I'm currently freelancing. I fell into it after job hunting for 6 months. It's worked out well for the most part-I work from home, I make decent money, and I don't commute. I can work out when I want and set my own schedule (deciding if early morning is best or not currently). I did only recently start getting game work again, and I have been making the mistake of trying to do too much and that hasn't helped...but overall I'm quite happy. I do miss being in a studio surrounded by talent that is better than I am.
My hours do sometimes suck-last week was horrendous. I try to keep an 8-5 (or 5:30-6:30-3:00) type hours though. I've also had issues getting paid-by one client in particular. I'm WILLING to look past it if I get checks this week. Not forget it, just look past it.
I'm currently not working as artist, but I would like to start again and do it as freelance, however I know from previous experience that I really suck as public relation/sales person, selling myself and get contacts. I'm just not a people-person.
So does anyone else do Freelance but not completely alone?
I would love to freelance, but the idea of not having a job the next month is kinda freaky. I was doing a lot of freelance a few years back and it was good money. Then the jobs died down (everyone was still recovering from the recession), and I ended up in a non art related field. I'm trying to get back to it, but I'm afraid to touch freelancing again.
I probably will switch to freelance at some point in the future, maybe between jobs. for now I just want to build up my experience and credentials. Plus working here is awesome
All I'll say is that healthcare bills are the number one reason for bankruptcy in the United States, so no, you basically would be insane not to have insurance even at high cost
Sorry I realize we are off topic but this is so mindblowing!
I had to call 9-1-1 the other day for my boyfriend and we had to get helped from paramedic and got a ride to the emergency in an ambulance. We didn't have my boyfriend assurance yet at that point and we spent the whole day and the emergency passing some scans etc.
In the end, the only charged fees was from the ambulance ride (all the rest is free in quebec), it cost us a small little 131$
Made me so happy to leave in quebec/canada haha
Sorry I realize we are off topic but this is so mindblowing!
I had to call 9-1-1 the other day for my boyfriend and we had to get helped from paramedic and got a ride to the emergency in an ambulance. We didn't have my boyfriend assurance yet at that point and we spent the whole day and the emergency passing some scans etc.
In the end, the only charged fees was from the ambulance ride (all the rest is free in quebec), it cost us a small little 131$
Made me so happy to leave in quebec/canada haha
Anywhere with universal health care is a blessing. In the US, that ambulance ride with no insurance would cost you an arm and a leg...with insurance, maybe just an arm. I suppose I could freelance in the future given my wife has a good job with insurance but only if I had to. I much prefer being around people in a studio as opposed to being at home by myself.
I've thought about doing freelance but I'm not sure I'd be able make the same money doing low poly, diffuse only work that I would in studio. I haven't done enough research yet but my guesstimate day rate I'd want would be $400. On the flip side these assets would only take 2-4 days. Is that attainable or would I have to go the sculpt/bake/PBR route? (which would make me a sad panda)
I've thought about doing freelance but I'm not sure I'd be able make the same money doing low poly, diffuse only work that I would in studio. I haven't done enough research yet but my guesstimate day rate I'd want would be $400. On the flip side these assets would only take 2-4 days. Is that attainable or would I have to go the sculpt/bake/PBR route? (which would make me a sad panda)
some clients still want the old school stuff, but they get rare
justin - i have done done some old school stuff and got the same money more or less as my sculpting work. the crowd stuff I did for forza horizon was also low poly , diffuse only and again the money was fine.
more likely though if you don't do sculpting work they would be after subdiv type characters with some hand painted stylization
i work from home, but i'm on a full time contract?
edit:
with regard to rates, when i first started i was charging £160 per day. at the time i considered that to be a lot, but as time went on and i started getting more jobs, needing to juggle clients and put people on hold etc. i decided to push my rates up... i figured if i'm that "in demand" then people would pay it, right?
That carried on for a while until people stopped wanting to pay what i was asking (which is fair enough, it's their choice) and now my day rate for artwork is £250.
Now that i'm an engineer with Marmoset, things are different... my pay is lower but more regular (let's face it i'm an amateur programmer and i'm glad to be taken on as a learn on the job deal), and i'm turning away clients for art, or passing them on to other artists that i know and trust. These clients have all said to let them know if/when i become available for art again so that's cool.
