Tim makes things

The ramblings of dutch illustrator and game developer Hedgefield

Year: 2015

  • Week 77

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    Last week I spent some time looking into the new VAT MOSS regulations. Luckily I could conclude from this flowchart that freelance work is not impacted by these changes, only direct (automated) sales from webshops. SO for now I don’t have to worry about it, but it will probably become relevant once I start selling my own games.

    On wednesday I went up to Amsterdam North to talk business with a new potential client. They are housed in a really big factory building that holds many creative companies; it reminded me a lot of the Caballero factory in The Hague in that way. I’ll have to wait a bit to hear back from them, but if it goes through it would be a pretty big assignment.

    I also closed a deal with Kars from Hubbub about a new project they’re doing that I can help them with.

    So 2015 is off to a cautiously good start!

    And then Charlie Hebdo happened. It was weird to draw with the news on, and it took a while to sink in, but all the positive responses around the world were a welcome sight in the wake of all the recent hateful outrage about basically everything.

    Freshpost asked me to draw a cartoon in response, and I was reminded of Holland’s motto.

    Next week: making a start on a 2015 resolutions project.

  • Week 76

    This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.

    Hey there, welcome to 2015. A new year, and a new coat of paint for the blog.

    In the last week of 2014 I translated my site into dutch as part of my 2015 resolution of focusing more on the dutch market (more on that later). I’m still doing the same for the presskit content – thanks to the just-released presskit() 2.5 update!

    To start off 2015 I wrote down some of my goals, business/art-wise. I wasn’t going to do it at first, but when I thought of one thing I was already doing – learning Illustrator – the rest came naturally.

    So here they are in no particular order:

    learn illustrator
    I never really ‘got’ what it was for, but with more and more art moving into vector I felt like I had to sit down and learn it front to back.

    translate my portfolio into dutch
    The past few months I’ve realised that I never really put much thought into the dutch market. I do work for dutch clients (and with this VATMOSS business I’m happy sticking to that), but my portfolio never reflected that, nor did my own projects. I always focused on the international, but I can see now there is merit in romancing the dutch side of things as well.

    start doing daily comics again
    Back in my third year of art school I drew daily comics every now and then, just as a sort of diary. Nowadays a lot of people do a vlog – it’s basically the same idea. It helps me remember the small moments and find a punchline in ordinary situations. I want to start doing those again, and combining them with these weeknotes maybe.

    get my art/cartoons into a (dutch) (comic) magazine
    Magazines are a largely unexplored area for me, and I think I can expand the sort of semi-weekly cartoons I do for The Post Online into that realm.

    off-stage
    I have a couple of ambitions for Off-Stage – increase the readership through targeted advertising, finish chapter 2, and start doing smaller updates more than once a week. I like the full-page format I’m drawing in now, but I’d like to start doing two-or-three-panel gags inbetween those.

    And ofcourse I’ll be working on Black Feather Forest again in the future, plus a few other goals I’m keeping up my sleeve for now. It’s plenty to keep busy with, I’d say.

    Next week: keeping busy with it.

  • Contrast

    I wanted to practice drawing portraits with strong or interesting lighting, so I looked up some Anton Corbijn-like noir-ish stuff, and it went pretty well from there. Also, why has David Bowie never been cast as The Joker?

    If anyone has tips for where I can find more photos like this, preferably something in color with strong sunlight or back lit, let me know in the comments!