Fantasy character armor work

ejthayer

I will give you OBJ files of a male and female character. Both are about 1700 triangles. I would then need you to retexture some parts of the model and maybe add some polys for a new armor. So for example you might add plate armor by expanding the size of some body parts to account for the thickness of the metal and maybe add polys for some shoulder pieces. Some armors may need spikes or designs depending on how elaborate the armor is. The male and female need to look as if they are generally wearing the same kind of armor with changes for female anatomy.

If you are interested then please send me some samples/links and then I usually have you give me a quote for the work based on armor complexity.

I'm just about done with this project and will then be moving to changing the models to other races and having some different head and faces created.

Please email me at: ejthayer@yahoo.com

MattQ86

Dude you still owe me like $400. I doubt anybody else is going to want to work with you if you don't pay your freelancers.

D4V1DC

You got to pay or you become blacklisted and no "logical", artist will work with you.
Especially if the word gets out, which seems to be happening now...

Best of luck gents!

Ruz

so MattQ86 he is refusing to pay or just not answering emails?

MattQ86

It started when I responded to a similar post of his here in the freelance section back in April. Initially things went well as he hired me to do some textures (and a few snapped on low poly pieces) on a male and female versions of a character. I followed his guidelines and put in about 12 hours for the generous price of $200. So it came out to $16.67 an hour. From what I've read here that's lower than anybody should be charging for freelance but it was my first job working on assets for a game and this is just one guy making a noticeably low budget MMO. So yeah, things were frugal but good.

Then I offered to do a second batch of work for him.

He said he had two potential jobs: one being an upgraded version of what I had just done and the other being leather armor for another character class. I told him I'd be happy to do both and sent him concepts, as he asked for, pumping them out quickly so as not to run up the hours and charge any more. He approved but asked for some revisions on the leather, which I did. I modeled some more low poly parts and squeezed them into the UV space and a few days later I sent him images of the textured upgraded characters. It took a few days for him to respond so I spent the meantime working on the two leather armored characters. I send him images of those too and get approval on the upgrades and end up having to do revisions on the leather armored characters. Note: this includes sending him images of the texture flats and multiple images of the textured models.

My logic was that I had done twice the work as last time with maybe three or four extra hours on revisions and concepting. I came up with the low price of $450 for these four characters. Apparently he had been counting on me providing twice the assets at the same flat price of $200. Again I try to be nice about things and drop any additional charge for the extra hours I put in. $400 is my offer on the simple principal of getting paid for two jobs when that's what I've done. Joe argued that he only wanted the leather armor (which he offered to pay me $200 for) and said that he wanted more changes on the other assets. This kind of came out of nowhere since he had previously approved of the assets I as I had shown him and never objected to me doing both jobs as we had seemingly initially agreed upon. Once more I tried to make good and agreed to make revisions free of any additional charges so long as he payed me the $200 he should have. Well it takes him about three days to respond to any given e-mail and it's already close to the end of the month. Sallie Mae doesn't accept polygonal wizard armor as payment so after asking for payment up front and again being met with Joe playing dumb I foolishly went along with sending him the assets before getting paid.

...and then he never responded to another e-mail of mine again.

Ruz

I generally don't work for individuals, it's almost guaranteed you are going to get situations like this. try and do stuff for recognised companies.
ejthayer you really should pay up.

MattQ86 - you could just refuse to allow him to use the assets, ie stick them on ebay or release them for free on the internet.

MattQ86

I'm not sure if I can do that. Even though I didn't sign anything or agree to anything the assets were modeled (and parts of them textured) by somebody else.

ejthayer

OMG I didn't even see this until today. You agreed to do a second model at the same price as the first one, then you tried to double your price on me and justify it by doing an extra model that I didn't even ask for. Then I agreed to pay you for the work and you sent me models with textures that were so dark I could hardly see any texturing. I'm not sure why you did that but at that point I decided to stop communication with you.

You need to do the work agreed on at the agreed price. I am NOT using and never would use that model you sent me.

I am working with another 3D modeler who is been doing a great job and I have paid him for everything he has done. Here is a link to screen shots of what he has done for me. (most of these are his)

http://xenimus.hyperboards.com/action/view_topic/topic_id/4266

Honestly you did great work on that first model and I was hoping to have you do several more. But you cant just do what you feel like and then try to double your price. More than double, $200 to $450??

EarthQuake

This is why (both parties) should always insist on contracts, otherwise its a he-said, she-said situation.

BrendtheCow

EarthQuake wrote: »

This is why (both parties) should always insist on contracts, otherwise its a he-said, she-said situation.

