I'm not as experienced as Cyangmou but I like to think I've learned a little bit during my first year getting paid to make art for games!

Starting out doing game art on the side, I asked $16/hr for my first job (I live in the US for reference). I had made art for my own personal game projects previously so I knew a bit about it already and consider myself a pretty decent artist. The client agreed immediately to that price so that's when I knew I probably asked too little. I read afterwards that this is basically as low as you should ever go. If you have a pretty good concept of making art for games I would say ask maybe $18ish/hr for your first job or two.

The rate you ask should depend on a couple things. Feel out the client first and foremost, if they act like they've done this before you can safely ask a little more than from someone who is making their first game. If the job is just a short little project I usually ask less per hour and if the job is going to last for months or even years I make sure to ask more because your cost of living and your skill level will both likely increase during the allotted time period. My rate also varies depending on how badly I need the work at the time, if I already have several jobs lined up I will ask more, if I need the money in a pinch I will settle for less per hour. And this may not be the best to admit, but if I am not really feeling the game concept and the job doesn't get me too excited I will usually ask more per hour because at least $ will keep me interested in the job.

Contracts are very important, but they can't always save you from getting screwed. I have had clients sign contracts only to refuse to pay come the first or second month's delivery of work. The contract is broken but it is just not a large enough loss for me to consider taking them to small claims court. Then I am out several hours of work with these custom made art assets that nobody else will want. I prefer to receive down payments before I start the work, this shows me the client is serious. Sometimes it is hard to get the client to agree to this, but there is usually some way to ensure you don't do massive amounts of work before any payment is received. Also you should send work samples to the client as a .jpg so the work can't be stolen and placed directly in their game.

For new clients I try to receive payment once a week or twice a month, for trusted clients I usually just do down payments and final payments or once at the end of every month. I use Invoicera for all my time tracking and invoicing needs, it looks professional and shows the client as much info about the time I worked as I want them to know.

Do not upload any art you've done for clients without their permission. In my contracts I like to put a clause stating the work can be displayed in my portfolio, so if they sign that they've already agreed to this. I recommend doing some research on copyright laws and looking up example contracts to get an idea of what you need to include in yours.

Best of luck! Hope this helps some.

I've searched the forum so forgive me if this has already been discussed...

Like many people on these forums I am a freelance artist, trying to make a living doing art for people's games. The best way I've found to advertise my services is through the Portfolio forums here and at PixelJoint. Are there any other websites I could get some interest for 2D & pixel art?

As I am getting more experienced I am having to adjust my rates to my skill level. I've found my lower end "professional" rates are at that awkward spot where they are too high for most interested parties but I am not seeing a large amount of more established/higher budgeted jobs that could afford professional rates. Do I need to be pursuing salary positions with game companies at this point or is there still hope for freelance work?

Any other words of guidance or past experiences from the professionals would be really helpful for all aspiring and current pixel artists!

Is there a way to make an animation by importing several gif frames made outside of Pyxel Edit? Everything's drawn already, just need to place each frame.

Also, it would be really helpful if you could implement an option for different frame rates per frame. With this feature I could replace my current animating software with yours. Thanks!

Your animations look nice. I think you could benefit from playing around with color contrast. You should zoom out all the way to 100%, if you can't differentiate shades relatively easily then those colors aren't serving a big enough purpose and should be made darker or lighter. From far away your C Shepard looks like he only has 2 color blocks used for his body, a navy blue and a darker navy/black area. But you DO have shading there, you just need to up the contrast and your shapes & details will be more apparent. Your skin tone isn't really working with that lightest shade, it needs to be less yellow and more pink like the other shades, and lighten it up a notch.