smArtist hardware! AKA How I manage my business from everywhere.
Hi, guys! I’ve been spending the last few months really digging into the most efficient ways to manage my business from wherever I happen to be while having plenty of backup options for staying communicative even if everything starts exploding. First off, I’d like to showcase my hardware! These are the main tools I use [...]
LinkedIn for research and business intelligence.
People underestimate LinkedIn as a business intelligence tool. If you’re interviewing, ask for names of who’s interviewing you. If you’re looking to contract with someone, look them up. Research, make notes, ask around, develop questions for the first conversation. MobyGames too. Know your goal, take aim, be prepared, then have fun! Be a smArtist.
The Six Commandments of Contracting
I’ve been dealing with contract art for nearly fifteen years, and have been a full-time professional for over ten years. I’ve worked both as an artist and as a manager in a variety of settings. As an artist I’ve freelanced from home, in-house at an art studio, and in-house at a developer. As a manager, [...]
Cloud Living is the Life for Me #1 – The invincible contact list!
Introduction to the series Here’s the first of a multi-part series on how simple and realistic it is to start transitioning into cloud-based computing. I tend to be an early adopter of new technologies, and converting to the cloud has been a focus of mine for the last year and a half. In this series, [...]
How NOT to hire an artist
[edit] WOW! Absolutely unbelievable level of response to this. Thanks SO much everybody. BTW, I’m @jonjones on Twitter. :) [/edit] I was browsing Reddit earlier today, as is my morning routine, and I came across an article called How to hire an artist. This article has been widely panned and criticized by artists and people [...]
The Art of Documenting Art
The difference between success and failure in outsourcing can come down to documentation. Effective and thorough documentation is absolutely the most important component of outsourcing, even more than finding good people! You can have the best artists in the world at your disposal, but if they have no guidelines, insufficient direction and bad documentation, you’ll [...]
Productivity tip #14: Lookout – hyperfast indexed search in Outlook
Here is my FAVORITE Outlook tool. It’s lightning fast indexed search that beats the pants off anything Microsoft has. Microsoft liked it so much, in fact, that they purchased the company, then killed the project completely. This paved the way for their horrible and criminally useless Desktop Search without any pesky competition to get in [...]
Tip for smArtists: Making sure you get paid on time
Artists: Getting paid is important. If it’s a small studio, they simply may forget to mail off a check in a timely manner. That sucks. It’s usually not intentional. They got the art, which is all they wanted, so they’ve probably moved onto working on something else and aren’t thinking about it anymore. One way [...]
Speccing out contracts smArtly! aka, Automatically Building Awesome Teams
Another big post this weekend! I’ll explain how I spec out a contract, divide the work into meaningful divisions, and how I handle asset revisions. I’ll even explain a bit of the psychology behind it that helps me automatically build kickass, super-talented external art teams. :) My typical approach to pricing something out — especially [...]
Outsourcing Animation Isn’t Scary: A Guide
I often run across questions people ask regarding outsourcing animation. I seem to be one of the few people that has outsourced animation successfully. I’ve written a handful of short articles on the subject, but I thought it was time I edited and assembled them all into one handy guide. :) I won’t dwell on [...]
Tools of the Trade: HTTrack Website Copier!
Ever bookmark a website full of great information, only to revisit it later and discover the link is dead? Worry no more! HTTrack Website Copier is here, and you need never fret over dead links again. It’s a free, very easy-to-use, highly customizable tool that automatically downloads webpages in their entirety. You can set how [...]
Random tip for finding good artists: Find their friends!
This may be outlandishly obvious, but for some reason it never occurred to me until this week. Here’s a tip for Art Managers and Artists both! Art Managers, when I find a portfolio of an artist I like (even mildly), I go to his Links page and find a list of all the artists he [...]