Looking to start a career freelance rendering and visualization - but WTF!

Kind of going to rant a bit in this thread, and i admit i might be misunderstanding or jumping the gun or missing the point, but i need to vent.

Been working in a large warehouse for 2 years on zero hrs contract, destroying my body and being worked to the bone like cattle, for minimum wage, so i want a career change.
I have been working for months building up Blender skills with an aim of product visualization and have even got a few nice renders for my portfolio and feel i can have a good go at rendering pretty much any existing product (note im not a designer and i have no background or training in designing a product).
So it’s all good so far. I have learnt a skill for free. Im not going to complain about Blender or whine that the industry tends to use other software, because i get that.
I did some job searching for product visulization and found that the job practically does not exist, or that virtually no companies are actively looking just for some joe bloggs to render their product for them. Ah well, i keep searching.
Found the website Fiverr which is for freelancers where you can easily get paid for providing a service or skill, really cool and avoids all the negatives of having to obtain a job at a company, and has all the positives of freelancing.
So i get really encouraged and i find people on there offering what i would expect, and what you would expect for a serious adult trying to sell a high level skill that needs to pay the rent and keep their head above water.
https://www.fiverr.com/davidorija/develop-visual-representations-for-your-product-idea?context&context_referrer=search_gigs&context_type=auto&pckg_id=1&pos=23&ref_ctx_id=2dfc0e85-034b-4b5a-9208-727cc3df4146&funnel=135932de-5630-4296-8d30-3ff28bfed307#reviews
in case the link does not work, he offers generous amount of rendering for a perfectly reasonable price; ÂŁ289 for the premium work - 4 high solutions renders + 7 sec animation upto 9 revisions and delivery time of 4 days.
Or his basic fee is ÂŁ65 for 2 medium resolution renders 2 revisions delivery time 6 days.
He has 33 reviews so it shows that maybe just maybe he gets enough work each week to scrape by and pay the bills.

Now i do more research and this is the whole point of the thread where i got really angered and disillusioned.
There is somebody on Fiverr you guessed it!! COMPLETELY UNDERSELLING THEMSELF AS IF THEY ARE A CHILD!!! WANTING TO POCKET MONEY TO BUY SWEETIES!. ( EDIT i was wrong and sounded like an idiot here, what they were actually doing was working from a 3rd world country with a much much lower living cost)
Case in point https://www.fiverr.com/sherry0077/do-3d-modelling-and-intro-videos?context=recommendation&context_type=natural&context_alg=gig_views_graph&mod=mf&context_referrer=gig_page&source=recommended_in_sc&pos=1&ref_ctx_id=2dfc0e85-034b-4b5a-9208-727cc3df4146
This person , offers product visulizations for £3.62 or £10.85 for high quality render and unlimited revisions( yea i might just tag him along for 1000 revisions and just to spite them). and delivery time of 3 days… But what really angers me is this cheap seller has well over a thousand reviews so hogs all the rendering work on the site. Yet he charges the kinds of money a child would ask. Is this illegal child labor?? maybe thats what it is.

Can somebody please tell me what is going on here??? And if i should just give up hope trying to freelance visualization and make a career out of it. Maybe i should go back to being a wage slave at a factory warehouse.

  1. The two people offer the service in different manner(lower priced offer quotes minimum pricing for simplest work while mentioning that pricing will vary depending on the amount of work involved).
  2. The two people clearly live in different regions and likely have very different living costs they need to cover.
  3. The lower priced offer likely gets a lot more traffic and has to turn away many of the offers because of time constraints, this does allow for cherry-picking which jobs to take on, though.

Something for you to learn from this however is that if you payed any attention, the person quoting minimum prices has a whole queue of work to be done, while the other person quoting more rigid pricing does not. Customers willing to pay premium likely get prioritized. Also, fiverr is likely not the primary source of work for either, though the low-balling service offer likely depends on the platform for additional work more than the other.

I did some further research and found that the guy lives in Pakistan… So we have two completely different costs of living yet somebody living in London is expected to compete in prices with somebody who lives in Pakistan! How is this good for the community for the world or as a business model for the website Fiverr??? Why is somebody living in Pakistan allowed take the work/jobs of people in the UK cut throating and undercutting people???

Globalization. :yes:
For some people $10 are like $100 for you. Maybe you can search for visualization work at the local market or offer much more sophisticated services at the global market.

ok i get what you’re saying here… It seems this kind of work might be viable.
Tthe biggest problem is as you said and i said people have wildly different living costs. How is it that this kind of thing is allowed to become the standard model for freelancing work for actual professionals and one of the biggest if not the biggest freelancing website? Seems there should be a lot of outrage from the folks who cannot afford to compete with those living in 3rd world countries.

Fiverr should region LOCKED, it should be as a website controlled by each countries government to prevent people from other countries taking jobs outside of their own country or region… Even down to the point where i living outside of London should not be allowed to undercut the people who live in London which can be upto 10X higher living costs.

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1st off this is a very competitive field. However it is completely feasible to make a living out of it. A little back story about me, I am a graphic designer/photographer (never went to college), I have been freelancing for a number of years before I had to get a job for medical reasons.

I noticed a trend in the past few years. Smaller companies (5-300 people) are looking to higher graphic designers that know 3D.

