So, I was wondering if there are any people here that are willing to share some experience with a newbie.
About me:
I did study architecture for a little while, but abandoned it to follow another career path. During that time I started working with blender and still do, mainly as a hobby.
I still enjoy creating all kinds of viz stuff, especially archviz since I have some experience with it, and would love to start working in the field as a kind of freelance side-hustle thing (for now at least).
I’ve build a small portfolio (and website with google sites) which I think is a pretty good representation of my current skill level: www.moreau3d.de
As of now I don’t really have any professional experience and I’m not sure what’s the best way to „get started“.
There are a few steps I consider taking next, but I‘ m not entirely sure if I’m missing anything important/obvious or if there’s anything with a higher or lower likelihood to succeed:
Keep improving my portfolio. (I guess that’s always on the to do list though.)
Online freelance sites like upwork, etc.
Trying to get in direct contact with local potential clients.
E-Mail marketing towards potential clients. (Again thinking more locally.)
???
Are there any dos and don‘ts I should now about? Anything that I could put a lot of effort into without getting much value?
Oh I’m from germany btw, not sure how important that is.
I don’t work in arch-viz so I can only speak according to my own experience. But it might be better than nothing !
1/ You could always improve your portfolio indeed, but it’s already cool and feels professional ! Well done !
2/ Online freelance work/websites, well you can always try but I’m pretty sure any serious client will avoid those and rely on a specialized agency/company instead. Beside that , without first experience how could you be sure you apply correct rates or if the client is asking too much or not ?
3/ You should try to get in touch with companies that do arch-viz and see if you can get a job there. Maybe try to meet them first and see if they can give you work they have in extra, when they have too much on their plate. Since they’ll supervise you , you’ll be able to learn the job the right way , without jumping right into the sea.
Reaching clients right away, is really a double edged sword, but since you have no former experience you’ll get a hard time to estimate correctly how long something will take.
It’s easy to estimate how long it take to model a house, but now what about if the client changes stuff 10 times, 50 times ? We can’t read the future for sure, but professional manage to deal with that. With experience you start to get a feel of the easy or difficult client, and add extra budget for that in the invoice. On top of that, they also know how to deal properly if all that go over-board and another invoice is needed. It’s not easy since in general clients will tell you that budgets are locked…
When freelancing you are artist in one hand , and commercial in the other, but it’s really hard to do that properly without prior experience !
Anyway, I’m kind-of old fashioned, I would print a few pages of your portfolio in good quality, and try to pay a visit to arch-viz agency with that, and see if it’s possible to meet their team.
A big company is very unlikely to succeed, but in small ones it might be possible to reach them that way !
I have talked to a few of archviz or interior designers throughout time. I can say for sure that they are mostly work with Autocad and their main interest is to do drafting all day long, measuring-iterating-negotiating are the most important stuff of their job.
Now another point is that in order to make their work stand out, they would have to bring it into a 3D software and visualize everything. Create lighting / materials / textures and populate the scene with random assets.
People I talked to, they do the job both drafting and visualization without problems. But is not like visualization is fun, because it takes time as well.
Most important thing of all, is that either you work solo (directly work for clients) or you collaborate (your clients are the archviz people) in both of these cases, you will need to have a legit portfolio that looks both nice and also be practical.
If I see in your website, your work is leaned to towards the most high-end architecture, something that only high-prestige firms would be able to implement. On the other hand if you look more into practical and effective setups that usually exist on the market you will be far easier to be approached. (Small business open and close all the time – The more interior rennovations to be performed).