How to hire good folk to make tutorials?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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I am a bit involved in a slightly unusual project, and a question came up during a talk. Note that this is purely theoretical, not an “open job offer”, since we have no idea if it is even feasible, but…

If someone needed a tutorial on a very precise topic, that people did not seem to cover normally, and did not feel like trying to get it for free through the request forum in here (both because good people deserve compensation, and non-free tends to make things a bit faster and easier), how much would that likely cost? We’re talking maybe a 10 minute solution-oriented (as opposed to broader feature-oriented) tutorial on how to do advanced quality stuff from time to time (i.e. it would be multiple tutorials, not necesarily by the same person(s)). And not that it really matters (or should matter, at least), but part of the project would include making the resulting tutorials available to the larger public, too. The current bets are going on respectively 100, 500 or 1000 USD per tutorial, but none of us have ever tried hiring for tutorials before, so it’s really up in the air if it’s even possible! But the idea appeals to, at the very least, me…

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it would I assume depend on the quality or better the polish of the tutorial. For example I would assume that a tutorial dvd like the blender workshop dvds are a lot more expensive to make (mainly time wise) than some one explaining a technique, in more of a question and answer kind of thing.

I think mavenseed is something the cgcookie guys do, which is basicly one on one tutoring. I think that money wise you’ll be hiring that someone, and paying him/her for the hours. Than copyright stuff might lower or increase price (whether people keep the rights for the tutorial and are allowed to distribute themselves with you getting some sort of distribution license, or you owning all the rights to the tutorial).
I suggest asking jonathan or wes about the time it takes to create their tutorials, that should be a good starting point I think :slight_smile: and maybe look into mavenseed as well (http://www.mavenseed.com/)

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Mavenseed actually looks pretty nice, and affordable. They might be something that could be used for the project. But do Jonathan or Wes have sites that show their work and lists their prefered work methods?

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I don’t know too be honest. You could always drop them a line through cgcookie though, I found them very friendly and they respond quickly as well :slight_smile:

oh and you might want to look at these persons as well http://www.blender.org/education-help/certified-trainer/certifications/
they are all blender certified trainers, so they should skilled enough to help you and interested in education :slight_smile:

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Thanks, Month, it seems there are definitely people out there to take the task, now it’s just a matter of… well, everything else :spin:

Anyway, people seem more eager to contact me privately on this than post in here, but I thought I’d do a collective feedback since the questions are pretty much the same. Firstly, please remember that this is not a job offer, we are just looking into opportunities right now. It looks like people charge from just under US$50 / hour to … uhm… slightly higher prices (some of them a bit intimidating), and we are actually poking at some ideas about that. No guarantees on what we end up with, it also depends on some funding work that is still very much up in the air.

As for questions on the specifics of the project, I can only give out a bit of info at this point, since the rest is hush hush to avoid rampant speculation. At it’s core, it’s an animated scifi series inspired by the classic scifis like Dr Who, Star Trek and Babylon 5 (i.e. lots of going to strange worlds and dealing with the consequences of that), but also shows like X-Files and especially LOST and Flashforward, and movies like The Matrix and Inception (i.e. lots of strange and existential mythos plot arcs). In short, world-jumping with an extreme dose of WTF’ery. Because we are all geeks here and we like that stuff. We are looking into whether to go for near-realism (a la the now old Final Fantasy movies) or an artistic style, but that’s all in talks right now.

The real deal is the production, which is inspired by the Blender Open Movie projects most of all, but rather than revolutionize Blender’s features, it’s about showing how Blender (and other software) can be used to make large productions far cheaper (for those not in the know, read up on Babylon 5 and how they slammed everybody by working on a fraction of expected budgets). The goal is to, right now, get a short teaser out there, then finance that up to a full 4-6 minute trailer, and then hopefully Crowdfund part or all of it and allow major crowdfunders to become creative consultants, effectively making the show partly fan-controlled. The tutorials part was an idea to learn rather than outsource work, and to spread that knowledge to kick down a door or two for other, future projects of similar goals. Most (nearly all) funds will go to things like the tutorials, because we all have okay paid jobs ourselves and would rather push the barriers for filmmaking than pocket a bit of cash.

Hope that made sense. In spite of the project information, please keep this thread about the tutorials, it was merely a reaction to questions in private emssages :slight_smile: