Freelance Inquiry

amadikus

I'm interested in venturing into freelance character modeling and was wondering if there is anyone that has any advice. Low to mid level poly modeling is my focus for now. Does anyone have any ideas on how to price? Is it best to price hourly or flat rates? If so, how do you come up with your rates?

hawken

I'm guessing that you'll get hired for gigs on the strength of your portfolio and the speed at which you can pump the models out.

Flat rates are wiser, and often decided by the client.

thomasp

are you talking about pure modelling? do companies in your area hire people to do just that? over here, you're either the über-hipoly specialist who generates geometry for normal-casting like no-one else - or you're delivering complete, textured and shaded assets. in general they are looking for people who can work on their own on "packages", requiring little supervision.

if you're doing characters, you should absolutely have animation/rigging experience or else you might get into trouble later down the road when they find out that your meshes are un-animatable.

hourly pay would be grand but it also put's you under quite the time pressure. the clients i've worked with (and me, too) prefer flat rates per character. it's nice when you have done a few and can re-use parts over and over, sometimes cutting your modeling time in half.

i have set my own daily rate and with growing experience i am now able to give them a rather accurate forecast of how long a character will take, that's how i set my price.
it also depends on the timeframe of the project. shorter projects mean higher rates but of course require constant jobhunting which is tiresome.

it's hard to come up with a rate at first, i know. no one talks about how much they charge and if they do, it's most certainly a lie
i simply went out and looked what kind of money specialized people with comparable experience in other industries manage to earn to get an estimation.

this was also when i found out how ridiculously underpaid employed artists of the german game industry in general are.