^ this.

Spudnik

In a case like this, what kind of weight does a permanent(ish) record of the agreed upon conditions in the form of email correspondence carry?

A situation like this sucks, just wanting to learn how I can avoid it :S

ejthayer

That is a great question. If someone is going to do something unethical are they going to care that a contract is in place? I don't think so. Even if there is a signed contract it is nearly impossible to enforce across state borders and even harder over country borders. And not even worth the time for a couple hundred bucks.

All this contract talk is just not practical. Are you really going to setup a contract for each tiny little project? People just need to be honest with each other.

I have been screwed over for around $600 total. What can I do? Nothing really, I just consider it a cost of doing business.

shagz412

Actually Contracts are highly practical in the US and anyone who says different is not really professional at all and live rent free at their parents still.... Any contract based in the US can be taken to court, it is referred to as "small claims court" with losses NOT totaling over a grand. If you do the work and they refuse to pay to the agreed upon writing it is the only "evidence" you have and can easily be represented by you and not some over priced attorney.... I actually write into my personal contracts that the client will cover all court costs if they lose, plus payment plus hardship.


Without a contract who owns said work, who owns said copyrights? Without contracts what is to say I barely pay you chump change and rape the profits of your neglect. We (americans) do have rights as an artist, protect them and its no biggie.... Lesson learned is write what you expect so BOTH parties leave finished and your name gets that much more respect.... Or don't then whine how you lost x dollars because you were ignorant to the world you live in

shagz412

Ej.... Yes they are very practical.... If you don't think so lol I got a few jobs you can lend me a hand with so I can prove to you how naive you really are about the industry. No contracts.....just a hand shake and good intentions

MattQ86

ejthayer wrote: »

OMG I didn't even see this until today. You agreed to do a second model at the same price as the first one, then you tried to double your price on me and justify it by doing an extra model that I didn't even ask for. Then I agreed to pay you for the work and you sent me models with textures that were so dark I could hardly see any texturing. I'm not sure why you did that but at that point I decided to stop communication with you.

You need to do the work agreed on at the agreed price. I am NOT using and never would use that model you sent me.

I am working with another 3D modeler who is been doing a great job and I have paid him for everything he has done. Here is a link to screen shots of what he has done for me. (most of these are his)

http://xenimus.hyperboards.com/action/view_topic/topic_id/4266

Honestly you did great work on that first model and I was hoping to have you do several more. But you cant just do what you feel like and then try to double your price. More than double, $200 to $450??

So yeah, you keep pushing this narrative that I somehow doubled the price on you when in reality I agreed to take on twice the work to no objections from you. We exchanged dozens of e-mails detailing the creation of all three assets and in the end I was only paid for the first one. You're either a liar or a really poor communicator but at this point I really don't care. I've spent almost as much time explaining this situation to other people including you as I have working on the assets and it's just not worth it anymore. EJThayer is a liar and a time thief, do not use his services.

I do find it funny that you apparently just had somebody re-textured the base asset I did for you though.

Stay classy Joe.

ejthayer

Yes you sent screen shots and of course I said they looked good. What did you expect me to do? Tell you it looked like crap? I was still wondering why you were doing it because I never asked to have it done but I wanted to stay positive. Why post some out of context emails to make yourself look good when you could just post the email where I told you to do the robe and leather armor at the same time? Oops, because that email does not exist.

You are the one telling lies here, and I did buy the first robe and paid you for it so what's your point on linking that pic of the other robe? Why would I not be allowed to reshape or retexture as needed if I bought it from you?

MattQ86

If you change your mind and don't like or want something you need to say it. This is far from my best work it's more like my cheapest, and I didn't start posting to Polycount because I was afraid of criticism. Perhaps you should have actually said you didn't want both. Perhaps you could have done that during the dozen or so e-mails where I sent you concepts and screen grabs. Ooops, you're a jackass.

ejthayer

Duh, it still does not say to do both! And where does it say you are going to more than double your price? There was not even close to a dozen emails, you just went ahead and did it. It says in your own screen shot "if you want to do something different", that means do the leather instead of the robe not both.

So this is far from your best work, you say it's your cheapest? You quoted me a price for the work. Why would you quote a price and then purposely do crappy work? If that is what you are saying then that is not very ethical.

I'm done talking about this.

ilwantex

This guy owe me 500 Us.he never paid me. He is a swindler.

ejthayer

WTF? I have NEVER even had a project for $500 so that is just total BS.

MattQ86