CAPTAIN FREELANCE

Well, the good thing is that I am not broke anymore.

I haven’t even got all of my checks yet from my freelancing the last two weeks, but I feel OHHHHHHHHHHHHH so much better than I have recently.

As many of you may know, my freelancing was in the crapper. There was no work and I as the head of the household only had a few grand left in the bank.

My wife prayed. I prayed. February came in to shake off the wicked January doldrums and the work stated coming in.  For the most part these were old clients and friends I have worked for at different companies who remembered me in their current ones.

I worked for old friends, directors Hype Williams and David Shane. Both of their jobs were over-nighters. 

Props go out to my man Bennett Miller who got me into a long campaign he is directing for AT&T.  As a matter of fact, I was working from Sunday night until about eight AM Monday morning doing finishes on one of the spots.

That is as hard as I care to work.  Twelve hours plus straight into the next morning.  DAYLIGHT!!! Not that an almost broke man is complaining. I had a ton of sketched frames to bring to finish.

I couldn’t get the right line quality on my STORYBOARD PRO program (still figuring things out), so I downloaded my sketches into Photoshop and finished the boards that way.

Thankfully, my buddy Todd Harris took some of the burden as I emailed him six frames to digitally ink for me, while telling him to keep the style similar to my own. It’s important to at least learn Photoshop if not also have a hand in Painter. Files can be converted from one program to another if you use J-Pegs as the key.

That is the good thing about computers. I email a friend work that he can help on and then he emails it back. Nothing is lost in the translation. Todd also helped to keep me awake, by talking to me on SKYPE until around 2 or so in the morning. For the rest of the time I watched BURN NOTICE and LIFE episodes on Hulu.com. I love those shows. Hulu even has I SPY and HAWAII FIVE-O!!

The main thing is that Bennett was pleased with the outcome. It was a very, very tough spot conceptually. Not the usual simple selling of a product. It got a little dicey. But, that was merely temporary.

In about a week, I should be starting on another feature that I’ve signed on for. More about that next week.

Keep the faith.