Sometimes creative people can be all over the map when it comes to what they’re good at. Writers can also be great at painting… designers can also be adept at sculpting. And these basics can evolve into new realms of creativity—and creative careers. Such is the case for Jesse Freeman, a freelancer living in Brooklyn. At just 28, this creative used his background in fine arts to launch a career in Flash development.

Jesse studied Studio Art at Florida State University. It was there that his mentor Ed Love guided him to excel in the fine arts. But after Ed had a fatal heart attack, Jesse realized that he didn’t want to go into the fine arts, even though he was good at it. “I started taking computer art classes. In one of my classes they were teaching Flash 4 and basic Web design. I started building games for fun and posting them on Flash Kit and New Grounds when both of these sites were still in their infancy,” says Jesse.

Since then he has been learning as much as he can about using Flash and currently works as a Senior Engineer at Heavy.com. “I was never really a programmer, I use to play around with Hyper Card (an old Apple slideshow application) when I was younger. I never imagined making a living as a programmer, but now I specialize in large scale Flash Applications and Interactive promotional websites.”

Even though the technical application may not have been what Jesse started out wanting to do, he’s now a whiz at it, and says that he enjoys the creativity it brings. “I realized that creativity doesn’t always have to be visual but it can manifest itself in the code,” he adds. “I love to write code and solve programming problems. It wasn’t easy but over time, with lots and lots of practice, writing ActionScript became almost second nature to me.”

In addition to his work at Heavy.com, Jesse continues to freelance. We caught up with him to learn how he manages it all, and how he believes his creativity has evolved.

Kristen Fischer (KF): What is a typical day like at your full-time job?

Jesse Freeman (JF): Currently, I am working directly with the CTO, Scott Penberthy, on organizing the Flash team and our workflow. My day to day responsibilities revolve around developing and launching Heavy’s new Flash products.

While growing up and studying fine art, my teacher Peter Olsen always told me that the most important thing to do before painting was to sketch. I still hold onto that lesson but now I have a digital tablet and a flow chart program I use to map out all of my day’s coding. I start with a mini code audit to refresh myself with what I did the day before then “sketch” out the logic I will need to program for the day.

KF: You also freelance on the side. What’s your schedule like freelancing? Is it hard being at work during normal business hours? Do you feel like your freelancing gets enough attention?

JF: People ask me how I take on so much work and when I answer that I don’t sleep I always get a strange look. Basically, I hold a full-time job, then get home and do all my freelance for as long as I can stay up. Normally I get about 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night. I guess you can say I am a workaholic but I find that when I am in a zone, the night just flies by. Most nights I have to force myself to go to sleep.

As far as my freelancing goes, I am very selective now. I use to take any job I can find to keep money coming in and occupy my time. I definitely notice the split between my day job and freelance but I feel I have found the right distribution of my attention.

By being selective, I can manage my clients’ expectations as well as my own. I use my freelance as an opportunity to explore projects I normally wouldn’t do at my full-time job. This is how I have taught myself php, mySQL, JavaScript and Ruby. I use my freelance as a sandbox for my ideas then bring what I have learned back to my full-time job. I feel that this works out for everyone including my full-time employer.

KF: Do you ever want to go solely freelance? Why or why not?

JF: Before my move to Heavy.com I was contemplating this. I did freelance for several years and only recently started working full time. When I did full-time freelance it was very difficult. I worked 18 to 19 hours a day for companies that had little direction, hardly any organization, and impossible deadlines. I was unhappy and I never had any say in the project’s direction or scope, because I was simply the hired gun who was there to bail them out.

A large part of launching a successful Web product comes from organization, planning, and solid coding library to build off of. When I start at a new company, freelance or full time, I find that I spend a great deal of time trying to learn the company’s system or worse, setting up a new one from scratch. I require specific things to be productive. A good computer, up to date software, and a stable development environment. I find that companies that rely on freelancers or outsource are not set up for this. Most companies today ask that freelancers work in house. There are just too many variables to deal with when walking into someone else’s company and each environment is different.

Don’t get me wrong, there are incredible upsides to freelancing. If you are at the top of your game as a Flash Developer you can basically name your own hourly rate. And if you are fast you can pocket some good money. This is how I got started, but your clients will burn you out and you wind up with WIN (What Is Next) syndrome. You always worry about the WIN so at the end of the project you are putting in less energy because you have to find your next job.

KF: You’ve taken the time to devote to your education. Do all artists need to do this? How has it paid off for you?

