➡️ Let's talk about art skills

As a freelance 3D artist, it's important to develop strong art skills to stand out from the competition, build a strong portfolio, take on more challenging and higher paying projects, and experience personal fulfillment and growth as an artist. Also, by improving your skills, you can take on projects that are more meaningful or interesting to you.

Why are strong artistic skills even more crucial for a freelance 3D artist than for an employed 3d artist? 👇 

💡 Competition: As a freelance 3D artist, you compete with other artists and entire outsourcing studios for projects and clients. Strong artistic skills can help you stand out from the competition and get more work.

💡 Client Satisfaction: A strong reputation is crucial for freelancers to attract and retain clients. Consistently delivering high-quality work helps build a positive reputation and continue to receive business. 

💡 Demand: If you have strong art skills and a good reputation, you will find that there is a higher demand for your services. This will allow you to achieve higher rates. 

Here are six effective techniques you can use to improve your art skill and attract more clients at higher rates. 👇 

✅ Simply Practice: One of the most effective ways to improve your art skills is to practice regularly. Take time each day to work on your craft and try new techniques and styles. If we're being honest, everyone has at least an hour a day to invest in their skills.

✅ Communities: Participating in an artist community or workshop can give you the opportunity to learn from more experienced artists and receive feedback on your work.

✅ Experiment: Don't be afraid to try new things and take risks with your art. This can help you develop new skills and find your own unique style.

✅ Stay Up To Date: Keeping up with the latest techniques and trends in the industry can help you stay current and competitive, or even give you a temporary advantage against other artists.

✅ Sign Up For Courses: Online courses can be a great way to learn new skills or improve existing ones. Look for courses that cover topics that interest you or help you develop specific skills.

✅ Questions: Ask other artists or professionals in the field to look at your work and give constructive criticism. This can help you identify areas for improvement and push you in the right direction.

If you would like to know how to structure your portfolio as a freelance 3D artist to generate more traffic, exposure, and attract potential new clients, read my previous post: Freelancing Part #2

👉 If you have any questions about freelancing as a 3D artist or about 3D art in general, please post them in the comments or send me a DM. I'll do my best to provide detailed and helpful answers. 👈 

➡️ Let's talk about portfolio

A strong portfolio is the most important thing for a freelance 3D artist, as it is often the first contact between the artist and potential clients. It is the most important way for artists to showcase their skills and experience, and it is the key to getting new gigs and building a successful freelance career.

💡 The difference between the portfolio of an employed and a freelance 3D artist:

The portfolio of a freelance 3D artist should be diverse and showcase a range of skills and abilities in order to appeal to a wide range of clients. On the other hand, an employed artist may have a more specialized portfolio that is focused on a specific area of 3D art or tailored to the needs of a particular employer.

Here are ten tips that help you structure your portfolio as a freelance 3D artist to generate more traffic, exposure, and attract potential new clients. 👇

✅ Strong Project Examples: Select the best and most relevant project examples to include in your portfolio. These should demonstrate your technical and creative skills.

✅ Versatility: Include a variety of styles in your portfolio. This will show your ability in adapting to different creative approaches.

✅ Quality: Include high-quality images and videos in your portfolio. Low quality ones can make it hard for clients to accurately evaluate your skills, which can affect your ability to land new work.

✅ The Process: Consider including WIP images in your portfolio in addition to the final artwork to give clients a sense of your creative process and approach to projects.

✅ Project Descriptions: Each project in your portfolio should include a detailed description that outlines the scope of work, your role in the project, and the techniques and software used.

✅ Organize Effectively: Use a clear and logical structure to organize your portfolio. This makes it easier for potential clients to navigate and find the information they need.

✅ Personal Statement: A short personal bio can help clients get to know you and understand your goals and motivations as an artist.

✅ Inspirations: If you have a particular artistic vision or style, include a section in your portfolio explaining your inspirations and influences. This can help clients understand your aesthetic and what sets your work apart from others.

