I got fired from my first game artist job and now I feel completely lost
Hi Reddit. I’ve been wanting to talk about this somewhere because most of my friends aren’t professional artists, and I don’t think they fully understand what it feels like trying to work as an artist in the current AI-heavy industry.
25F, I worked in graphic design for a few years, but my real goal was always to become some kind of 2D digital artist. Comics, games, web work, freelance, fuck, even NSFW, honestly, I didn’t care what kind of art it was as long as I could draw for a living.
A few months ago, I got offered a Game Artist position at a slot game company. Not an ideal industry by a long shot, but some of the stuff they said really sounded amazing for an artist role. What excited me most was that they specifically told me they wanted to move away from AI-generated assets and focus on higher-quality art, which is why they hired me, the first non-“AI artist” at their company.
I was super excited! The role sounded exactly like what I always wanted: designing the characters, symbols, backgrounds, animations, VFX, basically shaping the entire visual identity of it. “That game is basically your baby”, they said. Music to my ears.
The only problem was that the boss said that the games should take one month to be fully done, that’s it.
That immediately worried me because even AI slot games usually take longer than that. And i know for a fact fully artist-made slot games can take 3 to 6 months. But then the lead design/art/animation guy (Guy for short) reassured me that this was more of a long-term goal than a hard expectation for my first project, so I accepted the role.
They loved what I did, i loved to draw. I loved discovering how Spine works and having a theme and playing off that theme to make cool stuff in the game. The gambling side didn’t even matter, i was doing what i wanted for a living.
Then at some point work started feeling odd.
Guy kept sending me AI-generated characters based on artwork I had already made for the game. At first I assumed they were just loose references, because he rarely explained what he actually wanted me to change. Most of the time he’d just say stuff like, “Can you make it more like this?” …like this how? the AI images themselves were clearly generated from my own work in the first place. He didn’t know english very well so i tried my best to understand, but he just wouldn’t talk…
At some point he asked me if i can clean up some AI character he generated so that it “looks more real”. He then made a poll in the main channel asking the team to vote on which character style we should move forward with: mine vs the AI stuff based on my work. The team picked mine 5 to 1, but the boss stepped in and told us to stop debating because we were already behind schedule.
What frustrated me most was that cleaning up his slop took even more time away from actually working on the game. The whole situation felt bizarre and completely unnecessary.
After that, things quieted down. I think he let me do my own thing because he saw that the team likes what i do. In any case, i kept drawing.
Finally, we were moving along.
Once I started on animation, Guy told me to do the animations entirely in Spine. I spent a huge amount of time learning it, even though it felt far slower and clunkier than After Effects for the kind of work we were doing. I cannot put into words how annoying even simple things are done in this backwards-ass software. I kept thinking i’m losing so much time, but if they need it done in spine, i have to do it in spine. Besides, i was actually learning it, which could prove useful in the future.
Then I found out they weren’t even using Spine the way it’s actually meant to be used.
Guy eventually told me they only exported PNG sequences and barely used Spine’s JSON system at all because their developer supposedly didn’t want to implement it. I had spent weeks learning specialized software for features the project wasn’t even using, when most of the animation could have been done faster in After Effects from the start. At some point he actually admitted he uses mainly AE not Spine. Excuse me, what?? I thought i was going insane… but the deadline was approaching so I had to move past this.
At that point I switched most of my workflow to AE just to save time, while requirements kept constantly changing: frame counts, resolutions, folder structures, timings, all of it. The closer we got to the deadline, the more chaotic everything started to feel.
I get a feeling something’s not right. I check the calendar and we are still majorly behind. I ask him what exactly is left to do, he brushes me off. I ask again. He says “just keep drawing and i’ll tell you what is next after that”. I say no, that’s what we did until now. We need to be more organized. He brushes me off again. I make a list and ask him to check. He finally checks and adds all that i needed. Turns out its a lot. I do a little calculating and unless i only sleep 1,5h per night, we are not hitting the deadline.
Guy reassures me that things will be fine, he offers to take up some stuff that are left so that we can tag team it. I ask “what happens if we miss the deadline?” “That cannot happen”, he says. Very ominous, but I keep busy…
The next two weeks were miserable. I worked from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep, constantly stressed and convinced I was about to lose my first real digital art job. My work quality started slipping, technical mistakes piled up, and I could feel myself burning out.
But every time I brought up concerns, I was told the work was good and that we’d clear things up later during a feedback session once the game was finished. He says things like this happen in a first game. I try to calm down, i get some more excitement for drawing. Then, in an otherwise calmer Friday afternoon, what i dread finally happens.
Boss: “Hi OP, we discussed this with the team so wanted to let you know directly before anything official lands in your inbox. We've taken stock of where we are on the project and where we need to be, and unfortunately the pace isn't aligning with our timelines. We don't think this is going to work out, so we're going to have to end the contract. A formal notice will follow by email under [some contract stuff here]. During those 10 days the main priority will be handing over your files and any work-in-progress.”
Out of the blue, no warnings, through a text message. No call or video to ask about my side of things, nothing about any feedback session, nothing. Within 10 minutes i receive a formal contract closure email and i get removed from all the text channels that aren’t strictly about the game i was working on. 10 days to send in any progress and that’s it.
The whole job only lasted 2 months, but it feels like it aged me 2 years. I went into it excited to finally work as a real digital artist, and came out of it feeling exhausted, confused, and honestly a little disillusioned with the industry.
What keeps bothering me is that I still can’t tell how much of this was actually my fault. Obviously I made mistakes. I should’ve spoken up more about the impossible deadline and I should’ve taken more care of myself at the end when stress was making me mess up more… But the entire pipeline also felt chaotic from the start. Constantly changing requirements, vague communication, stark differences in what the boss and Guy were saying, AI references replacing actual direction… it felt like everyone was improvising while thinking everything was under control.
Right now I’m lucky enough to have some savings and a bit of breathing room. But after finally getting what felt like a huge opportunity and burning out almost immediately, I genuinely don’t know what direction I’m supposed to go in next.