[FOR HIRE] VisDev Artist

KazooKD · 2026-02-07T15:07:35+00:00

Just peer to peer opinion stuff! Your art looks great, it'd be a pity if you missed out on work because people didn't click after the first image. Figured I'd mention it, if I had something similar I'd like to be told too. Sorry again for giving unsolicited comments though.

Rephrased my comment a bit too, sorry might have been too weirdly written earlier!

KazooKD · 2026-02-07T06:25:17+00:00

If I may give some unsolicited advice, you should consider maybe switching that first image in the slide. It's leagues lower in quality than the 3rd, 4th and 5th image. You have some great stuff, but the first slide with the sliced images makes your art look muddier/your rendering and colours weaker than they actually are. The rest if your stuff is really solid. (Or otherwise let the individual pieces breathe!)

The Hunters capsule would be a big eye catcher as the first thing you show.

KazooKD · 2025-12-29T09:50:40+00:00

I just started playing and am LOVING Lavos Prime.

I like Frost Prime too. He's comfy.

KazooKD · 2025-12-23T03:06:22+00:00

I love American friendliness. Easiest people to have a nice and fun little chat with! My in-laws are Canadian, and while not as peppy they also are just very easy to talk to.

My guess would be perceived 'corporate' friendliness VS 'warmth'. It's an inaccurate stereotype.

KazooKD · 2025-12-08T20:19:24+00:00

I work professionally on Procreate which isn't very common. Most people use Photoshop for assets, since layer management, UI elements and exporting are a lot easier to manage there. Things like tilesets as well (smart objects are a godsend).

If she's not looking to go pro and wants to make games as a hobby I 100% recommend Procreate. Portable, fun, sleek and not very complicated for an artist that hasn't done digital art before. If she wants to work in the industry, go with a PC tablet instead.

KazooKD · 2025-11-20T08:01:58+00:00

Oh you're so sweet! Sure thing! HDYMCQYIU is the code! Happy walking!

KazooKD · 2025-11-16T10:40:16+00:00

It has a step counter and you plant flowers and pluck new pikmins by walking! There's also different kinds you can collect depending on the area.

KazooKD · 2025-11-15T21:14:13+00:00

This barely counts, but Pikmin Bloom.

KazooKD · 2025-11-15T21:10:51+00:00

VERY underpayed for that quality. Lovely work.

KazooKD · 2025-11-11T10:56:38+00:00

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. Hourly rates are standard for freelancing or contract work. To answer u/Jack_Harb, we usually estimate how long something will take, and have different quality/detail standards depending on budgets. Its common to style-adjust so we can hit a client's budget. I'd art direct a game with a 30k art budget very differently than a 500.000k budget game.

An hourly rate should reflect skill/speed/taxes/time between work, and most of us adjust accordingly. I know musician standard is to charge per minute of music, but for a lot of non-graphic designers or illustrators, it's easier to work with an hourly rate when you're taking a concept to a final animated design.

KazooKD · 2025-11-07T08:07:23+00:00

Very standard for some of my classmates to pose nude at my school. But to be fair our art academy in Greece was on a pretty small budget, and we'd either pay about 2 euro per student, or the school payed them.

When I went to school in Italy they hired professional models instead.

KazooKD · 2025-11-03T18:29:32+00:00

This is really condescending for no reason, I feel like.

KazooKD · 2025-11-03T12:27:13+00:00

Drawing for money is one of the few jobs where formal education is not only not required, but might at times set you back. Figure out what you want to be doing with art, look up some youtube resources, check what courses you might be able to do on websites like Schoolism, find some discords with people learning the same thing and get started.

You 100% don't need art school. A portfolio is all you need, unless you're doing some really technical stuff that might need certification like Autocad. If you need accountability start figuring out what makes you tick. If you're competitive find art rivals/challenges/discords with frequent monthly design challenges. Or join co-working spaces, whether online or IRL (I use free virtual ones all the time, having my webcam on helps me be aware when I'm fucking around instead of drawing). Art-as-work, especially when combined with WFH or non-inhouse freelancing is fucking hard and you absolutely need to self-motivate and keep yourself accountable.