✅ Teamwork: Collaborating with other artists can help you attract traffic to your portfolio and It also demonstrates your ability to work effectively in a team.

✅ SEO: Use SEO strategies to optimize your portfolio website for search engines, for example, by including relevant keywords in your website content and meta tags.

👉 If you have any questions about freelancing as a 3D artist or about 3D art in general, please post them in the comments or send me a DM. I'll do my best to provide detailed and helpful answers. Wishing you all a successful start to the week! 👈

A lot of people have been asking me lately how I got started with 3D art freelancing and if I have any tips on how to build a financially well-functioning freelance business in the first place. The topic is so extensive that it is always difficult for me to reduce it to a few key points, especially as it depends on the individual and the specific life and career situation.
 
➡️ I thought it might be a good idea to start a few threads on freelancing in the 3D industry over the next few weeks.
 
To begin, let me suggest a few general rules of thumb that helped me a lot in the early days. 👇
 
✅ Art Skills: As a freelance 3D artist, you need a very strong portfolio to showcase your skills. Spend time developing your skills and creating work that demonstrates your abilities. A highly skilled artist with a strong portfolio will likely have more success finding work than an artist with a weaker portfolio, even if their skills are similar.
 
✅ Business Skills: You need to have some business sense in addition to your artistic skills. This may include tasks such as invoicing, writing offers, negotiating contracts, and managing your finances.
 
✅ Online Presence: An online presence is essential for freelancers. Create a website or portfolio that showcases your work, and be sure to include your contact information. (Have your own website in addition to Artstation. Every business has its own website. Remember that as a freelancer you are a business.)
 
✅ Networking: In the business world, networking is key. Attend industry events, join online communities and connect with other professionals to expand your network and get your name out there.
 
✅ Rates: Specify how much you want to charge for your services, taking into account your experience, the demand for your skills, and the value you can offer the client.
 
✅ Marketing: Once you have a portfolio and an understanding of your monetary value, you should start marketing your business to potential clients. You can do this by networking, reaching out to companies directly, or using online job boards and platforms like Artstation, Linkedin and Instagram.
 
👉 If you have any questions about freelancing, please post them in the comments. Feel free to ask me anything from negotiating rates to dealing with mental stress. I'll try to answer in detail in future posts! Have a great weekend everyone! 👈

Last Sunday I finally ran my first competitive half marathon after months of training. I never thought that I would have the necessary fitness to finish quite well. Next year, a full marathon is on the schedule. At the beginning of the year, my girlfriend and I moved into our absolute dream apartment. Next week we are going on our long-awaited vacation to the fjord landscape of Norway. I have successfully recovered from a burnout in the last two years and my business is running better today than ever before.
 
I was really bad at school. In subjects like math, physics, etc., I couldn't grasp the simplest things. I loved video games, movies and art, but the general view was that I should focus on the bad grades and do something meaningful with my life. Good grades open up opportunities for you in life, right? Classmates and generally people in my school made fun of me for wearing makeup, tight clothes and jewelry. Genetically, I have eyelids that don't open wide, so they made fun of that too. Things like "You look like you are on drugs" etc. were commonplace. I also always had a weird emotional feeling. Today I know I have a form of social anxiety and sometimes depressive episodes. Basically, I hated a lot of my childhood and already didn't have particularly high expectations going into adult life.
 
What the hell does this have to do with business? Everything.
 
Today, I run a successful business in the creative industry, make more money than any single person I went to school with, and work on things that fascinate me: Video games, movies, art. I'm also in a position where I can fulfill my dream of traveling a lot, I live in a high-standard neighborhood and apartment, and I know how to deal with my emotional side.
 
Why am I telling this story?
 
Life is hard, especially when it slaps you in the face every day. But just because you had a hard time in school, you have emotional preconditions, idiots crush your confidence, or life just throws rocks in your path, doesn't mean you won't succeed in life.
 
