their commissions come to life and I can promote my work. It is something I'm learning constantly how to do better, so I'm open to feedback!

This is my Twitch channel link, you're all welcome to join: https://www.twitch.tv/gabzero7

I stream from 9AM to 4PM (GMT-3) from Monday to Saturday, taking a lunch break from 12PM to 1PM. I then take a break of 1 or 2 hours (depending of how tired I am) then come back to work on my game project for another 2 hours. This is temporary work time, I will update it in the future.


Well, that's all for now! A TLDR version is... slots are always open for now, I livestream my work and I'm loving my new freelance artist life!

Thanks again, everyone! You're all amazing and I could not be happier with my work. I'm doing what I love for the first time in my professional life, still learning but walking!

Big hugs!

~"Keep moving forward"