If you are from U.S./UK you will never be able to compete with someone from another country with much lower cost of living. They take a drastic cut from other 3D artist because they can afford to. There is no use in complaining about this, this is happening to every industry (clothing, auto, programmers, etc) and has been for decades. This is a battle not worth fighting in my opinion. However there are many smaller to mid size companies in your area that are in need of 3D artist and it is your job to go knocking on all of their doors until one hires you.

From what I have learned from freelancing throughout the years. There are going to be companies that just need you to model something in which case they will probably go to fiverr or decora. But there are still a lot of companies that like to work in person with the artist. This is were making sure you have a really good portfolio and start walking around to all your local businesses and let them know what you can do. You NEED to be a little bit of a salesman also. They may not see how you can help them, so it is up to YOU to sell them on the idea that a 3D model or animation will help there business/product look very professional.

I suggest you read this thread : https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?438906-Slavery-prices-on-DECORA

Also this is a thread that I wish would catch on because I think it could be very helpful. But this may open up some ideas for you to get a career using Blender.

Hope this helps a little, remember with hardwork, a good portfolio, and a little bit of salesmenship, this is very doable.

More research into cost of living.
[TABLE=“class: table table-bordered, width: 725”]

[TH=“align: left”]Comparing Basic Cost of Living[/TH]
[TH=“align: left”]1 Bedroom Flat in City Centre (monthly rent)[/TH]
[TH=“align: left”]Meal for 2 (Mid-Range Restaurant, 3 course)[/TH]
[TH=“align: left”]Transportation (Monthly Pass)[/TH]

[/TABLE]

[TABLE=“class: table table-bordered, width: 725”]

London, UK
₨ 230,869.33
₨ 7,553.22
₨ 18,127.73

[/TABLE]
[TABLE=“class: table table-bordered, width: 725”]

Lahore, Pakistan
₨ 16,562.50
₨ 1,700.00
₨ 600.00

[/TABLE]

Thats a 10 - 20 times difference. And is reflected exactly in his “gig” pricing.
Once again how is this good for the community? How can workers in the Uk survive if they are being asked to compete with people living in Lahore PAKISTAN???

Thanks for the information and the encouragement.

It is not good for local workers but it is good for local companies. A studio can use 3d artists from all over the world, sometimes cheaper artists for simple jobs and some times more expensive artists for more sophisticated work.
It is what it is.

Well if you think about it more carefully, artists from across the world invariably have the same potential skill levels, ie a artist in India could be just as capable at sophisticated 3D work as an artist in London, its just a matter of how much talent and practice each have had. Whats more, if studios, companies, corporations, services of the 1st world mostly exported their work out to the 3rd world, and in the process taking the work away from the locals in the 1st world, then how is the customer (the workers they took the work away from) going to have the income to pay for the product that is being sold at the end of the day?

Lets say Pixar or ILM started to export all their work out to India via some nifty new online website, in the process sacking all the existing 3D artists. Initially it sounds a brilliant idea to the Bosses. But as time passes they wonder why nobody is paying premium prices at the cinema to watch their movie… Could it be that the movie goers who once had spare money to go to the cinema are now homeless because their jobs/career have been taken by the 3rd world via a globalized internet freelancing system??? Should they be surprised when their movie gets downloaded for free or pirated? Terrible business model if you ask me.

Global capitalism is tough.

Do you want to pay 3x more for the computer you use to do this freelancing, the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the dishes you eat off of? Because if you are that opposed to foreign labor stealing jobs, that’s the reality you face.

It certainly sucks more when it’s your job that is being sent over seas, but the exploitative practices of global capitalism will go wherever they can to have the highest profit margin possible.

Note that I am not claiming that the way things are is the best option, or even a good one. It is simply the way things are right now, and short of any major shifts in global policies, it is the way it will continue to be.

Well if you think about it more carefully, artists from across the world invariably have the same potential skill levels, ie a artist in India could be just as capable at sophisticated 3D work as an artist in London, its just a matter of how much talent and practice each have had

I didn’t say anything about artists from uk being more capable than other artists from other places. However if you live in a 1st world country you will have more opportunities to develop your skills.

Whats more, if studios, companies, corporations, services of the 1st world mostly exported their work out to the 3rd world, and in the process taking the work away from the locals in the 1st world, then how is the customer (the workers they took the work away from) going to have the income to pay for the product that is being sold at the end of the day?

I have the same question as well.

I think i can see the results of the global capitalism going on even on mainstream twitter. I see new Apple product launches like speakers, phones and tablets, and i invariably see backlash in the comments about the ridiculous pricing for a mediocre product. And I think im right in thinking that Apple exports a lot of labour overseas to lower their costs. Suprise suprise only the upper class can afford the product that emerges from this business model. Granted its cheaper to make but they don’t pass that saving onto the consumer and they expect the westerner to pay through the nose, only to find out that most people no longer are their well paid jobs and so can’t afford it.

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And soon AIs will take all out jerbs. Whoop-de-doo.

You’re going about this the wrong way. If you want to start doing freelance visualisations, work locally… not internationally. Internationally you are competing against very VERY low hourly wage. If you work locally, for local companies, you are able to charge a normal rate.

Also, think about selling models on turbosquid… High quality assets you build once, but sell many many times over.

Also, know now - Precariat.
“What makes them rich, makes other poor.” - M. Freeman

Or CGTrader or… plenty of opportunities really.