How would you want to earn money as a 3d artist?

#1

Hello CGSociety Community!

This is a big one i think, with recent cut backs in the Vfx industry, 3d Artists find it harder to find work. Sites like Elance and Fiverr really kill the process of 3d services, i mean people are asking to model a city for $100, thats ridiculous, problem is people are actually bidding on it, so clients think oh great its super cheap. Well it’s not, its takes a great time and effort to produce quality CG work, of course the tolls have become easier to use and give faster results, but the demand in quality (from quality clients) grew.

As a 3d artist myself I too found it hard to find a good service that provides quality work that pays. I tried Turbosquid, but for that you need a big volume to succeed. Some other sources of income that were on my radar were:
a. Creating Assets for games for Unity Asset store.
b Creating 3d Art and selling it on those art selling sites.
c. As mentioned above creating stock.

If we as a community come together how do we want to earn money as 3D artists?
Do we create a marketplace for quality work? quality 3d assets marketplace? A social network just for CG artists (CGHUB was great but they tore it down)?

With what would we feel that we are contributing value?

Thank you for tang the time and thinking about this, I strongly believe that as a community we can come together and create our own work and terms.

Thanks,

Alex S.

#2

First of all money is money sometimes.
I know there are sites like Fiverr.com that have really low rates for modelers but they also bring you tons of clients and you have the ability to upsale.

Now I have seen some folks do a quick and great model in their lunch crunch in about an hour.
Charge $100 for a lunch crunch style model.
If they want better topology add that in.
If they want it animateable you add that in
etc.

It is good if you are in a bind and need money.

Also Turbosquid sucks for selling. You need to attack the niche market. Poser and DAZ studio. Find the most generic and useful thing around and model that. Sell it for 34.95 and sell in bulk.
Yeah you can seel 1 model on Turbosquid for 200 or you can sell 100 models for 34 bucks. YOu do the math.

#3

How do you WANT to earn money as a 3D artist?? Well, I think the concept of youtube was ideal initially (especially the community aspect before Google). IDEALLY, easy collaboration with like minds to produce original content and profit (both via ad revenue, tips, sponsors, and merch) would be ideal.

Yes you can crunch out a ton of models for others to use, but why can’t artificial intelligence? Imagine if in the future, all a person had to do to have a 3D model was take photos of the item they want (4 different perspectives) and click “Model”. And out pops a low res, all quad, uv’d, model with pseudo-textures that satisfy the average viewer from a distance.

With 3D printing, I would doubt we’d be too far off from that. But who knows…

At some point, I think the imagination and creativity of artists should outweigh the mastery of software tools to essentially reproduce what we already see.

Remember, in ancient times, portraits were painted. Imagine how much business painters would have now if that were still the case. Now, the average portrait is a button click (photo). Some day, 3d models might be the same way, a button click.

#4

My perspective on best policy:

Get to know who is doing what in your local market. Be different or be better than those in your local market.

Build relationships locally. Develop connections abroad.

Diversify your skill sets, alway continue to thrive to be better.

Always look for ways to move upward, increase your position, increase your rates

Network, Network, Network …

Don’t do something for nothing

Always … ALWAYS keep an eye out for opportunity, because it is those breaks that will lead you to where you want to go.

#5

^ So… your point is… we shouldn’t try to make money as 3d artists because at some stage our jobs will be automated by machines?

[Edit - my comment is about the post two above this now, not immediately above.

To the OP, in my opinion the best thing to do is to try to focus on quality work rather than trying to compete with people for really low paying jobs. If all you work on is super low end/cheap stuff then you never get a chance to improve your skills (apart from speed I guess) and your work will never stand out. I work as a freelance animator/rigger and I turn down jobs frequently where the budget-expectations ratio is ridiculous, but the clients I do get tend to be good ones, who appreciate quality work (yeah even if the deadlines are really short) and come back to me for repeat business. So it takes a while to build a clientele, and sometimes you find you are quiet for a bit, (good time to work on personal projects to keep pushing your level) but if you are careful and charge a decent amount for your work then you have savings to keep you going. Tough at the start but it gets easier.

Cheers,
Brian

#6

If your job is to model real life objects, or drawings, or pictures into 3D, then you are basically converting an idea from one format into another (not unlike painting a portrait, where you convert what you see visually into a static format). Yes it takes time and skill, no knock there, but understand what it is exactly that you are doing.

