*Note-I wrote this and planned to publish it in January after I set up shop in Austin for my contract with Bluepoint Games. Apparently it go lost in the shuffle. I have decided to publish it as is with only normal spelling and grammatical edits.*
Certainly a few days late isn’t a big deal at this point.
Quarter 4 is a very difficult quarter to break down. From later November on my personal life played a larger role than my professional life. It had to for a number of reasons.
- I bought a house with my girlfriend. We moved into it in the middle of December and I spent numerous days doing odd fix up jobs during Christmas.
- My siblings came to visit me at the end of November for Thanksgiving. It was a blast and I needed to see them.
- I was completely and utterly burnt out after 2016. I knew that 2017 was going to start off with a bang, so I took advantage of having a bit of spare cash and a huge job lined up and relaxed.
- Sort of-because House Buying is really stressful and a long process.
Because of what I just outlined above, my Fourth Quarter results are very out of the ordinary.
Task Tracking
I’m going to not include goal hours this quarter due to December being such a departure from the norm.
- Hours Worked: 306.5
- Billable Hours: 261.5
- Average Efficiency: 83%
October and early November closed out VaynerMedia, and the same caveats from my last quarterly applied. I immediately rolled off of VaynerMedia into two projects; a visualization for a future gallery space in New York City, and an unpaid art test (as they usually are) for Bluepoint Games in Austin Texas. At early points, all three projects (VaynerMedia, visualization, and the art test) were going at the same time. This further fed the feeling of being burnt out.
Finally, I wrote four blogs for Gametextures to be published slowly from December to the start of February. This was to allow the site to continue to have content while I moved into my new home and then made preparations for my assignment in January.
Income
October and November with both quite good to me. VaynerMedia carried me through October and I still had a light workload from them in November. My visualization project paid well, as most work from New York does.
December was lighter than the previous months, with most of my incoming being from GameTextures. However, I worked a few hours on a project for one of my former regular clients, Motion Logic Studios. John is always fun to work with, and it’s been a while since I was able to work with him. A lot has changed with Motion Logic, but he has not.
Even with a December in which I only wrote and didn’t work many hours, I still managed a pretty impressive 41% increase in my year over year income for the quarter. My fourth quarter last year wasn’t half bad either.
Looking Ahead
I will be pretty busy for the next two weekends, so if I find time to write my year in review it’ll be during the week. I have a family matter to attend to this weekend, and the weekend after that I will be in Philadelphia.
Much like I did with VaynerMedia, I’m currently not tracking hours at my current assignment. I’ll be working some fairly long hours from time to time, and I’ll be keeping them tracked in my invoices to the company I’m working with so I’ll be able to use them to keep an eye on how many hours I work per a quarter. I’ll continue to assume 80% or so efficiency, so the focus on my upcoming quarterly reports will be a little bit different for the next two quarters or so.
Oh yes, the result of the art test I took in the fourth quarter I mentioned. That is my current client. I’m working on-site in Austin Texas at Bluepoint Games as a Contract Senior Environment Artist. 2017 has started with a bang indeed.