Freelancing Revisions. Are you getting paid for baking and calculation times ?
polycounter lvl 3
Hey, I have a bit of trouble with how I should be approaching payment as a freelancer, or generally in projects.
Especially when it comes to baking and calculation times for textures or procedural textures and systems.
A friend told me that it still counts as working time if you can't use your pc for other work during the process. It makes sense, at the same time I think that's arguable, since I could have a better pc which would need way less time to calculate things.
Do you ask the full hourly rate for these kind of tasks?
Also, what do you consider to be a revision for freelancing in your own projects? Would you do revisions for any kind of projects, or does it not work for projects in which the workflow is unclear?
Especially when it comes to baking and calculation times for textures or procedural textures and systems.
A friend told me that it still counts as working time if you can't use your pc for other work during the process. It makes sense, at the same time I think that's arguable, since I could have a better pc which would need way less time to calculate things.
Do you ask the full hourly rate for these kind of tasks?
Also, what do you consider to be a revision for freelancing in your own projects? Would you do revisions for any kind of projects, or does it not work for projects in which the workflow is unclear?
Replies
I would put baking into the budget like any other task. That being said for me it's a non-issue since bakes on the GPU at least for my type of work don't seem to take any time at all. I also have a second machine available to continue working on at least some things while the main one is busy.
Revisions - phew. If it's due to a fault of mine then I'll eat it. In any other case - it depends a lot. I'd not jump into a task head first without a pre-agreed workflow, suitable references and an understanding of the technical requirements and the expected quality.
It's important to update regularly with renders and if feedback is unclear - start trading paint-overs until everyone agrees on what needs doing. Also important to not stay behind on deadlines, etc so any issues can't easily be blamed on me.
I certainly have no shame to ask for more budget if the task turns out different from what was originally agreed.
of course I do, any time spent on task is charged for. re revisions, they tend to come as part of the main task, but if they want ten revisions,each markedly different from the original of course i would charge extra
but for example if you are charging for 8 hours a day, then there is more than enough time to fix reasonable tweaks.
maybe don't think of it in terms of tweaks versus main work, just do it as a whole
Might be different for games work, but my main stuff is film and bit of VR stuff these days
"I certainly have no shame to ask for more budget if the task turns out different from what was originally agreed." - This tends to happen a lot actually, I'll keep it in mind. I really have to be more strict on these matters :)) Thanks for your answer !
Hmmm, it might be easier to just go with the hourly rate. I'm mainly a game artist, but sometimes I also go for advertising or various apps, which can get a bit weird with the requests since these clients generally did not know as much about the workflow as game art clients.
For the current project I'm working on I tried something new based on the recommandation of a friend and I charged for the whole project. A few tasks that were not initially mentioned in the contract also came around, they weren't super big or different tasks, but still extra tasks that take a bit of time. The company is on a smaller budged so I do feel bad for asking extra. At the same time friends keep telling me to recognize my worth and not sell myself cheap. Well, that's that :)))
As a person starting out it may be better to work on hourly pay so that you avoid getting over committed to bad jobs/bad clients. This also mitigates the need to even worry about getting compensated for revision and having to make judgement call about when it's too much, etc.
You can keep it dead simple this way: if you are contributing time to the job, it gets paid a flat rate.
In the meantime you will develop experience to understand different types of people and different types of job, so in future you might be able to entertain other payment options with confidence that you'll not get screwed and/or not have to have difficult conversation.
If you can go hourly, then that may be the best to deal with revisions indeed. I would imagine you'd have to justify the hours spent a lot though compared to getting paid per completed task.