Ok I won't talk anything about games or apps but the lifestyle itself. To tell the truth I haven't been working at a company as full time almost more than a year because the company I was working closed. The economy is not so great in my country recently and the wages are way too low also plus I haven't been lucky enough to find the job that I seek.
Anyways since then I have been working and struggling on game making for mobiles around a year and things are almost going the way I wanted to go but still I am at a better position than I expected. I was right and it wasn't always good to trust the job you are working full time. anything could happen and it happened, I was jobless. So the below links were what I had in those times with me.
https://itunes.apple.com/tr/developer/volkan-kutlubay/id927603440
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Volkan+Kutlubay&hl=en
https://videohive.net/user/volkankutlubay/portfolio
Ok what you do if you are your own boss and especially if you don't have an office to go. Work from home?? I tell you a big NO! If I had the enough resource I would definitely rent a small office even a very small one just because to get my self out home and go there. But until then I go to a nearest cafe around me actually both pictures in my previous posts are shot in there. Yes the one 2 years ago and the one 2 days ago LOL. Nothing has changed then only I had full time job 2 years ago.
What you need to do as a freelancer is you need to create the illusion of leaving your house and going to a full time job for yourself. If you can make some sports in morning go to a walk or jogging. But if you are someone like me thinking bout work a lot you won't be doing that but get to work as fast as you can. So Go out and even home is the only place you can work at, go out first for an half hour walk then come back home. And even at home don't take out your shoes if you can and work like that just like at office. This is very crucial for your psychology. If you can work from your laptop like me go to a nearest cafe around you and work there. Put on those earphones and get to work.
Since I have been a 3d animator for around 15 years and because of the nature of the work I always worked at night time until the morning that was the only way. I continued to do that when I was working on my own but I realised that is not healthy after a year. I put on around 10 kilos and it was in short time by the way. I also got married which put another responsibility in my life. So working alone can be really alone sometimes and you can get into depression. Working at an office sometimes is the thing I miss you know. Even I went to my friend's office yesterday and I saw the office environment I told him "this environment made me feel good". I love socialising by the way going out having beers dancing etc. I am a person of people not anti social so this thing working alone hit me hard. Besides all, my wife is a great person and she supports me all the time so just wanted to mention her so you don't misunderstand from what I wrote above.
Anyways what I did was I changed my programme and now I try to wake up early in the morning. My daily work routine goes like this.
Wake up at 6:30
Get Ready and take my Mac Book Pro
Go to a nearest Cafe
Get breakfast and start working while munching on my breakfast.
Change the office on different days so I go some other shopping malls with my computer which helps me to shift my ideas and thoughts.
Also meet with my friends at lunch time to have lunch which is the most important thing.
Most important to the above is I try to stay healty. I am on a diet right now trying to loose weight and also I go to the park close to my house 3 times a week. There I do jogging and some other physical exercises. Making Sports relaxes me a lot.
The main thing is while we are working we shouldn't forget that we are a human being at the end and we should live our life as we work. I realised I was pushing too hard on my self since I am working on a game which I will send to a publisher which put on me like triple stress.
I make the graphics on my own. I design the levels and plus you need to design between 92 and 100 scenes in a randomised game so the levels won't repeat themselves. Yes the game is a randomised game but also I am planning to add like achievable levels so the player will decide which way to go. I really hope this one gets accepted by publishers. I am going the publisher route this time since I can concentrate on 1 thing at a time and I concentrate on game making which is what I want to do already.
WHAT TO DO?
Ok I will share some other things on what you can do not to feel lonely when working alone as a freelancer. The below list are some ideas I though about so if you have other strategies you are doing as a freelance please share with me.
- Go out socialise more.
- Meet with your old colleagues as much as you can and share your current work with them take your ideas.
- Enjoy what you are doing don't out force yourself but please don't be lazy at the same time. WORK BUDDY WORK!
- Use Social Media as much as you can related to your work. In my case it is app business and I socialise a lot at a facebook group called BlueCloudSelect created by Carter Thomas.
- Try to network with other people if you can.
- You can also start a small consultancy firm to help people with a small amount of money which can help you to get to know other entrepreneurs. Remember the more you help the more you win always!
- You can start a youtube channel related with your business and share your knowledge. Or do some other crazy stuff in front of camera and at the same time promote your products or even other people's products.
Ok the most important of all is try to grow on what you know. I realised long ago that if you are bored at what you are doing this means your stuff is boring so you need to find ways to make it interesting. Why you get bored is because you are learning and growing as you work on something so your previous knowledge is not satisfactory and since there is no one around you that you can learn it is all up to you. So self improve try to be more creative. One thing on game making; If your game is getting repetitive try to add a few extra different enemies there it will just cheer up the game. Also try to add different challenges to those characters. Remember that annoying fishing dude on the cloud in Super Mario? Who could forget that you know. Just be creative and remember your job is to entertain and Game comes first nothing else.
Enjoy your work guys and live fully to the most with high energy. Make Sports, it is a great meditation for finding new ideas.
Happy Creating
Volkan
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