Artists' fees

#1 3500 polies is alot do you have a screen shot?

#2 Well it depends on the artist and what time he needs to finish the project. It would be the sum of the hour rate times the spent hours.

Hour rates can vary quite a bit. An experienced high profile artist will be able to ask a higher hour rates than an inexperienced unknown artist. Higher hour rates doesn't mean a project will be more expensive though. The experienced artist will probably finish it faster and might be cheaper in the end.

Also keep in mind that it is not uncommon that artist specialise and that they not excel in modelling, texturing and animating. SO if you need top notch work you might have to contract several people to get your project done.

But lets take your example a model (3500 polys), fully textured (1 base texture) and a basic animation set (walk 4 ways, jump, die) inclusive rigging and exporting for TGE.

First of you will need a good concept from which your artist can work. I will keep concept art out of this since it is in a league of it's own (or at least I think it is). A good model sheet will help you and the artist to get a good idea of what is the general idea. It might avoid a situation of you getting something that is not EXACTLY how you want it and believe me you want it exactly how you want it because this is going to count up.

Let me state on forehand that I specialise in textures and have some good modelling skills but animating is totally not my thing so it will be hard for me to judge that. But as is I would probably estimate to much hours than average for modelling and a bit less than average for textures because feel more at home doing textures.

Ok here we go

For a 3500 model texture ready I would estimate around 24 hours
For a texture 512x512 I would say around 16 hours

I would ask around 35 Euro per hour, the dollar isn't doing to well at the moment it's 1 Euro for 1.34 dollar so that would be around 47 USD.

SO!!

40 x 47 = 1880 USD for a textured model so no rigging, no animations.

I hope that helped a bit, I'm sure someone can shed some light on the animation part just give it some time.

#3 That sounds like a bit much for an independant guy though, doesn't it :) ?

PS Find an artist in Mexico....favorable conversion rate hehehe

#4 How do you figure to much???

#5 Brian:

Pascal's estimate is that upon a professional artist, ie someone who makes a living from doing this sort of work. Not a hobbyist as such.

Not to flame, but your reply *implies* (to me anyway) that you consider independent and amateur to be the same thing, or that professional and independent are mutually exclusive. This is not the case.

#6 Woah I certainly hope I don't have to pay that much, our game will never see the light of day. :o I guess if you are looking for freelancer artists, then that could well be true. However for an indie developer, at least for me anyhow, that is totally out of reach for just one model.

I would suggest scouting around, maybe you can find an artist who is interested in joining your team, and will work on a volunteer basis. Its a good way to for new artists to learn and get some experience. ;)

Cheers!
Ian

#7 @Brian

That is actually a very reasonable rate that Pascal has listed there. Most artists that are worth their weight will charge between $50 and $75 per hour minimum (US funds of course) for freelance work. This of course can be adjusted if you are friends with the artist or if it will benefit them in another way other than a monetary gain.

The thing you need to remember is that its not cheap to be an artist. It takes a long time to become good at this craft and in order to do the best job possible in the least amount of time you need to use professional level tools too (ie. Max & Photoshop would be one set of tools an artist would have).

Sure you can hire someone to do it cheaper in some other location, but the question is are you getting good artwork that is also Torque compatable or are you just getting some mass produced crap that isn't anywhere complete or ready for the game engine you are using?

Cheap doesn't always mean better, in fact it usually works out to being more trouble than its worth, but thats just my opinion based on my experiances with having to clean up artwork done by undercutting 3rd party art studios and make it actually usable.

Logan

#8 You can pay as little as you can get away with for outsourcing artwork. If you look around, you can find students or those learning and get away with paying way less. The original question asked about the 'usual' fees. If you were to call up an art contract house, the rates you could expect to be quoted are in the ballpark of what pascal quoted.

It can be done cheaper.. but it is good to at least have expectations about what it does cost when you just try to hire someone professional to do it.. so you know when you are paying too much, or when you are getting a bargain.

#9 Of course you could always learn to make the models then have someone texture them for you. You avoid having to pay someone to do the bulk of the work (assuming you only need one texture) and the model's shape will be exactly as you want it. Rigging and animation isnt much harder than making the model, so you could also do that.

#10 This is very expensive. But what about if you don't care that the model is actually used in another project. Like give the artist full rights to the model, but they give you full permission to use it inside your projects as long as you don't resell it?

www.turbosquid.com is one of the biggest and most famous sites to actually download/buy prebuilt models, textures and such.

