Noob employer questions
Hi,
I have couple of questions. This is my first experiences hiring graphic artists, 2D modelers, 3D modelers, so just curious what rates and practices are. HippoCoder from Other brothers referred us here. (Thanks!!)
Some questions:
1) Is there differences between 2D and 3D artists?
Some artists refer to as 2D-only and 3D-only. 2D guys don't know how to do 3D work, 3D guys don't know how to do 2D work. For the life of me, shouldn't a 3D artist be able to do 2D work? Is it not 2D is one dimension less? Should a 2D artist also be able to do 3D work?
When a 3D artist says he cannot do 2D work, is that weird?
I might agree that a 2D artist says he cannot do 3D work.
2) What are the going rates for 2D and 3D artists. Can I hire an artist who can do both 2D and 3D work? What is the going rates for 2D and 3D or people who can do both 2D and 3D works?
3) How does artists work? Do they work in a team? would they prefer to work like 3 artists together? (e.g., one guy passes parts to another guy for finishing, and parts to another). It sounds fishy that one artist cannot complete a basic model in two weeks and needs three people to do it.
4) Do artists often go on week-long off-line departures and then bill us shock bills (e.g., US$800 badly done models or US$1200x3 a model for 3 weeks for 3 person's works?)
5) What kind of contracts do you do? Do artists take prior art they did for other employers to put into their works? That sounds really strange.
We're open to fair suggestions for payment and rates.
I have couple of questions. This is my first experiences hiring graphic artists, 2D modelers, 3D modelers, so just curious what rates and practices are. HippoCoder from Other brothers referred us here. (Thanks!!)
Some questions:
1) Is there differences between 2D and 3D artists?
Some artists refer to as 2D-only and 3D-only. 2D guys don't know how to do 3D work, 3D guys don't know how to do 2D work. For the life of me, shouldn't a 3D artist be able to do 2D work? Is it not 2D is one dimension less? Should a 2D artist also be able to do 3D work?
When a 3D artist says he cannot do 2D work, is that weird?
I might agree that a 2D artist says he cannot do 3D work.
2) What are the going rates for 2D and 3D artists. Can I hire an artist who can do both 2D and 3D work? What is the going rates for 2D and 3D or people who can do both 2D and 3D works?
3) How does artists work? Do they work in a team? would they prefer to work like 3 artists together? (e.g., one guy passes parts to another guy for finishing, and parts to another). It sounds fishy that one artist cannot complete a basic model in two weeks and needs three people to do it.
4) Do artists often go on week-long off-line departures and then bill us shock bills (e.g., US$800 badly done models or US$1200x3 a model for 3 weeks for 3 person's works?)
5) What kind of contracts do you do? Do artists take prior art they did for other employers to put into their works? That sounds really strange.
We're open to fair suggestions for payment and rates.
Replies
This question is vague; I assume you are new here. It will take you a while to realize that we artists pretty much know everything. We just tend to focus on one thing more then the others. There are however traditional artists and designers who do not know much about 3d arts, and that isnt weird. It is just that they decided to follow one path and ignore the other completely. For example; Many traditional artists know very little about 3d.
That completely depends on the project, its progress, and its deadlines.
Also the salary should be negotiated between you and the artist.
hahahahaha lol. We wish.
As for the bad modeling part. There should be an art test in order for one to see what they are capable of.
Thats called cheating my good sir, and you have no idea what we do to them. After that they simply fall off the internet and dont bother looking for artists or work. There were many cases of this sort in the past.
Yeah, we fired two people for doing this.
Coming back to the question...
What rates would there be?
- US$20 per hour?
- US$40 per hour - what would that employ?
Rate's will probably be the lesser if your a smaller company./Expect to pay in the higher range for more experienced people/
Art test's are the key to weighing there skill level.
Also on the reuse of older art, kit-bash part's are used all the time. Kit-bashing is when you strip down older pieces for interesting parts. Mostly used in hard surface art for detail spam. Just making sure your aware of this as it's a common practice. The model will mostly be new work though so don't worry.
Talk to the artist for more information on there method's.
And finally, get a good lawyer for contracts ect. This may be handy.
http://vimeo.com/22053820
Interested to know since I deal with US$
It's not the payment problem. It's the quality problem and we're getting almost nonsense.
Your goal is to get a product of art.
The quality and speed of the art creation is going to determine the price.
To make sure you get the desired result you can go about it in different ways.
As a client I would get the artist to make a small art test of the desired quality of art you are looking for, for a small amount of money, and if that is approved open up the bigger project.
Looking at artist portfolio to find something close to what you are looking for in style can be helpful. Some artist specialize even further than 2d / 3d they can be very good at for instance Organic, mechanical or cartoonize design.
