Freelancers, is the Industry picking up or not? (non-archviz)

[Morne]

Hi all

So with the downturn we've all seen from around 2007, 2008, have you found that this year the insdustry is picking up a bit?
I'm talking in general about 3D for advertising, print, tv commercials, game cinematics etc.

What you think?
(if you're in archviz, feel free to also share your views of your industry)

[andybot_cg]

Seems to vary significantly from location to location (which is why freelancer websites are good economics, as they can efficiently - sometimes too efficiently - distribute work from places of plenty to places in need.) My neck of the woods has always been somewhat better than average, but I've definitely noticed an uptick since about last summer. Wish I knew where it was going.

Andy

[AJ Jefferies]

We're not freelancers but we are a very small studio (there's 2 of us) so we're not far off

Like a lot of people, we had a big slump in 2008. This was mostly due to any arch viz work that came our way completely disappearing & this had made up about 40% of our turnover so it was a big slap in the face. Fortunately, the rest of our work (advertising/editorial...etc.) was there to support us & we also noticed a lot of ad agencies were worried about the downturn & pushing their clients for spend more on advertising. This worked out really well for us & within the year we'd replaced any & all arch viz work with advertising/retouching projects.

In the last 3 years things have been insane - it's not been unusual for us to be booked solid up to 2 months in advance with advertising work & on top of that, arch viz work has started to come back in. That said the poor year we had in 2008 was a real kick up the arse & we're constantly checking ourselves to make sure that we're never complacent or overly dependant on one source for work - be it agency or discipline.

So yes, things are very good at the moment.

(Of course, the minute I submit this post, Fate is going to start cackling, my hands will fall off & our studio will burst into flames)

[Morne]

I had a quick look at your website. Your stuff looks awesome. For animations, do you have your own renderfarm or do you use one of those 3rd party places?

[AJ Jefferies]

Thanks!

We usually work it so frames get rendered across our network overnight - but on a few occasions we've used Rebus to save our backside!