Remote Game Artist: The ingredients to deliver, grow, and have a healthy work-life balance
Throughout my career, I have remained a very social artist. Often, I would go out for coffee with friends where all of us would take out our sketchbooks and draw. We talked about the next life drawing event in the city, discussed the sitting posture of people around us, or tried a new brush pen that one of us had bought.
Coffee and sketching hangout with friends in Helsinki, Finland
Similar acts of engagement have helped me build a strong connection with the artists in my team as well as other co-workers. Recognising someone’s contribution was done by pinning their art on the studio walls. Resolving a conflict over the visual vision of a game was sorted out over lunch,(by discovering we both had a shared interest in the same kind of salad). The biggest project challenges were answered by the draw-together brainstorming exercises in an offsite. All of this resulted in the highest engagement, inspiration, and happiness scores for the teams I led.
The pandemic brought a shift to remote work in the game development landscape. Several of my peers, myself included, moved back to our home countries to work remotely. Whether or not this remote work culture will become a permanent model is something only time will tell. Nonetheless, I know a lot of game artists (from all ranks and places) who don’t wish or plan to go back to physical offices. Especially when several game studios are happily hiring and promoting remote positions.
Remote work for game artists isn’t as easy as it may appear. It’s typically assumed that artists can work conveniently or even be happier when isolated. However, to deliver and grow, one requires a regular source of inspiration, smooth communication, and an environment that fosters creativity and productivity. This is as tough for an artist as it is for anyone else.
Here are some of my tried and tested recommendations which may help you deliver and grow, while maintaining a healthy work-life balance:
(1) Fake your ‘commute’ time
When we used to ‘go’ to work, we would often engage ourselves in an activity that passively contributed to our professional growth, while bringing an element of variety to our routine. Whether it be testing the game build, playing a reference game, or simply reading a book, it all gets lost when we switch from home posture to work posture.
My recommendation is to set aside at least 30 minutes before and after your work schedule, which you can justify as your commute time and dedicate it to any professional or personal development activity. This small habit of setting aside time can bring back the discipline of finishing comic books, doing warm-up drawing exercises, or recovering your lost hobby of writing.
At the end of my work day, I spend a few mins of wind-down time away from the main work desk, to check some Tech News, before going back to personal life.
(2) Invest in your workspace
Do you miss the office admin team? The ones who elevated your work experience by arranging a fan next to your desk, or replaced your chair with a more ergonomic one that suited your needs? You may now be on your own, however, it is equally important to provide yourself with the same facilities, functionality, and comfort as before. This not only improves your productivity, but also takes care of your well-being.
When accepting a new work offer, you could humbly ask for a ‘workspace boost’ package. Most good companies who have invested in hiring talent like yours (through a relocation package, sign-on bonus, etc.) would happily approve an additional amount to boost your work experience. Otherwise, take a portion of your pay cheque and dedicate it to investing in yourself. The benefits are not just for you, but also for your co-workers, who would experience your clear audio, well-lit focus on your face, quick file transfers, and meeting time proposals in their local time zone, calculated quickly from a time converter app that you purchased. I could do a deep dive into all the tools from my workspace in a separate post, so let me know in the comments section, if you are interested. For now, here’s a smaller list of products, room modifications, and tech that I currently use:
Wacom Cintiq Pro 32”
Mac Studio with M1 Ultra and height adjustable nano texture Studio Display
Additional 32” 4K Ultra HD Monitor by Dell mounted on Ergotron arm
Herman Miller Embody chair with an electric height adjustable sit-stand desk
Shure MV7 USB Podcast Microphone mounted on a Blue Compass Boom Arm
Elgato Stream Deck XL
Sound isolation with door and window seal
Little pantry with tea and coffee machine
(3) Virtual coffee break with colleagues
No matter how busy our work schedule gets, my teammates and I make sure to have a 30-60 min weekly/bi-weekly virtual coffee break (scheduled on calendar before the end of the week), just to hang out. There’s no agenda, no project discussion, just casual chat. We talk about movie recommendations, interesting cultural facts, and go down the memory lane with our shared love of pop-culture nostalgia. You could even convert those to play sessions to try the new game build together, or have multiplayer sessions of what’s currently hot.
(4) Show your work
We often neglect to share our work with the team, especially our process, assuming it’s all obvious. Also, we don’t like to shout about our work, thinking that may look like gimmickry. This ends up in silent Slack channels and reduced visibility of what’s happening around us. Seeing each other’s work leads to an overall boost of inspiration and keeps our supply of learning flowing. This is especially true when working in games where the learnings and tricks used by our peers is crucial for us to know for self-development. So don’t hesitate to share your work with your team. If possible, organise a process demo session inviting everyone. Even developers, game designers and testers experience dopamine level increase when they see the art from the game they are working on.
(Artwork © Rovio Entertainment Ltd.)
