Artists' fees

#21 Turn the question and the problem around. Instead of trying to find an artist, getting a quote, then finding enough money to pay them, first find as much money as you can to pay them, THEN offer that amount to whomever wishes to work on the project for that dollar amount who has the highest quality work in their portfolio. Simple.

#22 Say Romano,

The prices these guys quote are not half-bad. but if you can't afford them, you might try doing what I did for my artists. Try the agency route. Here are two of the older lot!

www.Guru.com (formerly known as ITMoonlighter)
and
www.rentacoder.com

Sites like these are popping up all over, so be careful when looking. Some of these only want your money for low-quality work or nothing!

#23

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 harsh thruth is, that if you want professional code or art then thats the rate you have to pay.
If you can live with all the problems associated with non-pro work, then you can find rates down to a few $/hour, but you usually get what you pay for.

Just because its indie doesnt mean it has to be cheap. Those 2 things dont equal.

Some are indies for fun, some are students with low income, and some are indies for pro. There are worlds of differences in what "indie" means, and there is room for all of us. But please dont say that indie = cheap. Its not true for lots of us

#24 And definitely don't say indie != professional, because a large portion of the GG community is made up of professional game developers who choose to do independent work. It is degrading and insulting to classify indies as non-professional.

#25 Well, art doesnt come easy. I'm not talking about some arcane "inspiration", "muse" etc. Simply its a process, taking time, skill and numerous reworks/tweaks if you wanna do a good job. Artists dont live in different dimension where food is free, shelter provided, wives/girlfriends have no needs. In fact, we live in this very same world, encountering the very same mundane problems.

Having said all that, although Pascal's numbers seem reasonable (dunno, I dont do 3d myself), there are numerous ways of lowering the figures, especially in a informal indie community. Prolly he's working on his own pet project and might need code help, or your game seems interesting to him and he'd be willing to work for less or nothing in exchange for a stake in company. Or you've done enough of cool stuff before for him to have enough confidence in you to work for peanuts and royalties.

The thing is - if i knew that every project was going to be finished and sold, I'd work for royalties whole the time. But this is real world and 90% fail rate for indie projects is a rather optimistic asessment.
So dough is kind of insurance that at least something comes out of the arrangement. There are prolly just half a dozen of guys I'd gladly work for with no pay at all, cause I have confidence in them.

The only thing i dont really get, is the pay per hour concept. Most of the artists work that way, but personally, it doesnt make sense to me. Customer doesnt really care if i had a slow day, he cares only about the end product.
Well, but thats just me and pretty off-topic.

#26 Thanks to everyone, I got the picture.

#27 I often get paid by the hour, but they also want a break down price per model as well as my hourly rate up front to please their accountants. If your reasonable you will get the job.

Being a contractor is hard. You can charge $40 an hour and get a little work, or charge $20 - $25 and get a lot more money doing lots of work. Most people seem to do well in the $20 - $30 range.

Often the client thinks they know what they want, but has barely any information and no concept art, just some fuzzy words. If your a client try to give as much info as possible.

Doing artwork can take a lot longer than one expects, if you break it down and explain your client will usualy understand whats involved better.

Sometimes you can break it down into

research, (libraries, possible trips with a camera for texture and model reference)

rough sketches + possibly concept art

Modeling

Mapping

Texturing

Possibly Rigging and animation

One thing people often overlook is your 3D engine. 3D engines often have limitations, a selection often shoddy exporters and tools to sift through, no documentation, or severe limitations that get in the way of producing the work, or take more time due to lack of basic features.

Any of these can take any amount of time depending on how clear the instructions and how familiar the artist is with the work and target engine.

#28 I want to add here that we usually give an estimate per piece, but the price is set by figuring out how long it 'should' take based on past experience doing the same work. Note also that these prices are often a little padded to take into account any unknowns. We usually stick to the estimate given unless the work involved is WAY beyond what we thought it would take do to client requests for change.

I also want to point out that cheaper is not always better. Getting someone that is lower paid to get to what you want may take much longer to get there (meaning you end up payng the same for the asset) and that some tasks, no matter how little you pay, may not be possible unless you have someone who knows what they are doing...

with contracting, it is a very captialistic system.. the law of supply and demand has a big part to play in the rates on can charge. If you are in demand, you can charge more for your time, if you are not in demand, you may have to drop your rates to get more competative.

One last comment on TurboSquid.. although good models can be found at turbosquid... there is a lot of crap that oen has to sift through in order to find the gems. You are as likley to get a garbage model that needs massive rework as you are to get a wonderfull asset.. and, as it relates to games, many of the models there are not game ready.

#29 One thing that I'd like to point out is that nowadays it generally costs several million dollars to make a traditional game title. If the work contracted out for an indie game happens to total, say, $25,000, the costs are still quite reasonable in comparison to that of the traditional titles.

#30 Yeah, when I was working on commercial a couple of years ago now I'd bring in about $4500 a month and I was making about average in the team that consisted of 14 people, the lowest paid was the Office manager and a new artist out of college who'd done an internship at another developers.

So in a year those people alone would have cost the company the best part of a million before you got down to software, equiptment, rent and licencing fees etc.

#31 Interesting discussion. I asked a similar question about music tracks and got pointed to here. I guess you get what you pay for, whether it's artwork, music or code.