Maybe one day i can charge superstar day rates as a tech-artist/engineer. But for now... i'm just very happy where i am =]
some clients still want the old school stuff, but they get rare
What about the Settlers stuff you posted? Would you count that as old school or is it the kinda new Blizzard/Riot style of sculpting & baking stylized stuff?
It amazes me how a person can climb up the ladder of freelancing, and change from no work to making some money, to making more than studio, to having to put some offers on hold "
Like, how is that even possible !? I can't comprehend this.
It amazes me how a person can climb up the ladder of freelancing, and change from no work to making some money, to making more than studio, to having to put some offers on hold "
Like, how is that even possible !? I can't comprehend this.
I also find it curious, not including lead or senior level, but a quite experience artist with out a promotion can peak at 65-78k at a studio(certain studios of course).
So wondering what the annual average on freelance stands on?
What about the Settlers stuff you posted? Would you count that as old school or is it the kinda new Blizzard/Riot style of sculpting & baking stylized stuff?
we created a new workflow for us here, pretty much no texturepainting involved. Because its almost impossible to either find the people for painting or getting the budget for the time spent to texturize it.
So what you see is simple polypaint + bakes. No classical handpainting of the textures.
I'm freelancing because I like standing around in my underwear and drinking beer.
That isn't to say I've never done that in a studio environment, but there are fewer complaints to HR in my current situation.
I'll probably go back to working in a studio at some point. I like working from home, but I'd like to eventually get back into an environment where I can be around other people with similar interests. One thing's for sure; I'm going to be a lot more picky with the places that I apply to in the future.
Slosh that is where the 230 dollar/day rate comes from. 230 a day is what you would have to charge, 5 days a week 52 weeks a year to make 60k a year.
First, nobody wants to work 5 days a week 52 weeks year, so right there we are already charging less than a salaried employee.
Second, no benefits. This can be a big one for families/people with only 1 working adult. Health insurance alone is a thousand or two a month, especially if you have children and a spouse. So right there that is another gap in pay - this doesn't mention 401k or any of that.
A lot of freelancers charge more than 230, and in many cases a lot more. Most don't though, 200-250/day is a pretty standard rate.
However for households who already have a working parent, freelance adds that flexibility that people mention.
I charge roughly 230/day, but I never work 5 days a week. My wife has a fairly good job, and I can essentially doubly our income by working part time. We don't have to worry about healthcare because of her job, and we save a ton of money not having to pay for child care because I'm home with our child, so you could essentially tack on an extra 800-1000/month on what I make.
There are other benefits as well, but it is a definite balance.
Like I was kind of saying at the beginning, you probably won't make what you make in a studio. But with only part time work you can really add quite a bit to overall home income, and add a great deal of flexibility. So it's not perfect for everyone, but for people looking for flexibility (the young or the married or those with kids) it can make a whole lot of sense.
Ysalex, you are talented and you should charge a lot more.
Also, insurance costs for me are actually pretty low. I have a middle tier policy and my wife and baby have very nice insurance. Our total monthly insurance cost it $600.
As a freelancer you can chose to live anywhere without adjusting your rate. I charge a very healthy day rate and live in a relatively low cost of living area of the country that I really enjoy. If you happen to really want to live in Manhattan or San Francisco that doesn't work so well.
$600 per month for three of you on health insurance?! absolutely fuck that. land of the free my ass.
Guess it evens out with the higher salaries. The salary surveys were showing US studios pay around ten grand more a year than Canada & the UK, and comments I've read around Polycount seem to back that up. Nothing's really free, I pay about $200 a month in taxes for the "free" public schools in my county, it's a property tax; when I was renting it was free because I didn't know what percentage of my rent went to what.
$600 for a month for a family of 3 is pretty great, possibly one of the last concerns I had about going freelance myself, the cost of healthcare. I still don't know if I'd like to give up the job security though, it might just be my "if I ever get laid off again" plan.
