Hi there,
Ive been using blender for a couple years now and Im about to get a freelance job in a small game studio as a character modeller. They are asking me to give them a figure but I have no idea how much to ask for. Since its a small studio and im not really experienced I dont want to ask too much but I dont want to get underpaid as well. What are the avarage rates for someone inexperienced like me, and should I charge daily/weekly or something else?
Most of all is a personal strategy.
- If you charge too low you simply get demotivated and won’t have any soul to finish the work. (You get very bored).
- If you charge too much you will have to work 10 times as harder to leave a good impression. (You get burned out).
So the middle pricing always works best, get enough motivation, but avoid overworking.
Say for example you can watch a sample model as sold in some online model shop and you can provide the same level of quality for that sampled price. Which is a good unit of measurement. Then adding more to the price or taking some off the price. Is always relative to how much time is planned to be spent.
Unless I am mistaken about something, I am always interested to learn other better approaches on the subject.
That sounds like a good idea but what im wondering is would it be correct to compare it to a model in an online shop? I mean, in online shops you can sell the model to multiple people so prices are usually lower, but when working for a studio you usually cant sell it again. So i assumed it would be a bit higher than the models online, or am i wrong in thinking that way?
No, that’s horrible advice…some of these highly detailed models go for $10…WTF???
I would say that (I assume we’re not talking about an hourly rate here) you need to figure out generally how long it will take you to create, tweak, modify to their notes and expectations, optimize, etc.
Let’s say that it takes you two days to come up with a particular model (something fairly simple), what you want to do is figure out what is a good day rate for where you live based on your skillset and charge around that for the model. If your day rate is $500/day, then charge about $1000 for a two day’s work model. If the model takes you a week, then charge accordingly.
I see so many artists devaluing themselves to the point where it makes absolutely no sense. A good modeler is not common. There are tons of people on Sketchfab or Artstation, but even though they might look really good at first, the majority of those models suck with incredibly bad topology or other major issues that create big problems down the line. What is the point of studying how to properly use a DCC for years, investing in expensive computing hardware and software, and keeping up to date with the latest technology and trends if at the end of the day you’re just charging the same as the guy who works in the coffeeshop?
4 Likes
Do you have a timeline? You’ll be working by the day for say, 6 months, or you’ll be doing freelance job, so you’ll be free to do s.t. else too?
In short what your commitment is going to be? If you don’t know how to price, simply take the cost of life where you’re living and charge based on time. This way you’ll be covered. Add to that depending on your confidence (and their budget)
The pricing of such task depends on
-
The geographical location of the artists and the location the studio.
-
Amount of the work
-
Type of the work
-
Duration of the work / contract
-
Type of the contract
-
Size of the studio
-
The quality of the work required
-
etc
Basically it is very hard to tell you how much you should charge given you have not provided any of the details above. My recommendation is to come up with a comfortable number for yourself, especially if they are in another country, given that the market pricing wont be similar in both places. If both of you are in the same country, you need to research the local work force pricing.
Sorry about leaving out some details, i learned about some of them later on too. Its gonna be a year long project (11-12 months according to them), and since they expect me to make a character in two weeks i assume it will be like a full time job. They offered me 550-700 $ a month, i did not want to take it since it seemed low to me and also felt like its a big commitment for me. But for future reference, what is the ideal price for this kind of job?
Where do you live?!?! $500-700 month is insane if you’re in any major city. But if you’re in a small village in Yemen maybe it’s a decent living wage? $700 a month for four-40-hour work weeks comes out to less than $5/hour. Here in the USA that would be illegal since it falls much lower than the Federally mandated minimum wage (and each state might have a higher one than that).
1 Like
Thats the other thing. I live in turkey. $700 a month is a good price for turkey (to give you an idea, its twice the minimum wage), but on the other hand, i dont know if i sound greedy here but what i offer is no less than someone who lives in, lets say, US, so i dont want to undersell myself while i can earn more than that.
Do not expect to get paid US prices if you never had any real professional work experience in this field. And please read my post above again. You can’t just expect someone else to pay you US prices because you think this is the fair thing to do, especially when you and the studio are not from the US.
Yeah you’re probably right, and im not trying to argue with you, but lets put it this way.
The person contacted me for this job told me that they are talking with two other people for this job. One of them lives in south korea and offered $550. The other one lives in canada and offered $700 for the same job. Now lets say that im the one who lives in canada and posted this asking what the price should be. How would you respond? And now im here, living in turkey, offering the same thing as the other people and competing with them. Why would i offer less than them, just because i live somewhere else?
