Game Artist salaries in LA?

Dosadi

Maybe some of you SoCal cats can help me out.
What are salaries like for character artists in the Los Angeles area. Particularly those people with a few years experience under their belt?
According to "teh interwebz" cost of living is %35 - %40 higher than where I'm at now. I'd like to see if pay evens out as well.

thanks!

arshlevon

i cant go into specifics, generally this is something you don't talk about. but i make roughly 3.5 times the amount i did when working on the east coast(yes 350% more), and actually the cost of living is cheaper than the D.C. area. New england is much more expensive than california. from my experience everything is cheaper here than it was in D.C. with the exception of gas,and buying a house, rent is still cheaper.. but i think gas has gone up everywhere, not just here, and i didn't have a car when i lived in DC.

other factors to consider, back then i didn't have as much experience, also i am a lead now, and also i am at a AAA developer who has never had a loss in sales. all these things factor into your wages. its really about WHERE you work (the company, not location). if you just want the cash,look at companies in Texas, they don't have state tax and the cost of living is really cheap.. but you have to live in Texas... ewwwwww..

just kidding i love all you dirtnecks that live in Texas..

So i cant really tell you as i feel there is no real answer to this question. there are tons of factors to consider..
do you have a kid?
do you want said kid to goto LA schools?
do you want to buy a house ( expect to shell out a cool million for a modest size shit hole)

some LA companies are addressing these issues with telecommuting. If i wanted to live in alaska, i could no problem. i would work from home via the internet and fly into the office once a month. this is an option some companies are doing to keep people around that might want to buy a house somewhere, or raise kids someplace safe, or just buy a ranch in Colorado (like our lighting master gooch). several of our employees have opted to do this.


What i did was look for companies i wanted to work for first, the location i felt was arbitrary, but then again i have never been doing this for money. i am almost certain though you would make more money in LA than other places, how much more i have no idea.

pliang

When you do get the chance ask them and negotiate for higher of course...your position and knowledge factors in more often than the other.

jgarland

This won't tell you much about LA specifically, but it's a great read, anyway. It'll give you some ideas as to what you can expect, depending on the job you're going into. You might be able to figure out some numbers on your own, just by rough estimates.

Take a look.

dom

screen grab of that salary survey

http://www.3dcreature.com/files/salarysurvey2006.jpg

Steve Schulze

I'm always surpised by how large the discrepancy between Australian and US wages are. I'm assuming the cost of living is vastly higher than ours.

EarthQuake

50 million, for starters.

b1ll

Oh ask to be paid in Canadian btw. the Us dollar is worth shit now. and CANADA IS GOING STRONG. sadly that suck. I hope it goes down again stupid canadian dollars.

Pedro Amorim

no... the euro is growing strong!

Jesse Moody

you guys get paid? wow i am getting ripped off then....

they gave me some free action figures and a place to sit thats warm and i thought i had it good.

pliang

Euro and Pounds...