$600 per month for a family of three is not great, it's terrible.
i pay 20% of my income as tax, which goes toward everything you'd expect.
i also pay 9% of my income (after the first £8000 of PROFIT) toward national insurance, annually. and this is because i'm self employed, if i were a full time employee it would be slightly less, it works out to ~£60 per month for most people in the country.
national insurance guarantees that if i ever need to have medical treatment of any kind, that i don't pay for it. if i travel to a country which would normally charge for it, i hand them my travel insurance (E1-11 form) and they bill my government. my kids don't pay national insurance until they're 16, and they only pay when they're employed. if they're unemployed THEY STILL GET FREE TREATMENT.
i wouldn't trade the NHS (even with it's flaws) for anything in the world.
and on top of aaaaall that stuff. national insurance also pays into a government pension scheme, which means that any UK resident who's paid national insurance will at least have some form of pension, on top of any other pension or savings they get.
Why does this always have to come up? I look at the low wages in Canada and the really low wages in the UK and figure things must balance out, I don't feel the need to express shock and horror about it. I'm sure $600 a month for a family of 3 in the UK would be horrible.
My saying it's "great" is because I figured the rate would be $1,000+ per month, the lower rates are due to the ACA healthcare reform.
Yup, health insurance in the states is killer...and not in a good way. I get really good benefits through my gig and get paid relatively well so I feel fortunate to be in this situation. I'm not saying living abroad with universal healthcare wouldn't be ideal but this works for me just fine. $600 in the US for a family ain't bad...it's just the situation Americans have to deal with.
I prefer to freelance 'on-site', which means I charge a daily rate for my services and expect my accommodation to be covered whilst I'm working there. On taking my first gig like this, my income effectively tripled compared to my previous studio job - because the pay was much higher and I had absolutely minimal outgoings.
A 600$ per month rate sounds pretty reasonable, my wife and I pay 1000$.
It's important to remember too though that it only covers a certain amount, and a certain percentage, so for instance while we pay 1000$/mo for our healthcare, we also have to pay 100-200 out of pocket for each doctor visit, and we paid just over 4000$ for my wife to give birth.
A 2 and a half hour birth. With a mid-wife instead of a doctor. With no pain meds, so no doctor even checking in.
Healthcare in the us does suck, but like slosh said we all know it sucks and we just have to work with it.
Personally for me it's part of my life plan to move out of country somewhere more reasonable. I would love canada, or the uk.
Just to clarify- that $600 a month gets my wife and infant literally the best plan offered by BCBS and it gets me a normal plan. Child birth is extremely expensive in the US and switching to the most expensive plan for them was actually much cheaper. Having a baby at the hospital with her old insurance (state employees plan) was going to cost us something like 10k.
Anyway, my point was health care is not free but it is easily made up for by billing the client an appropriate amount.
Hah, I read Ambershee's profile, mercenary technical designer lol
That's what I do/did for a few years with the exact same setup; working as a freelance consultant in-house for studios. I made more money that way than I ever could have being a staff employee. It started because I am not a big fan of specialization. I like tinkering around too much to be 100 percent amazing at everything and I dig mental as much as artistic challenges and that became a strength over time. My gigs were actually more enjoyable because there were so many challenges of all sorts to tackle and I knew I had a definite contractual end, not some ticking countdown when the project was over like I feared when I worked full time at some studios. I could breathe a sigh of relief knowing I could control my own destiny and not hope the captain in charge of the ship wouldn't steer the project into oblivion.
There were some points in my professional studio career where I felt like I was a contestant on the Price is Right and I have my chip ready to drop down the Plinko Machine. You hold something with almost unlimited possibility and you have all these choices on where to drop the chip and you really hope that it falls in some slot that is in your favor. Most of the time you have to walk away empty handed. I kinda like knowing that I can just walk away chip-in-hand these days.
I freelanced for around 8 months but I got sick and tired of it fairly quickly, especially when you get a few 'tricky' clients.
I didn't like the fact that you always had to look for work and there were so many deadlines and time zones to keep track of. It felt like I was never able to switch off work mode and that if I did the average earnings for the month would drop.
I was able to work on some fairly cool stuff but I never really felt like I was a big part of it and that my opinions were actually valued.
In my opinion the perks of working in a studio within a team far outweigh the experiences that I had when working from home on my own. Paid holiday, company shares, promotions, involvement in projects from start to finish, working in a team, a low amount of working hours a week, routine and most importantly financial security.
I see a lot of polycounters that looks happy freelancing. I'm wondering, how did you guys started? How do you get your first contract? You just contacted a shitload of studios? Used freelancing websites? I want to try and start getting some contracts, but i have a bit of a hard time understanding were to start. :P
I don't freelance anymore, but when I did here is how I got jobs. The first thing was that I worked at a large studio for five years previously and built up a network. My connections moved around over the years and worked at various studios. When they needed some outside help they would come to me because of the work I've done with them while working together at a studio and they knew I was a freelance artist.