If the day comes where this “conversion” can be automated, it is going to take a toll on your career path. Yes, people still paint portraits, but be honest, it’s far more rare than simple photography.

So when the question was posed as to how we would WANT to earn money as 3d artists, I advocated for something where artists could express more individuality and uniqueness, making their personal vision the marketable good, as opposed to “converting” objects to 3d as the marketable good.

It’s a thread about what you want, that’s what I posted.

#7

To the OP, in my opinion the best thing to do is to try to focus on quality work rather than trying to compete with people for really low paying jobs. If all you work on is super low end/cheap stuff then you never get a chance to improve your skills (apart from speed I guess) and your work will never stand out. I work as a freelance animator/rigger and I turn down jobs frequently where the budget-expectations ratio is ridiculous, but the clients I do get tend to be good ones, who appreciate quality work (yeah even if the deadlines are really short) and come back to me for repeat business. So it takes a while to build a clientele, and sometimes you find you are quiet for a bit, (good time to work on personal projects to keep pushing your level) but if you are careful and charge a decent amount for your work then you have savings to keep you going. Tough at the start but it gets easier.

So in the meantime how does he happen to make money when he has no current clients? What if he has no cash or savings because he is looking for his first gigs?

I’m not saying take cheap work but what do you do in the meantime when you have no client s? Would it be better he get into a normal McJob or try to focus on another career?

I’m not being combative or anything. I’m curious. How do you cope or find clients in the meantime?

#8

This is developing into a very useful thread.

#9

The best answer that resonates with my line of thought was Scott Johnson’s idea. All other answers are good too, but i think they are an old way of working. These days with current technologies and opportunities we can change all that!

Yes doing client work is somewhat fulfilling, IF the client is good and with budget and understands the process.In my opinion every client work, you are always at the mercy of the client. No that I had bad experiences or something, there always good ones (Disney), but majority are small ones who need to get things out the door and fast, and its understandable.

What if artists from all type of mediums come together and create content collaboratively, wether its games, movies, books, magazines, whatever. Cut out the distribution channels and share the profits, in my opinion it is possible.

#10

I agree with this sentiment, you can already start to see this happening in CG. For instance, Kojima productions already scans real world objects to 3D for their games. They need some cleanup but with time that need will go away (and frankly I’ve never been a fan of “clean up” positions as work).

You can also see it already happening in computer animation with motion capture. The tendency here is to need less and less cleanup as the technology improves. Thankfully most of the use of motion capture has been used and developed for realistic animation right now; the exception being a realistic and stylized hybrid like Tin Tin.

Anyway I agree with Scott, the best approach is probably going to be to tend to go for your own style and go in a different path from automation and realism. I have no problem with this because the reason I wanted to do 3D (animation) in the first place was not to translate real objects or characters into 3D but to express myself visually and having my own style.

I love when people do beautiful, realistic sculptures, but I can’t help to think that a lot of that will go away unless there is a stylistic intent behind the realism. This kind of brings us back to Scott’s analogy, “Yes, people still paint portraits, but be honest, it’s far more rare than simple photography.”

You will probably still see a few elite artists doing realistic sculpting and modeling but it will probably be a very small market, just like the portrait analogy.

#11

you know, I think us being 3D artists is a curse, I know we love and enjoy what we do, despite the long hours we sit to create those pieces, what people “non-artists” don’t understand when it comes to 3D, is that they think with one click on a program baam magic happens, there ya go your art is ready, yeah that happened to me, that’s why they don’t “appreciate” your labor, and that’s why some of them are “cheap” when it comes to paying back.

my opinion

#12

Well you are in a non essential profession where competition is high and where there are wild variations in price and quality. Where this is the worst is on the bottom, at the top people get paid well and what they make is appreciated by people who understand what is being made.

#13

How about: PATREON

//youtu.be/wH-IDF809fQ

#14

Looks good. I am for anything that promotes and supports indy.

#15

The good news is there are a number of online platforms that allow you to apply for freelance 3D projects. A couple of platforms like TurboSquid also let you sell your 3D models. Here’s a list of 6 3D Artists freelance platforms.