I am confused as to what role fits me / what clients to target. Can you help?
Hello, guys! Hope you're all doing well in the new year.
I'm facing some issues and confusion in the past 2-3 months, not knowing exactly where my place should be. Here's a little about me for context:
I spent the last 4 years working as an environment artist & technical artist in a video game studio. Everything well and nice, it was one of my dreams to work on video games and do what I did, but in those 4 years I got to realize that I simply find that work really boring. I'm just not the type of guy to wake up every single day and work on literally the same thing and watch the stuff I work on progress so slow (you know just how much time it takes to make video games). I also have to deal with a lot of technicalities which, although I understand and am good at, I just really hate. I'm not interested in optimizing scenes, finding ways to break them up and stream them in efficient ways, etc. I just want to make impressive looking environments and nothing else. I'm also not interested in sitting around for hours in meetings and team talks, talking about design models and stuff I frankly just couldn't care less about.
Before this 4 year full-time job I had another 2 year video game job and another 2 year job that was not related to video games. (I basically worked in a stock footage agency making 3D animation content & VFX compositing over real footage). And before those jobs I would just do freelance here and there. I'm 24 years old at the moment, those jobs I started around 18 years old, and I'm a 3D artist since I was like 13 or so.
I quit the 4 year job around 2.5 months ago trying to pursue a freelance-only system of working, but I'm having a lot of trouble seeing what kind of clients I could target, given that I'm not interested in doing a lot of things which I know would be a requirement for most of these roles I could fill in for a studio.
What I mean by that:
- I'm not interested in modeling & texturing assets. I've been modeling and making assets since I was 13 and I just got sick of sitting around and moving polygons and doing extrusions and sculpting. This is really a big no-go on my part, since I know I would just end up hating myself and the job and I would want to quit in the first week. I would do it if I need a custom asset for a personal project I work on, but having to model consistently everyday? Nope.
- Ideally I would be given an environment to make and a full library of assets already done for me. And then just have me make that environment a reality by building everything on my own with the library I have at hand, lighting the scenes, and adding whatever kind of VFX the scene needs. This alone I feel like it kills a lot of the environment artist roles, since most of them require the artist to also model specific assets for the scene and whatnot.
Right now I'm living off of some marketplace passive revenue, a bit of my savings (thankfully I'm good in this department), and some freelancing. The big issue is that I don't have consistent freelance work, I basically wait around for people to contact me through Artstation, mostly. And as you might have guessed it, i would enjoy having stable and consistent long term freelance work and basically make my whole living through that alone.
So yeah, I'm basically wondering what kind of industry / clients I could target given my criteria, that would also work in a freelance-only work system. And how should I get these clients' attention and not just wait around for people to contact me...
Here's some of my 2022 work if it helps in any way determine what I'm good at (I mainly model & texture the environment space while using props I haven't made myself):
(the one above is one of the scenes where I modeled & texture every single asset visible)
I'm sorry for the long post, especially if I posted it in the wrong section. I'm just trying to get some educated opinions from those with more experience. Thank you!
Replies
So to clarify, is the ideal work you want to do setting up environments with assets created by others and mainly doing lighting and the final look?
This could work in freelance depending on what the client needs, you could use asset packs to build the environment and then just focus on the lighting.
Any principle props can be outsourced.
Not sure how much work is there in freelance for this to build a steady revenue.
From my experience it really comes down to where the project is and what can be repurposed.
Most model artists I know do a mix of model building and arranging outsourced models and models made for other projects into levels and there is more consistency in this work in AAA than in freelance, unless you are working freelance for an outsource partner like dekogon or virtuous.
If you're looking for more creativity in your modeling you'd join a project that needs a fair amount of prototyping.
For example, you'd be modeling in conjunction with animator and programmer to realise the design of a weapon with many working parts.
Really comes down to where in the pipeline you are along with seniority and how established the pipeline is.
A lot of my work on the project I am on is more problem solving but it can also be seen as repetitive and the result needs to hit a specific quality standard so lot of iterating and finishing.
Are you able to balance the tedium of job related work with more creative exploration on your personal time?
Yeah this sound a bit problematic as you have to have access to huge library of items , and doing that as freelancer could be problematic , you have to prove that you are trust worthy
I would check senior environment artist , level designer[I guess this one is closest the what you looking for , the other have elements of it ] , outsource manager , lighting artist and whom ever do the gray boxing roles
I suggest adding to your arsenal active part . Hunt all the places job offers are published make a list and check them once a week or twice a month , if something catch your eye send them your cv and portfolio
With your passive income you can be picky and negotiate higher prices , amazing portfolio helps too :)
if you have financial security you could try making your own game. Then you can focus on whatever you want. Keep the graphics simple and much of that extraneous optimization never needs to be considered.
@carvuliero @NikhilR
I enjoyed my last job, as the team had multiple prop artists that were tackling the asset creation, while I could focus on simply building the open world map using assets made by them together with the Quixel's Megascans library. I was also tasked with developing custom procedural tools for environment creation using Houdini (that's also something I'm pretty good with).
Really the only reason I stopped enjoying the job is because management changed after the first 3 years and I had some terms agreed with the previous management about my scheduling (I was a contractor paid by the hour) and after management changed they pretty much changed me into a full-time position because I was filling a role that was too important to the production and pretty much wanted me to be a full-timer, attend all the meetings they had, because there was a lot of stuff only I knew regarding the environments pipeline and people would be blocked in my absence. That was bad recruiting in my opinion, if you knew the role you hired a contractor for was that important to the entire production.
So yeah, ideally the studio I would do work for has multiple people taking care of different aspects, and only require me for the final touches... sort to say. Honestly, I don't even mind creating the assets given they are filler props I can model & texture within the day. I'm only bothered when it's more of a hero prop / asset which starts requiring like a week or more to get done... yeah, I just lose interest because I'm spending too much time on literally the exact same thing. But that's the thing... I don't think I get to be picky on stuff like this. I mean I get the client's perspective -> I wanna hire someone who can take care of the whole deal for me, not be required to use multiple people for the job.
I actually did thought that the closest things might be a level designer / lighting artist, but I wanted to get some other perspective as well :). I will be on the look out for this kind of things!
@Alex_J
I actually did start doing stuff on my own, but as short movies instead of games. Making games just requires too much attention and different kind of work for my taste, and even though I do have a background in programming (I used to be a heck of a coder before giving it all to 3D art) and could pretty much code my whole game (hell, I even finished some mobile games on my own), I wouldn't enjoy having to do it consistently (as I would if I wanted to be serious about my projects). It just seems like game dev as a whole isn't really as fun (for me personally, of course) as I anticipated it to be before I got in the industry :)
I'm building a short movie kind of portfolio at the moment, perhaps I can start going after some cool advertisement projects which require 3D & Animation. At the moment the thought of dealing with advertisement / music video type of work seems attractive. I'll see what I get through that.
You think you have anything to add that might help me in that direction?
Thank you guys so much for taking your time and writing me. I didn't think anyone would bat an eye to this thread when I wrote it :)
As I've seen it, the type of very reliable, reoccurrent contract work comes to those from professional relationships built and proofed over time. I advise my friends to stick to it and stay on a years earned path.
That's very true. My freelance client base only got solid after 3 years or so of constant searching. Then I started to get more repeat work requests. I stopped doing freelance though as I wanted more stability and paid benefits.
Anyhow to your request, you could look for world builder roles. I did that for Tencent a while back, it was entirely what you're talking about.
I did very little modeling in this role, it was all placement/terrain sculpt/lighting/palettes and working with a team of prop modelers: http://ericchadwick.com/img/mmo_worldbuilding.html