It’s 4am in Bucharest and I’m wide awake. I noticed some bugs on my website. After fixing them, I thought “hmm… I haven’t blogged in a while… better get on it”.
Romania is the land of vampires, and I’ve become one. Night shifts line me up with the team back in Australia, so my day starts when the sun goes down. This is my second stint here. I get to spend another 90 days in Europe!
I feel incredibly lucky to be doing this. But I want to be clear about how long it took to get here, because I don’t think it’s stated enough. And hopefully my experience helps those who want to travel and work find their own way too.
Early days are hard
Starting out as a freelancer is hard in itself. You have no work and no clients. All of it gets built slowly, connection by connection, job by job, and plenty of those jobs are regular employment gigs that just happen to teach you something or introduce you to someone.
It’s not a linear journey. If you’re not a freelancer yet, don’t aim to digitally nomad. Aim to freelance.
It’s a trust exercise that takes ages. You simply have to accept it might take 5 to 10 years. Because the goal isn’t really “get freelance work.” The goal is to become good enough, and known enough, that your skills are eventually needed by someone who doesn’t live in your city.
That’s the whole thing, at least for me. I eventually found myself working for a client that could provide me with a constant and steady stream of work.
Practice mode
I didn’t jump straight from Melbourne to Europe. I did a version of this for years without realising it.
Brisbane became a second home while I was working on Bluey. Even after I moved back to Melbourne, I kept returning on short trips to help out on Bluey videogame projects. I’d also duck in and out of Sydney to work more closely with NotDoppler at key moments – though Sydney was always the harder one. That city is expansive in a way that punishes short visits.
Looking back, that was digital nomad practice mode. Covid helped too. Work from home stopped being a concession and became a normal thing to ask for, which quietly removed one of the biggest objections I would have had to deal with.
To be completely honest, I didn’t have the guts to go overseas by myself before that, but I also didn’t have a strong reason to travel… yet. It dawned on me that I SHOULD travel overseas and work, as I was in the perfect position to do so… consistent freelance work, already bouncing between states in Australia… why NOT travel, right?
Building Trust
I finished on Bluey Season 3 in 2022 and started contracting for NotDoppler in Sydney. Three years on Earn to Die Rogue, all of it remote.
When the mobile launch landed, something shifted for me. I’d proved I could do the work without being in the room. Not for a sprint — for years. So when I asked whether I could keep doing it from the other side of the world, I wasn’t really asking them to take a risk. I was asking them to confirm something we’d already tested for three years.
Much to my delight, they said yes.
That’s the part I’d underline for anyone plotting a similar move. You don’t build the case for going overseas by going overseas. You build it beforehand, my being as effective as possible while already remote. Go kick some ass. Be known as someone who is reliable and can deliver.
Travelling lighter
My remote setup has changed shape for the road.
The heavy Wacom Cintiq 16 Pro is gone. I like travelling light, and I’d had trouble at airports before over whether a tablet belongs in carry-on or checked luggage. Not a fight worth having repeatedly.
I’ve replaced it with a Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra. It’s excellent for drawing and dramatically lighter. Being an Android, it also just works as a tablet anywhere, which the Cintiq never did. When I need it as a pen display for the laptop, I use the Super Display app for Windows.
Is it as good as a true Wacom? No. Is it good enough? Yes — and the trade-off is worth it. That’s been the theme of most of my gear decisions lately.
If you’re an artist looking to become a digital nomad but can’t afford a fancy tablet, just get an Intuos or a Xpen. It’s fine! You’ll adapt to drawing without the screen, you might even prefer it!
Flexibility
My clients don’t need me full time, five days a week right now.
That means I’m not earning my full potential, but for now it’s fine and allows me flexibility and options. What I get instead is time – for my own projects and games, and for getting outside, touching grass, and actually seeing the place I’ve travelled to. Right now that’s an acceptable trade.
Just this month I took a short trip to Malta and it paid off immediately. A beautiful rocky island – I was taken back by the coastal landscapes, the lagoons, the caves. The buildings are all a sandy white, and I loved the consistency of it. That kind of intentional design, held across an entire city, just like a painting! It sent me straight back to environment art and gave me a stack of new ideas for rocky landscapes.
What I love the most about travel is absorbing the details. The streets in Xi’a, the Great Wall, the volcanic cave clusters of Cappadocia, the hills of Istanbul, the canals of Venice… all this is still sitting in the tank. I haven’t applied it to my work in any meaningful way yet.
I’m choosing not to worry about that. Absorb now, spend later.
Where that leaves me
None of this happened quickly, and I think that’s the most useful piece.
The years of small jobs and slow connections were the price of admission. Brisbane was the rehearsal. Three years of remote delivery on Earn to Die Rogue was the evidence. By the time I asked to work from the other side of the world, the answer was mostly already decided, I’d just never phrased it as a question before.
What I have now isn’t the maximised version of any of it. Not the most money, not the best drawing tablet, not a full week of billable work. But I’m making things I care about, in places I’d never have seen otherwise, for people who trust me to deliver from wherever I am.
It’s nearly 3am. Australia’s about to log off. The sun rises early in Bucharest in summer, so I better jump in a coffin or something.