The second way was I had a couple friends that started a small 2 person art outsource company. They approached me to be an additional member for bigger projects. I got a majority of my work from this connection and got to work on some very cool movie projects.
The third way was posting on forums. I'd post some stuff on the unity forum and guarantee I'd get some freelance emails. Though probably 80% of the time this would fall through because it was some guy in his basement or an indie studio with no money. But it did cast a wide net and I had some good stuff come through with this and did some pretty awesome mobile stuff.
honestly, when I did freelance for a year I did really well for myself. But it also stressed me the hell out. One month I'd have so much work I'd have to turn stuff away and the next week I'd have nothing. I have a family and the instability wasn't an ideal situation for me. But I also found the longer I did it the wider my network would grow, over time it did become more stable. But it just wasn't for me at that time.
I currently work in a studio for the experience and learning. I plan to freelance in the future when I have more experience. I love reading threads like this because of that. My question is, how do you guys find work? I read a lot that people build contacts, but how do you leverage that for freelance work exactly? Do you guys use job boards/sites? Also, what kind of freelance gigs are you guys getting? Are you guys getting all game jobs? Or is it mixed with CG/Visualization stuff? Also, how common is it to work on AAA projects as a freelancer, or do you guys typically mostly work on indies? Sorry for all the questions, I'm just really curious.
Kind of freelance? In house contractor, not sure what this counts as but I'd consider it more in studio and finding it quite comfortable. The first month or so was scary as I had no funds coming straight out of uni and the housing deposits in the UK are stupid, but I'm back out of debt again in under 3 months which is nice..
My only saving grace though is that I don't live alone and decided to take the hit on commute time as living costs in London are impossible..
I'm in a great studio at the moment, I would like to go freelance one day so me and my girlfriend have the freedom to live away from a big city if we want to. The more I read about it the more it terrifies me though so we'll see if it ever happens :P
I see a lot of polycounters that looks happy freelancing. I'm wondering, how did you guys started? How do you get your first contract? You just contacted a shitload of studios? Used freelancing websites? I want to try and start getting some contracts, but i have a bit of a hard time understanding were to start. :P
I personally got quite lucky!
I was working at a studio at the time and I knew that, 3 weeks later I would be giving my two week notice to my company and moving to another city.
I had to find myself some freelance work and I wasn't too sure how, especially didn't want my company to know at that point.
I just got kinda lucky and I got a linkedin message asking if I was doing any character freelance work or if I had some great artist friend that did. SO my first contract was just about luck, they stumble on my stuff and decided to contact me.
Now it's pretty straight forward, when I need a new contract I share it all over facebook (where I have a tons of other 3d artist working around the world), I also share it on twitter, linkedin etc.
I usually bump my freelance thread in the job section of polycount and then I cross my fingers. So far so good, I'm hoping thing will continue to work out great!
CharlieD Yah building up contacts is great. You don't need to ''leverage that'' usually those are friends, collegues, other artist, and sometimes, when you will need work, their company or the company they are working for, might be looking for a freelancer and there you go, you found a job . I don't personally use job board sites, except posting in the job section of polycount. Maybe I will have to at some point, so far I have enough work, I don't need to.
I personally only get game jobs, maybe it is different depending if you are making character or enviro etc, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't really accept any visualisation stuff myself, I wouldn't be very good.
So far I got myself contracts on bigger project from relatively big companies. I do have a lot of request for indies, but usually never actually get to work with them since, they don't want to pay you (its gonna be great on your folio!) or is way too risky because they want to pay you after their kickstarter and you gotta eat until then, and after that if the kickstarter fail
I do have a lot of request for indies, but usually never actually get to work with them since, they don't want to pay you (its gonna be great on your folio!) or is way too risky because they want to pay you after their kickstarter and you gotta eat until then, and after that if the kickstarter fail
Yeah, these are the worst. I've been asked a few time and you can't make a living out of these. I would never accept not getting paid or getting paid *once it hopefuly works someday*.
There is lots of freelance tech art. I mostly work with smaller indie studios that don't have a tech artist. I think Paul Neale (http://paulneale.com/) is a great example of a freelance tech artist.
