Some questions about freelancing

System

Hey guys,

I'm hoping some of you with experience freelancing can offer some tips/advice with regards to some questions I've got.

I'm not new to freelancing, but I'm very new to the games industry... as in, I've never worked in it.

I've freelanced in Arch-Vis a few years back, and I now do it full time as an employee so handling a self-scheduled workload, and the administration of the behind the scenes stuff isn't completely new to me, but I'm curious as to freelancing in games.

Here's where I'm at. I love the prospect of working in games, my game art isn't quite there yet, but I may work on changing that if it seems like a sensible route to explore. What I don't love is the potential for office crunch. Right now, I have a fiancee, I'm almost 27, and we've lived together for the past 6 years. Who knows when we'll have kids but it probably won't be too long. She works a standard 9-5 and at the moment, so do I, more-or-less. We like to spend the evenings/weekends together, sure I'm sometimes on the computer working or whatever, but I'm 'there'.

I don't think I'm really up for staying at the office til late, or staying there all weekend, I understand it's necessary at times in the development cycle, and I know plenty of people do it, enjoy it, see it as part of the job etc, but it's really not for me.

I'm happy to work long hours, but in my home office... which is why I'm keen on the idea of freelancing.

So my questions are;

Can someone with no industry experience still get freelance work with big name developers who outsource? I guess what I'm saying is, can freelance be a case of 'If you're awesome, you'll get work, we don't care how many titles you've shipped'?

And also, is there adequate work for a freelance environment guy (again, if you're awesome enough), to pay a full salary in games? Environment/prop work is my fort

System

Looks like this one slipped under the radar, still keen to hear some thoughts on this.

Thanks

jipe

It is very hard to "be awesome" if you have not shipped a number of titles, much less any. Yes, we can all point to exceptions -- people that have great portfolios but little experience and who still manage to contribute at a high level at large studios. But in the main, experience counts for a lot (and not just because it's a bigger number than zero). Experience means you've made plenty of mistakes and learned from them, that you can work much faster than you used to, that you can communicate better and anticipate problems before they arise because you've been there before.

Without that experience, and without actually knowing people at AAA studios, I'm not sure how you'll be able to convince them to pay you to create environment art from your home. There are also advantages of working in a studio that I think you're overlooking; even if your art was up to par, you learn so quickly when surrounded by talent and experience. You pick up workflow tricks, you get answers to your questions quickly instead of banging your head against the wall for hours, etc.

I realize you're looking for something relatively stable without insane hours. I don't subscribe to the belief that working in games/broadcast/film has to involve crazy crunch all the time and it's great that you want to have a life outside work. I have friends who work reasonable hours at good studios and get paid well. I also have friends who are currently working crazy hours and have been there myself (though not in games). But the good jobs are hard to find and hard to keep; even mediocre jobs are difficult if you don't have experience.

If you really want to work in games, I don't think "I'm too old for that now" is the attitude that's going to get you there. Curious to see what others think, particularly because environment art is a different beast than my experience animating.

System

Thanks Jipe, some great comments.

Yeah I see where you're coming from on the lack of experience thing, I guess it doesn't make sense to expect a studio to hire you freelance without knowing if you're capable of the workflow/deadline from previous experience.

I should rephrase my original question. I'm totally open to working in a studio, in fact if I could do that and work regular hours, that'd be perfect. It's just I know a couple of Juniors who got their first jobs this year, one at an indie studio who had a huge PSN hit last year, and one at a AAA developer here in the UK. The guy at the indie studio actually had a bed in the studio, which is understandable I suppose, given the size of the company, but the other guy was working til 8PM or later in his first week. That's the kinda thing I'm not into.

I just don't want to be 'that guy' who wants to go home at 6PM and end up getting fired because I'm the only one there who won't put the hours in.

I dunno, I don't want this to turn into another of those threads, but if it was a choice between having the job and working long hours, or choosing a different career, then I'd go for a different career. I mean, I want it, but I don't want it that much. From a studios perspective I'm thinking they'd look at me and think 'why would we hire this jackass who wants to go home early when the other kids are happy to stay here 70 hours a week'

But I know it's not always like that which is why I'm asking for thoughts.

Ben Apuna

From what I have experienced and observed it's pretty simple really:

The quality of your portfolio determines the quality of your employers and clients.

As to your other question, from my experience there is way more props/environment work out there for freelancers than character work.

I personally had much worse hours and less pay working freelance (~2007 - [noparse]2008)[/noparse] than as a full time employed artist (~2004 - 2006), but perhaps that was due to my own lack of skills and experience.

Fomori

It sounds like your main concern is working late away from home?

From what I can tell crunch in studios in the UK is less extreme than in the US.
If you're good enough to freelance then you're good enough to pick a studio that won't force you to work long hours. So maybe get really (REALLY) good before deciding what you're going to do.

Freelancing can bring some serious crunch along with some serious boredom, loneliness and disruption to life. Make sure that's for you before going down that route.

Mr Whippy

Experience will always be an issue, which means at first you might have to take on work at a low value to prove yourself.
To do that, you will have to work in your spare time to achieve it, while also doing your day to day work, to be able to make a living!

It sounds like hard work, but when you really want it, and want better for your future career and your family, then it won't feel like hard work. Bolstering your skills that you will be using for the next 40 years as a top game artist shouldn't be seen as a chore!


I've spent the last 9 months working evenings to bolster my more game oriented work (current full-time job is more motion graphics/video work), earning maybe 20% more salary this year now because of it, which is nice.
So I've got a foot in the door at a developer, I've made a bit of extra money, I've got more valuable experience, and my portfolio is now vastly more impressive in the direction I want to go.



Every job is different and every new experience makes you much more capable of turning out good quality work quickly, which then justifies the rates you might want, and the ability to choose the clients you want!

Getting experience in realtime content creation is key to getting a half decent job on half decent pay, at which time you can give up the day job!



Do you have any game experience at all? It might be worth doing some mod work for a game, or doing something in one of the SDK's available, some of the challenges on here and other game art boards. Develop, learn and show off your skills, preferably in something you are generally passionate about as passion is key to being the best at what you do, and go from there.

I don't think you will get any freelance work AT ALL, until you show you can actually do something useful for those you will approach... more so if you want paying at all!

Dave