1050 Norman Place

[glorybound]

This was a strange one. The real estate agent reached out, said that I was 2X what their other guy charged, so we met in the middle. After the contract was signed and the deposit was paid, she sent me to another person, who was to call the shots and she vanished. apparently, the PDF's I quoted from were just a basic shell... really! Also, the quote was for 2 views and the guy wants 6 views, maybe more was his words. We worked back and forth all week and the house kept growing and growing. I was getting requests to lower roof pitches after days of looking at it and seeing more and more detail being added. I ended up seeing his other guys work, the guy that was 1/2 my price, and I know why he was cheap (no offense). Anyway, I thought I would share the project story

[glorybound]

What a pain in the butt. Last night, literally after working on it for a week, the developer said that the house doesn't look large enough, make it about 30% longer and wider. Where do these people come from?



And, when they say, "whatever you think looks good, do it", means what I do is correct. If you don't like it, then I charge you to change it. I realized years ago that if they complain about the cost, they will be more demanding and difficult to work with. I need to listen to my own advice. Also, every conversation starts with, "man, if this works out, I have so much work for you!" Today was, "has my other guys called you yet, about all the work they want you to do for them? If not, they will be calling you soon". For that, I just roll my eyes.

[Vizioen]

Do they hand out the architect diplomas for free there?

[glorybound]

What happens is, you don't need to be licensed for residential, so these developer/builder grabs plans on-line and try to play designer.

[Vizioen]

Well lets hope Trump changes the rules

[glorybound]

He'll require all building to have a licensed architect and you stiff them for their fees.

[glorybound]

Trump borrows billions for a casino, filed bancrupcy and claimed the billions as a loss, and has been depreciated that loss over a decades. Basically, he has dodged taxes for a long time; brilliant!

[andybot_cg]

He's a developer, he's part of the problem, not the solution!

Well lets hope Trump changes the rules

[crazy homeless guy]

Did you do a camera review when the project was kicked off? Did client sign off on those? If so then I would guess his request is outside of your scope.

Back to the problem with the "feel" about the scale of the house. During camera studies did you try using a longer lens? That would compress the distance between the patio elements and the house and make the house feel large without actually changing the scale.

My guess is you client lacks the vocabulary to accurately describe what he feels when he looks at the image. His gut feeling is that the house looks small and unimpressive so it should be made bigger rather than thinking about how vantage points and focal lengths effect scale.

[Crayox13]

Omg had such stupid conversations with clients...I always thought I was mean when I got annoyed and frustrated (never in front of them mind you ) but some things are just stupid. Like when you have slightly angled camera, you know when it doesn't point parallel to the walls nor at 45°, and they say - no this looks deformed. I mean! And I wasn't even using wide angle lenses, so it look so natural, but no, to them it looked deformed. That's called perspective

Or when I spent days trying to figure out what kind of floor my client wanted. He said it looks like its printed on...and I just started using more natural (not crazy reflective) wooden floors. Like with matte finish and fresnel reflections. After several days and renders I figured out he meant he wanted reflections! Ok, he wasn't from english speaking country but hey, neither am I

And yes I get alot of - could we make this look bigger! They DO know I make things exactly as drawn in their blueprints?!

[glorybound]

Sometimes I feel like a rag doll being whipped around. In some cases, like this, one party signs the contract and another party is doing the design. The contract party doesn't share anything with the design party. Usually, the design party doesn't know the cost, how many views, nothing. This project had a front and a back view, however, he wanted a dozen, including two aerials. INSANE!