Indeed! Tech art is one of those roles that is quite common to hire-in as necessary, since a lot of small studios don't always have particularly specialist knowledge like that on hand, but may need to solve one or two difficult problems
I have a question about people who freelance while working a full time job: are you just burning the candle at both ends or do you quote a longer time-frame to avoid working 80 hours a week?
I have a question about people who freelance while working a full time job: are you just burning the candle at both ends or do you quote a longer time-frame to avoid working 80 hours a week?
I've got this issue right now. An old client from when I freelanced contacted me over the weekend needing some work. I don't want to lose this connection, but I have enough going on right now I don't feel I can give it the time it needs without burning myself out. But we have a baby on the way and some extra money would be nice.
I don't think working fulltime + freelance is for everyone. I mainly do it because I was just working on my own personal projects outside of work anyway, and the wife prefers I'm at least making money doing the same stuff. I also don't have kids so I think I have more free time than my co-workers.
When I start feeling overworked or a deadline at my job is looming I start referring work to other animators and tech guys. Clients so far have been very understanding, especially when you can refer someone of similar talent to take over.
I do most of the freelance work on the weekends, but I word it, "I'll have this delivered on Monday." Because when I say "I only work weekends" they usually say they will find someone else.
I'm very good at managing my own time and estimating how long a task will take. If you have trouble with this than it's better not to do both until you are able to.
I have a question about people who freelance while working a full time job: are you just burning the candle at both ends or do you quote a longer time-frame to avoid working 80 hours a week?
I only just recently started taking on freelance projects on top of my studio job, but I'm just very picky about what I take on where I won't have to sit at a computer constantly. And this isn't going to be a common thing for me, it's only because I could use the extra money lately.
Replies
My hours do sometimes suck-last week was horrendous. I try to keep an 8-5 (or 5:30-6:30-3:00) type hours though. I've also had issues getting paid-by one client in particular. I'm WILLING to look past it if I get checks this week. Not forget it, just look past it.
So does anyone else do Freelance but not completely alone?
Sorry I realize we are off topic but this is so mindblowing!
I had to call 9-1-1 the other day for my boyfriend and we had to get helped from paramedic and got a ride to the emergency in an ambulance. We didn't have my boyfriend assurance yet at that point and we spent the whole day and the emergency passing some scans etc.
In the end, the only charged fees was from the ambulance ride (all the rest is free in quebec), it cost us a small little 131$
Made me so happy to leave in quebec/canada haha
Anywhere with universal health care is a blessing. In the US, that ambulance ride with no insurance would cost you an arm and a leg...with insurance, maybe just an arm. I suppose I could freelance in the future given my wife has a good job with insurance but only if I had to. I much prefer being around people in a studio as opposed to being at home by myself.
some clients still want the old school stuff, but they get rare
more likely though if you don't do sculpting work they would be after subdiv type characters with some hand painted stylization
edit:
with regard to rates, when i first started i was charging £160 per day. at the time i considered that to be a lot, but as time went on and i started getting more jobs, needing to juggle clients and put people on hold etc. i decided to push my rates up... i figured if i'm that "in demand" then people would pay it, right?
That carried on for a while until people stopped wanting to pay what i was asking (which is fair enough, it's their choice) and now my day rate for artwork is £250.
Now that i'm an engineer with Marmoset, things are different... my pay is lower but more regular (let's face it i'm an amateur programmer and i'm glad to be taken on as a learn on the job deal), and i'm turning away clients for art, or passing them on to other artists that i know and trust. These clients have all said to let them know if/when i become available for art again so that's cool.
Maybe one day i can charge superstar day rates as a tech-artist/engineer. But for now... i'm just very happy where i am =]
What about the Settlers stuff you posted? Would you count that as old school or is it the kinda new Blizzard/Riot style of sculpting & baking stylized stuff?
Like, how is that even possible !? I can't comprehend this.
I also find it curious, not including lead or senior level, but a quite experience artist with out a promotion can peak at 65-78k at a studio(certain studios of course).
So wondering what the annual average on freelance stands on?
we created a new workflow for us here, pretty much no texturepainting involved. Because its almost impossible to either find the people for painting or getting the budget for the time spent to texturize it.
So what you see is simple polypaint + bakes. No classical handpainting of the textures.
