[w4ffl35]

i was friends with a lot of artists for a while. some did it for the cash but others have a deep drive. some creators just want enough money to keep creating. one friend sold nearly everything that she owned in order to keep creating plush toys. i work sporadically and use the money i make to fuel video video game development (i originally did this to give myself extra time to self-educate on how to make games). I have been doing this for around 8 years.

I'm in the middle when it comes to money for creation. I'd buy a house and a car if i could because it would be nice to have a stable place to live as i get older and a way to get around, but my primary thought is always: "how can i make enough cash to give me the time i need to work on my project?" because creative projects are literally the only thing i do with my time. I can't live without creating things.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

This is my drive.

I worked for over 35 years, to have enough money to be able to work on stuff I love to do.

I'm not rich; and never will be, but I have enough, not to be worrying about starving. That's a rare luxury.

And I work on the kinds of things that I want to work on; not that someone else wants me to do for them, so they can make a bunch of money. Most of my work is given to people and organizations that can't afford talent like mine.

[postingposts]

Ideally someone would value your creativity or recognize the value in paying you enough to do a task that has value to them while also giving you time and space to work on the things which are valuable to you.

We can all be paid more and work less and things will get better. Now, making people actually understand that is an entirely different beast.

I can sympathize with your friend, I made digital art for a while and distribute it for free still to this day without any license whatsoever. Because I love to make art. I write with no expectation that I will get a book deal, that someone will pay to read it, or that I can convert it to some form of sellable text.

Because I love to write.

The more I’m on Earth the less I like it here.

[w4ffl35]

> Ideally someone would value your creativity or recognize the value in paying you enough to do a task that has value to them while also giving you time and space to work on the things which are valuable to you.

You would think this would be the case, but I have only encountered this at one company. I was a professional web developer / designer who also learned to become a "full stack" engineer over the course of 20 years. it started out great and kept me satiated creatively for a long time but ultimately i think it lead to more trouble than it was worth (a career i mean).

The number of companies that have taken advantage of me in various ways is appalling. I decided I wanted to stop working 10 years ago but I still had debt to pay off and a number of other poor life choices that had me weighted down. I knew I wanted to make games but I also had never programmed any games (other than some qbasic stuff when i was a kid) so I quit my job and started contracting and learned c# and Unity3D and tinkered with games in my spare time.

I've also learned C++ and Unreal Engine and done a bit of just pure C++ game stuff but I haven't released anything official yet.

My current plan is to release a few well polished small games that I've been working on to multiple platforms and see what happens.

> I love to make art. I write with no expectation

This is exactly how i feel about the games. I have lost loads of money thanks to this and in reality it may never pan out financially, but at least I will get some creative projects out the door and feel satisfied that I didn't waste my entire skill set assigning scrum points to story cards, or working 18 hours a day for some other person's startup fever dream.