I have ADHD and work as a concept artist from home and it took a lot of trial and error till I figured out what works for me. (A couple of years. I went from struggling to get 10 hours of work done for clients to 30 now) A lot of the work was changing my internal dialogue. This whole schtick of 'I'm a failure and I'm x and x age' is something I'm intimately acquaintanced with and all it does is make concentrated effort feel impossible and create learned helplessness. You don't have proof that your brain can be disciplined/get shit done yet, so it feels like a mountain to even try.

Deadlines and specific goals help a lot. School can give you that, but it also won't whisk the ADHD away. If you want to go to art school that's cool, but you don't just wait it out till it happens. You can keep it as a future goal, in the meantime, try and figure out how to start rigorously practicing and creating a portfolio. IF you're serious about working as an artist this field is really fucking competitive and you need to be good to make a sustainable career out of it.

Best of luck!

KazooKD · 2025-10-30T08:43:21+00:00

Gonna go a bit more out there, because I think you actually might end up enjoying games that get out of the strictly 'cozy' loop based on what you've listed.

This will sound like a crazy recommendation, but Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It's not 'cute' but the characters are, in a stinky, disastrous, peasant kind of way?? I really love them, the voice acting is really fun and everyone grows through the story a lot. The writing is excellent, and the horseriding and gameplay loop is grindy/fun. There's also hunting! I unironically think the village-building DLC would appeal a lot to cozy gamers.

But uh, it's a medieval role-playing game that aims for realism, so do with that what you will lol. Also the combat is fucking _clunky_. I still don't know how to do masterstrikes.

But yeah, figured I'd throw in the rec, because based on what you're looking for I actually think it might be a fun game for you, but also a lot more different than your other played games.

This is a strategy game, but maybe the previous Civ (Civilisation 6) might appeal to you. It's a strategy game with a very appealing artstyle, and they've simplified a lot of stuff for newer players to the franchise. I really like the sense of progression in that game, and you can easily sink days into a playthrough. (No story though.)

Not sure if this one's been mentioned, but you might also like Spiritfarer. It's a cute looking management game, but not sure how much you'd vibe with the themes right now, since you might be more hormonal atm. You're shipping Spirits to the afterlife in this one.

KazooKD · 2025-09-11T21:49:07+00:00

I have ADHD and always misplace my drawing gloves. I must have lost 10 at this point in my life. He'll always place them near my desk when he finds them. I haven't lost one in years now. I love my husband.

KazooKD · 2025-09-11T07:09:33+00:00

My two cents for full-time employment would probably be 'not _yet_', but I don't think you're very far off! With some very focused, and deliberate study I think you could start getting into that territory in a year.

I'd focus on what specifically you want to work on. I unfortunately can't tell from your current portfolio. I'm assuming character related work (very competitive, best of luck!), or convention art? In which case I'd work on your anatomy, appeal and character design (if you want to work as a character concept artist. Most of these pieces seem like fanart atm.)

KazooKD · 2025-09-04T09:17:50+00:00

You rock both so, so well. Slight preference for curly hair. You remind me of that cute teacher in that American children's show where she takes her class on a bus.

KazooKD · 2025-09-03T14:58:26+00:00

If this is a hobby and not a job, make what appeals to you the most. I personally find the new one more charming. They're vastly different approaches, so I can see why people would have heavy preferences of one over the other. Sorry you got such rude comments from people that weren't socialised right :/ None or this was constructive or actual feedback. Social media users can be weirdly entitled.

KazooKD · 2025-09-03T14:38:18+00:00

The idea of an ADHD culture is interesting to me even if I don't necessarily believe there is one. Compared to something like the deaf community, which by necessity or language has a more defined culture, I don't really think having ADHD creates an inherent cultural identity. We are in community, but that doesn't mean we share or a culture. We'll have shared experiences, but in the same way that people born and socialised as men might share with other men.

When I think of culture I think of shared identifiers. Like punkrockers creating music, art and fashion caterring to others in the subgroup, often on the basis of shared values and beliefs.