Im sorry if im thinking wrong, im just trying to understand since im new to this and dont know much.
Because the living expenses in both of those countries are higher than Turkey and the workforce of those countries in this field is also more competitive than Turkey.
Fair enough. But then i would say, if the studio was negotiating with only 2 of them and not me they had to pay a price according to their countries. Which is way higher than $700. And then i come in to the scene and offer the same amount as them. According to you i cant do that, so i offer much less than. But then what the studio would do? give the job to me or other poeple? They would give it to me right, i ask much lower so its logical. But would that make sense, asking much lower than other two while i can ask for the same price as they do? And the other two had to lower their prices to meet mine, back to what i asked, if i was the canadian, asking you this how would you respond?
You are unnecessarily complicating the issue by asking hypothetical questions. You also do not know what kind of candidates you are racing against to get the job. Maybe the canadian modeler can model this character in a day or so therefor makes $700 a day, meanwhile it takes you 2 weeks to get it done.
The bottom line is that you are not living in those countries therefor you cant really understand what it means to make a living there. That is why you judge your position by where you live. Find a comfortable number that will offer a a decent living wage in Turkey for the contract and take it from there.
You can ask whatever price you want since pricing is an art of itself but you need to be able to back your pricing claim with the work experience and the past professional projects.
I saw their portfolios and also they both said it would take them 2-3 weeks to complete a character. And why would the studio care about where i live, what my expenses are? And no, im not complicating this, im asking a very simple and basic question and you cant answer it.
Im not saying im right, maybe there is a logical answer that i dont know, im just trying to find that answer.
TBH you can’t start doing this in my view until you are an artist, have a business plan, and understand the mechanics of bidding, and (self) marketing. Being an artist is only going to work under 2 scenarios: you are a staffer, you can reliably contract out 70% or so of billable time in a year. Perms get holiday and Bank Holidays, contractors have higher over daily rates as they are not expected to always hit the same billable days as a perm will work in a year.
3D has the advantage of being more location agnostic, but you can only use that to exploit your lower cost base. If you won’t someone else will. The argument the work is as good as from the US is bull we are dealing with capitalism here.
I also fear there is a 4th thing you have to do. Build a presence and reputation that makes you not your day rate the primary reason for picking you for the work.
Finally what are you earning today? If underbidding on this is a step up do it, and build the reputation.
2 Likes
Okay i give up, i accept that im wrong. But at least, can someone answer my first question, what is the standart price of the job i described for someone who lives in us or somewhere equivalent so that i can base on that and decide what would be a good price for where i live? For example, is $700 a month a good price for someone who never worked as a professional? Because, as i said i have no idea what are the prices as a 3d modeller.
The highest price you can find is “a character in 3-5 days” from a freelancers type site (checked some time ago), it goes about $500 or so if I’m not mistaken, ready made assets.
But if you are given a year job that calls for a different arrangement. Basically they gave you a budget limit 550-700 for a two-two and a half week max time. Simply as that (the canadian price is not realistic). You won’t get more than 700 from them much probably, so if that’s fine for you then take it.
HTH
Okay, that clears it up a bit. Thank you for your answer.
I had in mind some specific models that are sold for 200$, but obvisouly 10$ models do not count. 
That’s not exactly a problem from your side, as you are only concerned only on your deliverables.
This means that you would have two weeks to complete one character? And repeat the process of producing a character for 12 months? This calls for another strategy to approach the project.
Pretty much now you have the picture. You have a price proposed by the client (as got many offers). And perhaps there would be a max price as well but for sure is kept secret so they use their best cards first. But as of now consider that you have 550$-700$ price range.
One important thing to note is that once the client makes the offer, you usually are locked within that price range. So your chances to go higher are diminishing. However the catch is that if you intend to compete and go lower, your chances are increasing. Since you become more competitive. But the real deal is that if you get paid lower, basically boils down to the ratio of long-term short-term earnings. It means that you prioritize long term earnings in favor of getting paid lower now, but you keep getting the jobs, keep staying on the arena longer, keep getting more experience and more sharper. Basically once you get a very fat and heavy portfolio then you become the master and set your own rules.
Basically since you have the offer proposed from the studio, as mentioned earlier, you have the price range ready for you. In theoretical terms you can charge for anything you like, however the real system works based on what others charge, so you try to stay competitive. And if you follow any other freelancers who have created a dozen of models multiple times and hit the same price range all the time. It means that you get a standard relative cost where you can play lower-higher.