Wow, thanks so much for taking the time to do that for me! I regularly recommend artists and programmers for jobs if I've worked with them before, but I don't think I've ever recommended a total stranger, so that's quite a mark of kindness on your part.

Whenever I advise younger animators who are just entering the field, I always tell them that a lot of jobs come from contacts who recommend you for openings, but this is the first case I've experienced of an out of the blue recommendation, haha. I'm happy the quality of my work inspired you to stick your neck out for me at all, so I'll do my best to live up to that if they do contact me for any work! It's especially nice to know a fellow artist has vetted them as a company and worked with them before, since there are plenty of companies out there that just mistreat their artists and which I wouldn't recommend.

If I find the time and am looking to swap techniques, I'll give that discord a look sometime! I see on your YouTube that you've made a tutorial for using the Spine web widget, which is something I'm definitely keen to have a look at if I ever get around to updating my website, so I'm for sure bookmarking that. You've used it to nice effect on your own site, which has a lot of clearly fun-loving work on it all around! My favorite thing from your Spine reel would have to be the receptionist, since I found her super twitchy timing and posing funny and well-motivated.

It's always good to have more genuinely nice people in one's life, so please feel free to add me over on LinkedIn if you like! (There's a link to mine back in my networking thread~)

Hi again, Erika!

I just wanted to let you know that Miguel from Social Point contacted me shortly after you forwarded my reel to them, and I have now signed a contract and delivered a finished rig, which was approved as having met their expectations. Studying and recreating the setups of their example rigs also served to teach me a couple of little tricks, which is always bonus.

Couldn't have happened without you, so I'm very thankful! The amount of work he's projected to have for me over the next couple months should slot nicely into the occasional gaps in my existing schedule, which is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to find from putting my reel up here.

You weren't kidding about them having fantastic artists, though. I initially asked if it would be possible for me to also do some animation for them (since I ordinarily consider myself an animator and not a rigger, with rigs just being a means to an end for me to animate), but after looking at the animations in the example rig files that Miguel sent over, I was like "Nope, I'm totally 100% happy just rigging, thanks!", hahaha. The animations were so flawless, there was nothing I could possibly see to improve upon, and I sure as heck ain't got enough time in my freelance schedule to pour enough of my heart and soul into the animations to make them look that great. Although it definitely represents the quality I'd like to aspire to with time!

Was the sort of work that you've personally done for Social Point animation, rigging, or illustration?

Also, I saw in their contract that the payment term is within 30 days of invoice. I've been working with a company for the past year whose contract said the same thing, but they often take as long as 90+ days to process payments, which has created some undue stress for my wife and I. I know you already said your experience with SP has been positive, but I'm just curious if you can vouch for whether they also tend to process payments in a reasonably timely manner. Just between you and me, of course!

Cheers,
Matt