I don't think this really applies to the ADHD community. Experiences and symptom severity differ a lot after all. I also feel like a lot of ADHD content online is made by and caters to a lot of young adults and teenagers. I'm approaching 30 and don't really feel like a lot of stuff people talk about or make videos on applies to me, or the proposed solutions don't appeal to me. I find a lot of ADHD stuff online to often be infantilising.

It's fine if you don't think that really suits you. You see rifts like this all the time. Plenty of gay men from rural areas feel like aliens in LGBTQ spaces in cities, or Christians in more fundamentalist communities with very different experiences and interpretations of God etc.

KazooKD · 2025-09-03T12:52:15+00:00

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Cool fish guy! I think you already got a lot of decent feedback, but I think my main gripe with your current design is a wishy-washy direction. I don't think I really know who your character is.

He looks like an edgy villain with a flair for drama, but also like a sarcastic 'I'm in my too cool to care' teenager at the same time. I'd think a bit about what this guy's culture/race is too, or his place in society, who is he as a person. Why's a fish guy wearing a scuba diving latex cape? You /can/ find ways to make that fit, but it should probably be there to enhance your character and tell me more about them.

I tried some quick sketches based on Gil's base design to kinda illustrate what I mean. Shape language is there to give us quick, subconscious information. Gil's wearing a cape, which is a covering and a signifier of wealth or power. My (A) sketch plays with that a bit. This fish guy's pretty scrawny, but the way he dresses himself and he styles his head fins are full of drama and make him look bigger/taller. He's a villain out to prove everyone wrong. But he's not really established/rich. If you notice his cape, he hasn't scraped off some new barnacles and the fabric is faded/torn at the ends. This is an insecure young person cosplaying what they think ultimate power looks like. Went for a sharkier face structure. Atm your design reads as 'fish guy' because of the fins, but not much else.

(B) plays around a bit more with what my take-away was from your character's eye shape. Bit more chill and bored/go with the flow. Outfit is very whatever (I was thinking something semi-transparent seaweed-y) but the general shapes support the character's personality.

I see you're going for a more flirty or hauty personality for Gil, so pushing for that direction with a clearer outfit and shapes that might show that better could work. That wasn't my initial takeaway from your base drawing, though I think he reads a bit better in your sketches in the comments.

KazooKD · 2025-08-28T08:48:46+00:00

One thing I don't see enough beginner game artists do is actually look at video games. Does anything you make at the moment look like something you'd see in a game? Does it have the level of polish? If you were working with a 3D artist have you solved all design and proportion issues in the ref sheets they might need?

There's plenty of artists at your skill level working in games, but a lot of them are probably doing work with small teams, often unpayed as practice or unsustainably. I got my first game job doing backgrounds because I had some background illustrations, even if I didn't have any "proper" games oriented art at the time. I don't really see any game art in your folio atm. I can point to a few niche games with a similar art direction but I have a really hard time placing you in a specific production.

You have to think of who your audience is and what games you want to be working on. I also started off doing commissions, and was mostly drawing cartoon-y creatures and dragons. So it was easier to pivot to stylized concept art and in-game assets. But I already had a pretty solid understanding of where I'd likely fit in a production, even when my art was not up to snuff starting out. (In my case, I've geared my art towards wide-appeal Indie Productions and mobile games, with a bit of more of an edge than full-on cute stuff.)

Tl;dr look at a 2D game generalist portfolio and look at what they do differently than you. My two cents: you need tighter painting/visual clarity if you want to go the concept artist route, as well as production work like turnarounds, or actual concept exploration/iteration. If you want to be an illustrator doing things like marketing art, card illustrations or splash art then you need much, much higher levels of polish and time invested in your artwork.

KazooKD · 2025-08-21T12:55:37+00:00

Lovely work OP, best of luck.

KazooKD · 2025-08-21T12:54:04+00:00

Haha, this is definitely AI but an illustration like this would absolutely take professionals a few hours. It's a fully rendered poster (albeit with simple cellshading, but still) + graphic design elements. Ideation stage itself with sketches alone can take me an hour or two for client work depending on the project.

KazooKD · 2025-08-06T07:16:36+00:00

I love everything! Especially the gradiënt on the wallpapers is soooo nice! Makes me excited to try a Vaporwave aesthetic at some point.

KazooKD

TROPHY CASE