[glynnsmith]

I disagree with the "if you're doing it for the money" comments. Why else would you go through the hassle of creating game art for an evil, bloodsucking, money-grabbing company if not for the money? If the money factor wasn't so important, we'd all be sitting at home working on our personal projects and things that we're REALLY wanting to be working on.

Of course the money's important. Trying to take a moral stance over being paid for your services is silly, imo. It's not that black and white. Of course, love what you do, but get them papers, son!

Also, whilst we're on this subject - Not sure if anyone else has said it yet - but with working in a studio you do feel a lot safer as payday comes every month.

Freelancing can be a gamble at times and working whilst you're thinking about putting food on the table and budgetting and filing your tax returns and all the rest of it and chasing people for payments and figuring out where the next contract's going to come from, can be a very real problem and inducive to artist block, bad moods, sleep deprivation and all the rest of it. It's not fun to be struggling as a freelance artist.

If you're solely wanting to be a game artist, it's usually a good idea to get a studio job first, so you know the ropes, get that experience on your C.V and figure out if freelancing is really the route you want to take. You can always moonlight some freelancing work in your spare time and work on building contacts and business links and still have that nice chunk of change in your bank account each month.