Knol article on 3d Architectural Renderings

[pixelplume]

great to read and thanks for the effort. It made me feel a little less crazy (alone) for pursuing this profession . I wish all our clients would read this.......as I wait to hear back on a bid i just put out that I suspect is too "high"

[Sawyer]

Its so frustrating I think most firms are very familiar with the prices that overseas firms advertise even if they have never used them for renderings. Every place I have worked at gets weekly mailings showing a rendering with a price tag of $100-$400. So before you even open your mouth there is an assumption that the client has on the ball park price range.

[jujubee]

as I wait to hear back on a bid i just put out that I suspect is too "high"

I just recently talked with one pretty good illustrator who does more traditional types of work. He mentioned that $150-$200/hour is not unheard of - and he has had a busy year... My jaw dropped.

I think we as a group really need to reassess our prices if possible.

[dlparisi]

But how many hours at $150-$200? That's the difference IMO.

[RE:FORM_STUDIOS]

Yea, a good traditional artist can produce an amazing perspective in less than a day... try doing that in 3d !

[jujubee]

He was telling me $5k minimum a week. I'm supposed to go have a beer with him this week lol.

[3DMK]

Great to see someone trying to inform clients & the general public about what the industry is about.
From my experience most people including architects, developers, interior designers, etc no nothing about what we do and it has the effect of undervaluing our work. I think that comes from the industry still being young. Traditional graphic design has been around for a long, long time & they get a lot more respect from clients. I have worked on projects where the logo designer gets up to 4-5 times the money the 3D viz gets, yet the 3D viz is 4-5 times more time consuming & complex.... Go figure?? I guess it's just that they value their work more.

I think an area you did not cover in your article that is of the utmost importance is advertising. Everything we do is advertising, unless it's pure design work & even then the principals of advertising need to be taken into account. It's all about selling, whether it's selling to potential buyers, selling a project to council/government or simply selling a design to a client.
Unless the industry can move in this direction & get clients to understand this fact then we will always be judged as an unimportant extra in the process. The better you can sell a product then the more money you are worth. The more our clients understand this then the more they will value us, & the less likely they will be to go the 'cheap & nasty' option.
My best client by far is an advertising agency, as they truly understand the value of 'eye candy' and can get a client to pay what things are really worth.

As a side note I think your article needs to be severely shortened and get to the the point/s more efficiently.
I would also loose the 'I' for 'we' in a lot of cases as it implies that you are a one man show, & even if you are, people want to think you have more than one person working in your company.

Hope this helps & good work for getting more info into the public arena.

[jujubee]

I definitely think it's "too" long. I just can't figure out how to shorten it because I wanted to take into consideration those people that don't have the general concepts down.

However, I do wish more people would post comments directly on that page. Instead, I'm finding comments on 4 other separate forums...

[glyph]

re typos: you have "hard" instead of "heard" and "right" instead of "write" when I looked last week - I didn't read it all so there may be others

I was up against a traditional visualiser a while ago who charges £ 600 for an A3 magic marker sketch he does in around 5 hours (someone knew him personally so knew how long he took) - but if the design changes over the weeks he has to start again whereas in 3d you can modify - so I got that one

but the client still prefers him for most stuff as it gives an "idea" of how it will look rather than a finished view - and then the end client doesn't get bogged down in looking at detail

maybe Piranesi is the answer there

[jujubee]

Thanks glyph - corrections made.

[3DMK]

I would also suggest using the 'SPELL-CHECK' tool on you word processing software. I wouldn't survive without it.

[Sawyer]

When I first started was a local guy here in Sac who worked in traditional pen and watercolor techniques who charged I think +- $200 an image. And I think he was really fast and he could do a few buildings a day. I have seen some of his work and it was "pretty good" I got distracted by a few things (verts weren't straight) but I knew architects who loved his work. At least they loved his price. And for changes he would just "glue" on a new sheet of paper and paint over it.

I usually paid a photographer more than that just to provide a site image.

[jujubee]

Heh. The weird thing is that there is no spell check with Knol. I had to bring it into Word. Of course, it won't catch the difference between "right" and "write."