#11 The other thing is can you draw or at least give a very detailed description of what you want. This is a very big deal because you want to make sure you are not wasting yours or the artists time. What if he models it and you do not like it. If you cannot draw you may also ask for them to first do some concept art for the model. Basically with Our Company Cellien Studios the pipeline goes something like this:

Idea-> Concept Art-> Model sheet-> 3Dmodel-> UV mapping-> Textured-> rigged-> animation

As you can see there are several steps that go into making a finished model. And in alot of cases this is done by more then one person.

#12 My last project, i was involved in, i did 3 low poly models, biped them posed them, my colleague textured them and created the concept drawings, and on top of that we created some extra items, we got paid around $600. To me it depends on the complexity of the work.This work had a 2 week deadline which was unrealistic but we did get in the stuff, but took 1 more week to finish off the extra stuff they asked for, which was not part of contract but we were happy to do.
The pay was low because it was slipt by 2, but i was happy in doing it. IT jsut mean certain things don't get done due to time and priority.

#13 Same goes for programmers and managers. A good programmer or manager can easily charge $100 or $150/hour in the pro world.

Someone selling a complete art/code pack for $25 or even $50 is a steal.

So the ~$2000 quoted by Pascal is very reasonable

#14 I can only echo what Thomas said--you would be amazed at how expensive custom code is for any application in the professional world. Just playing around once, I added up all the hours involved in managing and coding the RTS-SK community resource I worked on just after release. If I were to get my "professional" billing rate, the project would have cost the customer roughly $16,000--and that was just for my work--there were several others involved in the project.

Quality work simply is expensive, no matter what it is you are working on, or with.

#15 That seems very unreasonable considering...

I could go to www.turbosquid.com and purchase the model I am looking for. Lucky for me I can texture. Oh by the way, they have textures!

This is Indie game development work and not professional game development work. People need to realize that. There should be one price for private consumption and another if the game actually come to fruition which by the way, most wont. Sorry to disappoint anyone but that is the harsh truth.

Reality says:
buy a book and do it yourself (Paul Steed's Modeling a Character in 3Ds Max ISBN 155622088X)...
find a place to purchase reasonable models for a reasonable prices (www.turbosquid.com)...
find a friend who can model and texture and buy him some beer(s)...
purchase art packs from garagegames for prototyping...

#16

Quote:This is Indie game development work and not professional game development work. People need to realize that. There should be one price for private consumption and another if the game actually come to fruition which by the way, most wont. Sorry to disappoint anyone but that is the harsh truth.

That may make sense to you from the purchaser's perspective, but it most certainly does not make business sense from the artist's perspective--they still have to pay the bills. The value (and cost) of their time doesn't change based on if the purchaser's project is successful or not.

#17 But Panthros reality says a few things different then what you think:
buying a book doesn't make you an artist
most of the models on turbosquid, at least the ones that are affordable, are subpar
and most importantly, make sure you wait to give your artist the beer after he is done :)

#18 $600 for two weeks ain't THAT low. Maybe for your profession or gamedev in general (I can't comment on that) but 2 weeks. That's $1200 per month. In Sweden the average pay per month is $1500.

The fee's mentioned above by Pascal would be a dream for many :)

#19

Quote:This is Indie game development work and not professional game development work. People need to realize that. There should be one price for private consumption and another if the game actually come to fruition which by the way, most wont. Sorry to disappoint anyone but that is the harsh truth.

the prices pascal quoted (and I back up) are for professional work. There are royalty rates that anyone will consider as part (or all) of a ownership package of an independent title. If you are not going to get the game done, it will be hard for you to attract artists. If you pay going rate, it would not be hard at all. In terms of the different rates.. the peope I know are not in a situation where they need more work. Most are in a position where they presently have too much work.

So, you can say it is unreasonable.. but people pay these rates all the time for professional work.. In terms of having a rate for indies.. we don't have one. If you can convince me that you will make me a bucket of money by working for free. I am willing to listen, buy it had better be a convincing argument.

There are very few people I would trust to make me a bucket of money if I did free work.

#20 I usualy charge about $20-$25 an hour but on occasion I get lucky. Over the weekend I earn't $200 a model and did 8 models taking less than an hour each. Doesn't happen often, but my client arranged the pricing, and I guess he was charging a lot my regular rate didn't correspond to his or something. But that wasn't for games, but construction engineering.