If you are a team lead/director, remember to credit your artists. Whenever I send work over emails, I always make sure to add a line of credit, mentioning who did what, from the art the recipients are seeing. This not only ensures that they receive the credit they deserve, but is also a key contributor to get your teammate recognized. This can help towards getting them a raise and promotion when it is time.
(5) Communication is the key
I have worked with artists with a broad range on how they communicate. Let’s take an example: You made an art asset, and are now about to send it to your Art Director. There can be two different ways of submitting your work. One is where you just upload your image, hit submit, and that’s it! The other is where you add an extra write-up, describing your thought process, why you took a certain direction, what you are still unsure of, what areas are you specifically looking for feedback on, what the AD should ignore, and if there are multiple options that you created, then mentioning which one is your favourite, and why.
Here is another example: You are wrapping up for the day. One choice is to sign-off and leave. The other is to drop a few sentences about what you worked on, how is it going, share the path of where your files are located, and what areas of your art asset that you plan to work on tomorrow. If there’s not much to say, then you can still leave a line saying “Wrapping up here, see you tomorrow.”
Now of course there can be instances where the best format is to just shoot through an image and ask “WDYT?”, or not necessarily provide updates every day. My point is that it makes it easier to work with artists who value the importance of communication and adopt that as a work practice. This is not related to just ‘reporting’, but also applies to many other scenarios, such as confirming your understanding of the asset specs with the designer, or sending clear instructions to the tech artists on how to use your file.
(6) Align everyone’s vision before heavy lifting
Before you create an art asset that requires heavy lifting (investing long hours before results can be shared), I suggest you make fast drafts of your ideas and check with your AD if you mutually agree on the direction. A scribble and a supporting reference mood board is enough to validate the vision before creating the polished piece. It’s important to remember that when you’re not under the same roof, a colleague can’t pass by and remark on something important. I love it when artists in my team approach me to receive briefing and discuss an art asset before starting to draw. By checking the specs together, scrolling through Pinterest inspiration boards, and roughly drawing on screen share, we establish a clear vision that helps prevent common pitfalls.
Example of an early sketch (above) that you can share with your team before developing it further (Artwork © Rovio Entertainment Ltd.)
(7) Review your own work
Going back and forth on a rushed asset consumes more time and energy than ones that are self-evaluated in the first place. This is especially true when working from a distance. It’s a good practice to have a checklist and validate your art asset against that and other benchmark assets in the game. When in doubt, create a quick additional option to submit together with your original version.
Viz Ref for iPad, Pure Ref, Miro, and Google Slides are one of my favourite programs for preparing reference mood boards.
If possible, take a small break and look at your work with fresh eyes. If you are not convinced, you can express it to your colleague or Art Director, and say that you think it might take an additional amount of time to complete the work. In most cases, it should be an acceptable proposition. This habit of looking at your work from the lens of your Art Director will not only reduce feedback, but also help you grow to become an Art Director down the track.
(8) Benefit from the time zone difference
Most likely, your employer’s HQ is in a different time zone than yours. I don’t recommend adjusting your schedule a great deal to sync with your employer. This can negatively affect your health and personal life. As long as there is half a workday of overlapping hours available, you and your peers can find ways to communicate effectively. You could use the non-overlapping hours for focused work and get maximum productivity. Most artists agree that 4-5 hours of focused work in a day is enough to yield the daily expected output. In my case, I am about 3.5 hours ahead of most of my team. Therefore, I use my morning hours for focused hands-on work, and keep the rest of my day for meetings and art reviews. If there’s a specific time in your day when you are most productive, ask your producer and peers to limit booking meetings with you in those slots. If you work at times separated by a huge time difference, you could work in different shifts instead of a single sitting. This way, you can find overlapping hours for meetings by waking up a bit earlier, or staying up later, and still have time to rest and spend with your family throughout the day.
(9) Separate your work and personal life
When you wrap up your workday, you must return to your personal or family time just as you did when you went to a physical office. I like to mark my work calendar with non-working hours (including lunch) for the hours when I want my teammates to know that I am away. Most phones also have focus modes, where you can set up your preferences to restrict notifications from work emails or Slack. If someone pings you when you are not at work, gently check with them on how important it is to answer now? If it can wait, request that they take it up with you tomorrow. If you want to be reminded about a Slack message you just read, there is an option to let Slack remind about it at another time. I also personally like to keep a separate and dedicated room (in my house) for work, and usually avoid flexible working hours. It’s easier to maintain a healthy work-life balance when you follow a disciplined work schedule. The same goes the other way around.
Remote work will always have its challenges. However, if you take examples from what worked for you at physical office, you can create alternative solutions that you can easily apply in a remote setting. I can confidently say that you and your team can succeed in getting the same results and have equally good relations together. In my current team, there are 95% percent of my artists I have never met face to face. Though, I can say that we have a great sync between us, we accomplish results, and most importantly… we have fun, and take pride in our team culture.
Let me know in the comments section below on how have you been doing it. Or write me an email if you want advice on how to improve your remote work arrangement based on your unique circumstances. If you found this post helpful, please share it with your network using the buttons below.