This.
That isn't to say I've never done that in a studio environment, but there are fewer complaints to HR in my current situation.
I'll probably go back to working in a studio at some point. I like working from home, but I'd like to eventually get back into an environment where I can be around other people with similar interests. One thing's for sure; I'm going to be a lot more picky with the places that I apply to in the future.
Ysalex, you are talented and you should charge a lot more.
Also, insurance costs for me are actually pretty low. I have a middle tier policy and my wife and baby have very nice insurance. Our total monthly insurance cost it $600.
As a freelancer you can chose to live anywhere without adjusting your rate. I charge a very healthy day rate and live in a relatively low cost of living area of the country that I really enjoy. If you happen to really want to live in Manhattan or San Francisco that doesn't work so well.
$600 per month for three of you on health insurance?! absolutely fuck that. land of the free my ass.
Guess it evens out with the higher salaries. The salary surveys were showing US studios pay around ten grand more a year than Canada & the UK, and comments I've read around Polycount seem to back that up. Nothing's really free, I pay about $200 a month in taxes for the "free" public schools in my county, it's a property tax; when I was renting it was free because I didn't know what percentage of my rent went to what.
$600 for a month for a family of 3 is pretty great, possibly one of the last concerns I had about going freelance myself, the cost of healthcare. I still don't know if I'd like to give up the job security though, it might just be my "if I ever get laid off again" plan.
family of 3 making 55k in my state is looking at $4,932 Maximum Annual Premium $411 per month
if you make under 50k it drops down to half that...
I think if you make less than 42k you are eligible for Medicaid
http://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/insurance-costs/insurance-cost-calculator
i pay 20% of my income as tax, which goes toward everything you'd expect.
i also pay 9% of my income (after the first £8000 of PROFIT) toward national insurance, annually. and this is because i'm self employed, if i were a full time employee it would be slightly less, it works out to ~£60 per month for most people in the country.
national insurance guarantees that if i ever need to have medical treatment of any kind, that i don't pay for it. if i travel to a country which would normally charge for it, i hand them my travel insurance (E1-11 form) and they bill my government. my kids don't pay national insurance until they're 16, and they only pay when they're employed. if they're unemployed THEY STILL GET FREE TREATMENT.
i wouldn't trade the NHS (even with it's flaws) for anything in the world.
and on top of aaaaall that stuff. national insurance also pays into a government pension scheme, which means that any UK resident who's paid national insurance will at least have some form of pension, on top of any other pension or savings they get.
My saying it's "great" is because I figured the rate would be $1,000+ per month, the lower rates are due to the ACA healthcare reform.
I prefer to freelance 'on-site', which means I charge a daily rate for my services and expect my accommodation to be covered whilst I'm working there. On taking my first gig like this, my income effectively tripled compared to my previous studio job - because the pay was much higher and I had absolutely minimal outgoings.
It's important to remember too though that it only covers a certain amount, and a certain percentage, so for instance while we pay 1000$/mo for our healthcare, we also have to pay 100-200 out of pocket for each doctor visit, and we paid just over 4000$ for my wife to give birth.
A 2 and a half hour birth. With a mid-wife instead of a doctor. With no pain meds, so no doctor even checking in.
Healthcare in the us does suck, but like slosh said we all know it sucks and we just have to work with it.
Personally for me it's part of my life plan to move out of country somewhere more reasonable. I would love canada, or the uk.
Anyway, my point was health care is not free but it is easily made up for by billing the client an appropriate amount.
That's what I do/did for a few years with the exact same setup; working as a freelance consultant in-house for studios. I made more money that way than I ever could have being a staff employee. It started because I am not a big fan of specialization. I like tinkering around too much to be 100 percent amazing at everything and I dig mental as much as artistic challenges and that became a strength over time. My gigs were actually more enjoyable because there were so many challenges of all sorts to tackle and I knew I had a definite contractual end, not some ticking countdown when the project was over like I feared when I worked full time at some studios. I could breathe a sigh of relief knowing I could control my own destiny and not hope the captain in charge of the ship wouldn't steer the project into oblivion.
There were some points in my professional studio career where I felt like I was a contestant on the Price is Right and I have my chip ready to drop down the Plinko Machine. You hold something with almost unlimited possibility and you have all these choices on where to drop the chip and you really hope that it falls in some slot that is in your favor. Most of the time you have to walk away empty handed. I kinda like knowing that I can just walk away chip-in-hand these days.
