About

About

Hi! I’m Red Panda, a freelance artist from the Netherlands.

My real name is Tiamo Pastoor. I was born in 1997 and I don’t have any good pictures of myself.

This page could list all my achievements and praise me into the heavens … but that’s just not who I am.

Workflow & Personality

I care about honesty, activity and kindness.

Even tiny little lies are not accepted. I’ll always honestly say if I haven’t done something, or if I think something’s not good enough, but also expect others to do the same. If you lie to me or keep back information (repeatedly), even if your intentions are good, I’m gone.

I am absolutely not the kind of artist who sits in his chair waiting for inspiration to strike, or for that “perfect idea” to arrive. I work hard, every day, with the same amount of effort and attempts at creating something.

It also means I might go down paths that don’t make sense at first sight, that I make mistakes, that I’ll show versions that are raw and unpolished. And yes, there are days when all the effort in the world still won’t find solutions to your creative problems, or when your brain is simply too tired.

But I know from experience: if you simply put in the same effort each day, then everything will be done. And surprisingly quickly.

At the end of the day, we’re all humans here. I have to ask money for my work because I need food on the table, but I’d do it all for free if I had a choice. I want t help you create your dream projects, but health and kindness will always have more priority than whatever end result our collaboration produces.

When we’re on our death bed, we’d like to think we did something good and added kindness to the world, don’t we? The idea that maybe we could’ve made more money or worked even harder instead will seem absurd then.

This is my portfolio, though, and not my personal page! As such, for more details, background, work, opinions, and anything else, I refer you to Tiamo Pastoor.

Common Sense Terms

Of course, the ideal “terms and conditions” depend on the project and your offer to me. I understand very well that different projects lead to different “design constraints”. When designing a wheel for a car you really don’t want to use the same process as when designing a wheel for an office chair!

In general, though, I maintain the following principles.

  • Clarity & Communication. Everything is clearly communicated and written down. The vast majority of wasted time and money comes from things “only verbally agreed upon”, or simply never communicated at all, forcing me to make assumptions. If needed, I’ll keep asking questions until I get those details out of my employer and hope you don’t mind ;) In the same way, you should tell me to be more specific when, say, I send an invoice that’s not 100% correct.
  • No fixed rates. This might ruin your whole world view, but money is subjective. The exact same work can be worth more or less money if done at a different time or in different circumstances. There is no “proper rate” or “sensible cost” to, say, designing a website. I will ask the monetary amount that I, at that moment, looking at the project, need to survive. Like most people!
  • Half now, half later. It’s the only sensible split of risk in my eyes. I’ll ask half the agreed upon pay at the start, and you only need to pay the other half when all is done and to your satisfaction.
  • Everything needs time and iteration. I’ve made 200+ board games and still can’t create a game that’s even 100% done or playable in a single try (especially not with time pressure). Everything in this wereld starts with a terrible, ugly first version, which is your starting point for iterating, iterating, iterating. That takes time. That requires time off too, allowing your brain to recharge and find new solutions. Thus, I will say so when I think an assignment simply can’t be done in the given time frame (or other constraints), and pass on it.

My other websites

To keep things clean and simple, I’ve created separate websites for each of my major artistic areas. This portfolio you’re reading is just an overview of everything. The actual website of the project will always contain all the information, updates, downloads, comments, etcetera.

Visit them using the links below.