Freelancers, where and how do you find work in general

[Morne]

Hi all freelancers

It is no problem to do the actual work, but where and how do you find it in the 1st place? Do you approach for example the marketing department of big corporates directly, or do you appraoch other 3D studios and see if they have stuff they want to outsource, or both? Or perhaps approach advertising agencies? Don't these advertising agencies have their own inhouse 3D people, or is it always subcontracted?
Or do you skip both these approaches and just post on forums, and hope some1 will contact you?

[andybot_cg]

Hey Morne,

I've had discussions with other freelancers about this - basically imo cold calls to large agencies work approximately 0% of the time. The bulk of my work is through networking/ references, and doing proposals on freelancer websites. I get the occasional referral from someone visiting my website. I also diversify, as I do some drafting work as well, which is pretty exclusively with local clients.
Hope that's helpful.

Andy

[Morne]

doing proposals on freelancer websites

What do you mean? Just create a personal project and post it in a freelancer site, or you mean a freelancer site puts out a request for proposal, and you do work on risk and hope they choose yours?
How does it work?

[andybot_cg]

Employers with projects post details and request for a proposal. Freelancers can bid on the project (only the project owner sees the bids) then one freelancer is picked based on price and reputation (there is a rating system based on projects completed.) I had looked at sites that you can do work on risk, but quickly ruled that out.

[glyph]

I was the in house person (though not exclusively for 3d) at a big London agency - 7 years ago now - after a while there was zero 3d so I did a load of other stuff.
This was for web and cd stuff - not TV.
Most agencies will outsource unless they have an all rounder who does lots of other things.. and that means the all rounder is not as good as the hot guys in town.
No way would any do TV CGI in house