I didn't like the fact that you always had to look for work and there were so many deadlines and time zones to keep track of. It felt like I was never able to switch off work mode and that if I did the average earnings for the month would drop.
I was able to work on some fairly cool stuff but I never really felt like I was a big part of it and that my opinions were actually valued.
In my opinion the perks of working in a studio within a team far outweigh the experiences that I had when working from home on my own. Paid holiday, company shares, promotions, involvement in projects from start to finish, working in a team, a low amount of working hours a week, routine and most importantly financial security.
The second way was I had a couple friends that started a small 2 person art outsource company. They approached me to be an additional member for bigger projects. I got a majority of my work from this connection and got to work on some very cool movie projects.
The third way was posting on forums. I'd post some stuff on the unity forum and guarantee I'd get some freelance emails. Though probably 80% of the time this would fall through because it was some guy in his basement or an indie studio with no money. But it did cast a wide net and I had some good stuff come through with this and did some pretty awesome mobile stuff.
honestly, when I did freelance for a year I did really well for myself. But it also stressed me the hell out. One month I'd have so much work I'd have to turn stuff away and the next week I'd have nothing. I have a family and the instability wasn't an ideal situation for me. But I also found the longer I did it the wider my network would grow, over time it did become more stable. But it just wasn't for me at that time.
Hope that helps a bit.
That sure isn't something exclusive to studiojobs. Tho freelancing from home surely can isolate you
My only saving grace though is that I don't live alone and decided to take the hit on commute time as living costs in London are impossible..
I was working at a studio at the time and I knew that, 3 weeks later I would be giving my two week notice to my company and moving to another city.
I had to find myself some freelance work and I wasn't too sure how, especially didn't want my company to know at that point.
I just got kinda lucky and I got a linkedin message asking if I was doing any character freelance work or if I had some great artist friend that did. SO my first contract was just about luck, they stumble on my stuff and decided to contact me.
Now it's pretty straight forward, when I need a new contract I share it all over facebook (where I have a tons of other 3d artist working around the world), I also share it on twitter, linkedin etc.
I usually bump my freelance thread in the job section of polycount and then I cross my fingers. So far so good, I'm hoping thing will continue to work out great!
CharlieD Yah building up contacts is great. You don't need to ''leverage that'' usually those are friends, collegues, other artist, and sometimes, when you will need work, their company or the company they are working for, might be looking for a freelancer and there you go, you found a job
I personally only get game jobs, maybe it is different depending if you are making character or enviro etc, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't really accept any visualisation stuff myself, I wouldn't be very good.
So far I got myself contracts on bigger project from relatively big companies. I do have a lot of request for indies, but usually never actually get to work with them since, they don't want to pay you (its gonna be great on your folio!) or is way too risky because they want to pay you after their kickstarter and you gotta eat until then, and after that if the kickstarter fail
Yeah, these are the worst. I've been asked a few time and you can't make a living out of these. I would never accept not getting paid or getting paid *once it hopefuly works someday*.
Thanks for sharing your own experience !
I envy you all that are in your careers, i have a question though.
When did you feel you were ready to get out there studio or freelance?
I've got this issue right now. An old client from when I freelanced contacted me over the weekend needing some work. I don't want to lose this connection, but I have enough going on right now I don't feel I can give it the time it needs without burning myself out. But we have a baby on the way and some extra money would be nice.
I don't think working fulltime + freelance is for everyone. I mainly do it because I was just working on my own personal projects outside of work anyway, and the wife prefers I'm at least making money doing the same stuff.
When I start feeling overworked or a deadline at my job is looming I start referring work to other animators and tech guys. Clients so far have been very understanding, especially when you can refer someone of similar talent to take over.
I do most of the freelance work on the weekends, but I word it, "I'll have this delivered on Monday." Because when I say "I only work weekends" they usually say they will find someone else.
I'm very good at managing my own time and estimating how long a task will take. If you have trouble with this than it's better not to do both until you are able to.
I only just recently started taking on freelance projects on top of my studio job, but I'm just very picky about what I take on where I won't have to sit at a computer constantly. And this isn't going to be a common thing for me, it's only because I could use the extra money lately.