Concept Art Freelance Diaries #2: Meeting My First Indie Client
After four and a half years working mostly with larger companies and rarely spending much time without a project, I recently decided to start looking for smaller clients on my own. I talked a little about why I made that decision in my previous post, but actually doing it has already given me a few interesting reality checks.
It started on Reddit. I posted some concept art I had made for a medieval project, mostly because I really enjoyed how those pieces turned out. They were produced relatively quickly, mixing painting with photographic textures, and I thought they would be a good way to introduce my work and start talking to indie developers.
One piece of the entire artwork I originally posted on Reddit:
Not long after that, I received an email from someone asking if I was available. He told me about his game, a sci-fi horror project set in a frozen tundra. Early in the game, the player would need to reach a bunker and activate its power systems. It sounded fun, so we started working together.
I was surprisingly nervous. Even though this was a much smaller production than the projects I had worked on before, I didn't want to treat it any differently. I wanted to bring everything I had learned from years of professional production into this tiny project. So I created a Miro board, organized all the information about the game, listed every asset that needed concept work, gathered references and tasks, and shared the whole thing with him. He loved it, and that became our little production hub.
One of the Concept art pieces made for sci-fi horror project:
Then came my first delivery.
I probably overprepared it because I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I made several sketches, explained my decisions, organized everything nicely on Miro, checked it again, and finally sent him a message on Discord telling him the update was ready.
And then I waited.
After years of working with art directors, my brain was already preparing itself for the usual list of notes. Maybe the shapes weren't working. Maybe I had misunderstood something. Maybe I'd have to rethink the whole thing.
Then the Discord notification appeared.
"Awesome! Perfect, I love it!"
That was it.
I was obviously relieved, and pretty happy too. But I was still nervous. One successful delivery didn't mean I had figured this whole indie thing out yet.
A few days later, I prepared the next batch of sketches. Same process. References, variations, explanations, everything organized on Miro. I sent him the update and, once again, waited to see what would come back.
Second Discord notification.
"Perfect! Amazing! Keep up the good work!"
Okay. Something was different here.
That's when I slowly started realizing how much more immediate the emotional impact of my work could be on an indie developer. This wasn't just another concept moving through a large production pipeline. This was [i]his game[/i]. Probably a world he had been imagining for months or even years. And suddenly he was seeing pieces of it becoming real in front of him.
And honestly, seeing someone react like that to my work made me pretty happy too.
Then he disappeared for a couple of days.
I kept posting updates and eventually started wondering if something had gone wrong. Then he came back and apologized. He had simply been busy with work.
His regular job.
That was probably the biggest reality check of all. My client wasn't sitting in some studio managing a production team. He was just a regular person with a job who was saving some of his money to build a game he dreamed about making. He would finish his workday tired and still find some energy to open Miro, look through my concepts and send me feedback.
And for those unfamiliar with Miro, it's basically an infinite digital board where you can drop images, references, notes, draw directly over things, and organize pretty much anything visually. I particularly like using it as a hub between everyone involved in a project, because instead of having information scattered across messages and folders, people can open one giant board and see the project, the tasks, references, feedback and progress all laid out together.
The Miro board I use to organize the project and communicate with the client:
There's something very different about knowing that the person on the other side is personally putting their time, money and energy into making this thing exist. It also made me realize that all those organizational habits I picked up from larger productions can actually be incredibly useful here. Miro has basically become the bridge between me, the task and the client.
So that was my first real encounter with an indie client. I came into it worried about whether my work would be good enough and whether I could adapt my professional workflow to such a small production. I wasn't expecting the biggest surprise to simply be discovering the human being on the other side of the project.