If you're good at something, keep investing time in it, no matter if someone says you should do something more meaningful with your life. How the hell does that person know what makes you happy? You have a difficult life on the emotional side and people always ask you why you're so quiet or why you're not laughing? Honestly, f*ck them. It's absolutely okay the way you are. At a certain point, I started not giving a damn about what comes out of other people's mouths.
 
I believe that life really takes care of you if you work towards a better tomorrow every day. There is always a way. In the end, it's worth going through it all. You'll come out of it a stronger person, and eventually it will be easier to deal with stressful situations and you'll start to take on life's challenges with joy.
 
If I can run a damn half marathon in the middle of summer, dehydrated and with pain in my legs, then you can overcome your hurdles too!

I'm finally done with this piece, just in time before the year ends. And this is a special portfolio piece for me.
 
The last 3 years have been the biggest roller coaster ride I've had in my life. From making more money than I ever dreamed of and working on absolute dream projects, to extreme mental health issues, almost giving up my profession as a 3D artist, selling most of my financial assets acquired in the last few years and cutting off most of my social contacts. Rebuilding everything from scratch was extremely draining and painful. Even finding joy in creative things and not just doing it to make money was a heck of a process. Understanding what is really important to me and how I should handle both myself and my life was the biggest learning experience.
 
I'm so glad that I can look back today and tell myself that it was worth it to go through it all, no matter how hard it was in between. I'm so grateful for all the business opportunities I have had this year, for the people I have met, and for having a personal life that brings me more joy than I could have ever dreamed. I feel more productive, fulfilled and balanced than ever before.
 
Why am I telling this? There are probably many people out there who struggle with one thing or another in life. Maybe it's finances, health, or a combination of many different things. Have you ever felt like everything is too much and that everything is going down the drain? Life can be so painful, and often no one around us realizes that we are struggling all day.
 
One thing I learned during my struggle adventure was to talk to someone. Someone you trust. It's very painful to tell someone about your deepest thoughts and feelings, but it will help. You don't have to go through everything in your life alone. Don't carry the burden on your shoulders. In situations where we are on the verge of losing all confidence in ourselves, we need someone to help us get back on track. Does it get easy then? Life is probably still hard, but having someone to walk the path with takes a lot of pressure, sadness, and self-destructive thoughts away and puts what's going on in our heads into perspective. And please, never give up on yourself! No matter how hard everything is. It's worth it in the end. The belief in a positive tomorrow is what no one can take away from you.
 
I wish you all a successful and healthy start into the new year. Take care of yourself!

More images of the character can be found here: Bounty Hunter, Lennard Claussen

I had the opportunity to do a second interview for 80lv. This time we went into a few different topics, such as why I think self-esteem, consistency, and a thick skin are much more important than technical knowledge, what visual language is all about, and what it was like to take the journey from being terrible at school to landing a Netflix gig. I also shared a few tips and tricks on how to deal with pressure and generally how to navigate the creative world.

You can read the article here.

 

I recently had the opportunity to be on Christoph Redl's Game.Art.Talk podcast. We talked about work ethic, switching from industry to industry, freelancing, etc. Feel free to check it out. 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7quadTbjF7bwWMVQSo6cKp?si=9119336a3b3148ff

Youtube: EPISODE 024: Lennard Claussen – Freelance Senior CG Consultant - YouTube 

I had the great opportunity to write a bit about my workflow, plugins and tools I use.  

You can read the full article here: https://80.lv/articles/001agt-004adk-stylized-sci-fi-rifle-in-maya-substance-painter/

Some of you asked me about my workflow and especially the topology, so here are a few wireframes. The topology is quite dirty but works for render stuff pretty well. As long as the shading looks good, I don't care about the edge flow. Basically, everything is booled into each other with custom macros, scripts and Hard Mesh.

Some quick WIP shots of a new portfolio piece I'm currently working on. Unfortunately, I'm quite busy with moving to a different city, so nothing is really finished.

Inspired by a weapon design from Mattias Pettersson https://www.deviantart.com/intribunal/art/Hits-4-Kids-Rifle-WIP-356076041 and various Wolfenstein models.