I’m curious if I was unreasonable or it’s the times we’re live in …
I got recently project to estimate.
Here is what the client wanted: offshore oil platform in the middle of the sea , animation of camera coming from water level (waves on the sea), zooming into the platform , helicopter landing on it and supply ship approaching platform with some 3dimensional logo as cargo on it (total of 30 sec animation).
I estimated it for 785 Euro in total (wanted to be really cheap :). here’s the client answer:
oh btw he said it needs to be realistic
“Ok, thanks for the offer, but got some better offers on my hand thanks anyways!”
yes it was worth much more but I wanted to be price competitive in nowadays 3d market but as we can see there’s now way to win price war anyway ! and there are people who will do it for pennies !
How many hours do you estimate for the animation?
I can do stills for 800$. I can often do stills quite fast, like 1-2 days.
But I can’t imagine doing an animation in under 1 week. I’m not very experienced with animation though. But every time I did one (like 5 times in total), it was so much work, just organizing all the data.
i got a reply to this question for you Luke and you wont like it…
chinese :-/…most probably some HongKong company…i woudl bet a lot of money on this probability
sucks
BTW
did this come from T T?
how did the cooperation go so far?
just got the offer from him to do 10 exteriors monthly for approx 1.500 EUR but it just too low for the amount of work in my opinion
I think this is part of the problem. If everybody is in ‘panic’ mode and gives lower prices just to get the job, the whole of our industry is undermined. Charge what you think it is worth and not a penny less. If we all do that, I think the industry would be in a stronger position. We are never going to compete with the likes of China on price, so it isn’t worth trying. Just offer top quality and give reasons why it is better to use you rather than a Chinese CGI factory.
Guys dont lower ur prices. Just start advertising urselfs better. U only damage urselfs by lowering prices like that. Soon discavery channel will come and ask you to work for less than office cleaning lady…
Keep up ur prices and go get some advertising lessons and managing to get better clients
In principle I agree that you need to hold your value as best you can, but one thing I don’t hear a lot of is respecting the market demand. Rates are a balance of what we think our time is worth, and what the market is willing to pay - regardless of our opinion of the value. My feeling is that sometimes you actually need to lower your rates if you are priced out of the market, and rates are falling for most of our type of services. It is not a temporary blip IMO - and that illusion or misperception can be lethal to your career.
If you do not keep your rates in check with the market you will soon find yourself without any work.
I’m not saying Luke should have taken that job -there are limits of course! - but to say that one should just ‘advertise’ and find better clients is a bit naive. It can be true in a limited way but it’s no magic bullet. I know people who are literally world class artists that do work for the biggest budget clients (multi-national clients and global campaigns) and it is not unusual for them to be working at lower rates these day, sometimes much lower.
I have to agree. Keeping check on costs is something you should do on a regular basis. If you have 5 jobs come in and you don’t get any of them I think you definitely need to lower your costs…even if it is whilst you build up your work. Keeping your costs high because of pride isn’t going to do you any favours and in the scheme of things and I’d rather lower my costs for some jobs to get the money coming in than not because of pride or “lowering the appreciation” of 3d artists. At the end of the day I love my work but I also need to make money. Also, maybe targeting an audience in different areas may be an idea. UK and USA are good places for sure. There is still plenty of work around and I would say payments are still good when compared to some other countries where you might be getting enquires from.
Not entirely true…it would depend on future work from that client. It might be worth stipulating a reduced cost for the first job and then explaining the time taken and future work costs.
it’s all subjective. If you get good and are able to work fast, you might be able to lower your fee. I have learned the software and studies the art. I have good, fast, hardware that I can rely on. I can work twice as fast as I could last year, so if needed, I could lower my fee. The problem you might find is having to work harder to get that next job.
thanks anyways!”
I got same deal I was supposed to do this oilrig and if he like it I would have a “chance” to get those 1500 Eur projects …