#32

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.

I really don't see how this is the artists problem. If I was an artist, there'd be too much messy stuff involved with, "Well this game never made it, but we re-used the assets in this game, but it's a different game so we won't pay you," or whatever. Used it in 2 games, sequal. Nah, wouldn't deal with that crap. Why should an artist care if it's indy or professional. If you are contracting someone, you pay their prices, negotiate something, or you don't. It's really that simple. The guy who works out of his apartment doing art all day still has to pay the same amount of rent if he worked on an indy project or a professional project.

I sometimes get the feeling that art is undervalued. There's this magical and mystical force surrounding games, and some kind of disconnect between the quality of the game and the time and effort that went into it. There's this concept that there is one "look" for an engine, and that's all there is. People think Torque has this "look" to it...why? Because they never change the damn textures on the terrain. Then someone like Tim Aste comes along, puts some great, detailed textures on the same terrain, and people instantly think it's magical or something. Another example, when someone threw the Doom 3 textures/normal maps into TSE and people said "OMG IT IS TEH AWESOME!1!!" Same engine, guys...same shaders...different art.

Short form: Good art is good art; be willing to pay for it.

#33 @Pat

If one were to drop the exact same art in the Doom 3 engine, the UT engine, and TSE...would anyone be able to see the difference?

#34 Providing the scene was set up the same...the differences would be so minimal that they would probably not be noticeable. Eventually I forsee all engines being essentially the same. Like Maya and Max, or programming languages. It's mostly this way now, actually. There's some stuff you can do in one more easily than you can do in another, but given a competent individual, you can accomplish the same stuff in both.

At the rendering level, engines just blast out polygons as fast as they can, with as much shiny as they can pack on there.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Unreal3engine-berserker.jpg
Load that into TSE with a standard bump-specular shader and it's going to look pretty much the same.

#35 @ Pascal

I am not saying that a great quality model is not WORTH that amount, I am saying that most indie developers can't afford to pay that much.

@ L Foster

I agree his rate is reasonable. The problem is that most indies can't afford that rate, reasonable as it is. My point is that most idies can't afford "professional" art. They need to find hobbyists who charge less, unless they have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on models.

Now please everyone, stop stoning me ;)

#36 If you want professional quality art, your going to have to pay for it one way or another. Particularly if you want to keep them motivated.

However there are other ways of adding percieved value to a job, If I like something enough I will do it for cheaper. If its a project I'm particularly excited about I'd give a hand but probably no real; commitment since I have to organise my time around getting paid.

I charge less for indie work than I do professional contract wor in part due to the fun factor.

If your company has a proven track record I think a good artist is more likely to work with you for a smaller ammount with royalties, but you need to have a proven team and titles that make it look like it will succeed.

There are so many people starting out that have little incling in regards to what is required in irder to complete a game. I think paying a small ammount shows a little more commitment that most are willing to take.

just a few thoughts out loud there from my own experiences working with others. Art is no different than coding, what do you have avaliable to offer that makes you worth the individuals time?

#37 Edit: if only these forums had a "preview" button...

@Brian

I don't think you're taking this to heart. Indies have to pay just as much for art as anyone else, not as a matter of greed or kindness, just business.

And to be honest, game content (and I mean commercial here; EA and the like) is already discounted, compared to what any other organization would have to pay for the same work. People want to work on games, so they put up with 100 hour weeks and no overtime. And even with this discount, EA still pays > $5 million for AAA games.

If indies wants quality art on the cheap, they have to do what's always been done: trade creative control and a cut of the profits for a lower rate. If you are mercenary with your art, your artists will act like hired guns. Take them on board as equals, and they will sacrifice for you.

#38 The Animator's Union in Los Angeles reports the median salary for a senior character modeler is around $100,000 per year which translates to roughly $50 per hour. It means that initial estimation by Pascal in terms of real life is a bit below line (it also means I've been more then once working all day for 1 hr. salary I'd get is US if this data is true :) ).

Problem with Turbosquid and other portal is not quaility- after all you can always return model if you are disapointed (at least at Turbosquid)- but fact that prices are lower because models are being sold not once but several times. It means that you might discover your adventure game character on 3d porn website and there is nothing you can do about it- because this character is not your intelectual property. Forget about estabilishing brand assigned to character, license and royalties connected to it. Additionally you still have to list creator of model in credits and be very cautious about copyrights.

Is it worth paying ? Yes it is. Experienced artist will not only do things faster- he is also supposed to be able to advise you and in most of the cases will be capable of making your life much easier (for example by solving problems with collisions or shaders)- just because he lives out of making art for games- which is not something one can learn in year or two- he will know much more tricks then most of indie develpers.

#39 Depends what insustry your in. Most commercial game artists/animators earn in the $50,000 - $65,000 range. Many would consider this underpaid. And the sallary range of a experienced artist, lead artist, art director dont ramp up as high as you might think. that plus the long hours and usualy no overtime pay means that most game artists really don't earn as much as they would in other industries like Film and TV.

#40 Yes, of course- industry, country, terms of contract etc. I am clinic example of that. You can always try to find polish or russian or chineese modeler and he will most probably will do it for a half of price- question is if you will be able to talk to him and if you are capable of estimating his capabilities and control workflow but that's quite another story.