There is artist out there that can do both 2d and 3d. But it all comes down to what level of quality you want.
Another option is to hire in a artist that can do both 2d and 3d parts of the project. It all depends on the quality and your wallet. The separation of the two can be more expensive or save time and then money?
There is a lot of different ways to do this. I would recommend:
Find the artist / artist you want to give the job, get the art test and the negotiate the contract / payment and deadline.
Here are some links to some sample contracts and related info:
http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2012/05/20-contract-questions-what-is-contract.html
http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2012/05/20-contract-questions-how-do-i-get-to.html
http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2012/06/20-contract-questions-how-do-i-read-and.html
http://wiki.igda.org/Casual_Games_SIG#Sample_Contracts
http://www.graphicartistsguild.org/resources/contract-monitor/letter-of-agreement/
You should also head over to.http://forums.indiegamer.com/ there's a lot of business info over there. Same for Games Brief http://www.gamesbrief.com/tag/legal/
Good luck!
EDIT:
Here's a US. based lawyer (I'm sure you can find MANY more, US. is the land of lawsuits after all...): http://underdevelopmentlaw.com/ She has some great info on her blog.
Thanks!
I hope my next hires won't be as bad as the first two. :poly124:
Thats probably because your studio isn't very well-known, or known at all. Your studio is unknown to them. The people who are applying at your company are people looking really hard for jobs so they apply to literally everything and have severely lacking portfolios. Those AA and AAA artists are employed at big awesome studios like Blizzard and Naughty Dog. Not saying that there aren't unemployed high level artists but most are already employed or will have no trouble finding future employment.
I guess just try advertising your company a bit more, get the name out there and maybe you'll have some bigger bites
Is that bad rates?
I've been in business for about 9 years now, so I'm going to try and provide you some information on the requested topics. Hopefully it helps:
1) Is there differences between 2D and 3D artists?
There is a huge difference. 2d artists can draw or paint a composition. 3d artists understand dimensionality and have the technical skills of the 3d applications needed to make 3d models for games. Sometimes a 2d artist can do 3d, and sometimes a 3d artist can do 2d. Being good at 2d helps a 3d artist with his textures, but making a texture for a character, environment, prop, is not exactly the same as creating a 2d composition.
You can generally look to 2d artists for the following jobs (Be aware of lots of sub-specializations under 2d as well):
* Creating concept art for your game elements
* creating textures for your environment
*creating UI elements
*creating animations for flat surfaces (think cartoon/UI animation)
You can generally look to 3d artists for the following jobs (Be aware of lots of sub-specializations under 3d as well):
* creating game ready characters, props, vehicles, environments
* creating textures for the above said models
*potentially rigging/skinning/animating the 3d models above
1a) When a 3D artist says he cannot do 2D work, is that weird?
No, its not weird at all.
2) What are the going rates for 2D and 3D artists. Can I hire an artist who can do both 2D and 3D work? What is the going rates for 2D and 3D or people who can do both 2D and 3D works?
See if you can find a studio that quotes based on a fixed price per asset; you know what youre getting and its easier on your book keeping. Failing that, hire someone charging between $33-$40 /hour. Hiring people charging less than that makes me know they dont know what theyre doing in their financial/book keeping department, which to me, in the past, has meant that they may flake out.
3) How does artists work? Do they work in a team? would they prefer to work like 3 artists together? (e.g., one guy passes parts to another guy for finishing, and parts to another). It sounds fishy that one artist cannot complete a basic model in two weeks and needs three people to do it.
You dont need to worry about this, find a good team, and tell them what you want, agree to a price, and let them worry about the details of delivering it. If they have the skills, great, if not, work with someone who does or has access to the skills. Dont micro manage, and dont treat a contractor like an employee, its a bad idea for everyone in that situation.
4) Do artists often go on week-long off-line departures and then bill us shock bills (e.g., US$800 badly done models or US$1200x3 a model for 3 weeks for 3 person's works?)
This should not be a problem if you do the things listed above. You need to be explicit about deadlines, and expected pay-outs. Ask for general prices on a given asset if youre doing hourly (which I really suggest you dont do), then expect to pay up to 25% more than expected, because damn near everyone assumes everything will take less work and time than it actually does.
5) What kind of contracts do you do? Do artists take prior art they did for other employers to put into their works? That sounds really strange.
This is illegal if theyve signed a contract for said employers. The work product is owned by the person its assigned to in the contract. The artist is doing it as a work for hire, and has no rights to the work once its been paid for.
As for general advice, dont be afraid to pay a bit more to get quality/stable people. Whatever you think youre saving by going to eastern Europe/India/china or finding some semi-experienced people to do the work, will come out of your ass later on during the production pipeline. Its a story as old as time. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
Good luck mate.