JF: Flash developers are a new breed of creative. The good Flash developers are half-artist and half-programmer. Education plays a different role for each of us. I know incredible Flash developers who never went to college and some who are computer science majors. I am a big believer that your work speaks for itself. My exploration of higher education was personal and not for professional advancement. I went to SVA (School of Visual Arts of Manhattan) to be a better artist. I had all of those old fine artist desires inside and wanted to understand how they fit into my digital life.

When I was getting my Master’s degree I was doing the complete opposite of the other students in my program. Most of the students there wanted use the program to find a better job and gain some new work skills. I walked away with a different experience and I feel like it made me a deeper person. I think that also comes through to people who look over my education and are interested in hiring me. Since a Master’s degree is rare in the web world it speaks volumes of how I value education and self improvement. Those are two things employers want to see in a new hire.

Since ActionScript is evolving into a more complicated programming language we are starting to see a change. Computer Science majors are coming over and doing stuff that self taught programmer/artists, myself included, never knew could be done. At the same time a lot of the hard core programmers don’t have the creative touch that makes Flash sites shine. As we mix and match disciplines I image that more and more schools will start offering up Programming/Art Degrees.

KF: What is your biggest challenge as a freelancer?

JF: Keeping clients happy and delivering on time. When you are the lone wolf it’s hard to get proposals together, coordinate client meeting, gather assets, and find time to work. I have trouble outsourcing my workload. I am a perfectionist and work very hard on maintaining my reputation, I can’t leave that in the hand of someone else. My perfectionism become a fault to some extent and I will be the first to push back a launch date if the site is not perfect or as good as I can get it.

Luckily for me all of my clients respect my experience and advice so it hasn’t been too much of an issue but it is always hard to sell a client on the idea that “with one more week of work the site will be so much better”. It is also hard to say when enough is enough and I put in a lot of extra unbillable hours into trying to make things perfect.

KF: How do you acquire your clients? Have you gotten leads from your full-time job?

JF: I have always been very lucky with being in the right place at the right time. Networking is so important in this industry. When I lived in the East Village, the guy who lived across the hall from me worked as a creative director for Arista Records. We started talking and when we he asked me what I did, I had a new client.

I started with a site for OutKast, then got a job for J-Kwon, Kelis, Usher, and so on and so forth. Before I knew it I had a big name artist sites on my resume and people just started calling me. One day I answered a generic job listing on www.craigslist.com and wound up getting hired at the New York Jets. By having big name clients on my resume I found that I could walk into any company and sell myself at top hourly rates. My only limitation is the time in the day and not the jobs I could find. All of my work comes from word or mouth now, and I have more work then I know what to do with.

KF: What advice do you have to others looking to enter your field?

JF: When it comes to making a name for yourself, there is a big difference between working for someone for free and taking a lower rate to get ahead. Whenever I hear something like “This is really going to be great for your portfolio” or “Once you do this job, you are going to get so much more work from the hype,” I politely turn down the job. Living in New York is a reality check. It’s so expensive to live here, there is a lot of money to be made, and if someone wants something for free, chances are you will not benefit from it. I’ve got bills to pay and I never forget that.

There comes a time when you have to make some sacrifices. For me I gave up a lot of my social life to work on my craft and myself. That is something that is not taught to you in school, it is self-taught and requires discipline. You have to spend a lot of time learning, and experiment with code to be efficient at it. Also, you have to work on your communication and public speaking. There is a lot of selling and proving to be done in meetings with clients as well as peers. If you can’t express your point of view in an intelligent and digestible way, you will have problems advancing in your career.

KF: What else is on the horizon for you? Do you aspire to do anything else career wise?

JF: I am really excited about my new job at Heavy.com. When you find a company that values creativity and wants to make you a better person—not just a better employee—it goes a long way. With that in mind I really want to work on my management skills. That is one thing you never truly learn as a freelancer, and it is a skill that can only be mastered at a full-time job.

I am also trying to be a more active voice in the Flash Community. For years I treated all of my code as proprietary and wouldn’t share it with anyone else. Recently I have adopted a more open-source mentality. I always had this internal battle because I learned everything from online sites and reading other people’s source code on the internet yet I never gave back what I learned. Last year I felt it was time for a change so I started my own blog called “The Flash Art of War” at www.flashartofwar.com. I hope that the code and knowledge I share helps educate the next group of Flash Developers. I am also trying to be a speaker at Flash Conferences and see if I can get into teaching. All I have to do now is just find the time.