Jumping out of the Pool, A changing 3D Economy
One of the first blogs I wrote for Gametextures wasn’t a game overview or texture article of some kind; no, it was about experiencing personal growth through the process of pain and disappointment. Titled something like “How Losing your Job can Lead to Personal Growth”, I detailed my two layoffs from Sony and Warner Brothers at the time and how I handled each one differently. There were a lot of lessons I learned and I shared how internalizing my situations, especially WB, led me to grow as a person and as an artist.
One of my favorite articles that I wrote some time later was called “A Freelancer’s Guide to The Gig Economy”. In it, I described the Gig Economy and my experience with it. It’s been a pretty big factor in my career thus far. I also expanded on what it truly is to be a contractor and how I saw the economy changing and shifting at that time.
With the recent re-launch of the GameTextures blog at least some of the GameTextures customer base being freelancers or members of small independent studios, I felt that a 2019 version of those two articles being mashed together would be appropriate. It’s the start of the new year and a lot has changed for me, the game industry, and the economy.
Everything feels like it’s in a different place.
‘Member! “Follow your heart, Luke”
On the personal front, 2018 was the year that I left the freelance and contract lifestyle (as well as adjunct instructing). In a sense, I laid myself off and closed up shop. I was no longer a game artist for hire.
Why did I do this? My personal experience of the freelance market from the end of 2017 to mid 2018 was telling me that it was time to make a change. If the combination of the your employment market, personal experience, and choice of spirituality feels like it’s pushing you in a certain direction, it’s a feeling that is worth listening to.
There is a really fascinating story (and pretty depressing frankly) that applied to my specific circumstances in 2018. If you’re interested in it, I suggest you head on over to my personal blog.
Keeping sight of guiding principles is a lesson I learned first hand. It’s can be hard to keep the eye on the ball when things are going well, especially when working on a huge contract. It’s important to have a core set of business principles to refer back to. Having these principles allows you to navigate the often choppy waters of working alone and dealing with clients of a mixed variety. It’s the bedrock on which your freelance business is built.
I lost sight of mine, and it led me into some waters I wasn’t prepared for.
I had spent a large portion of 2016 and 2017 doing on-site contracts. This is where a lot of money can be made and, when coupled with awesome locations and projects, is a great way to make a living. When I returned home, I had no game-plan to speak of and was exhausted from the development cycle on Shadow of The Colossus. By not taking stock of my business in an appropriate fashion, by August I was no longer freelancing.
It’s a mistake that everyone should strive to avoid.
How The Business has Changed
My overall failure in 2018 had a lot to do with me, but it also had quite a bit to do with not keeping tabs on the shifts in business from mid 2016 into 2017 and adjusting appropriately. Industries and economies change and 3D artists are as vulnerable to this as others. I was one of a small number of AAA artists going into freelance in 2014. I had worked in house at some name video game studios, contributed remotely to a AAA release, and charged rates that weren’t outrageous. By the time I was back on the market for remote work in late 2017 and 2018, I was expensive. The pool of artists who could create quality work had grown thanks to services like Substance and Quixel, and the work that I could sell myself for at a proper price (world building, art optimization, technical skills in Unreal) usually require an on-site presence.
What’s more, I wasn’t just competing against other freelancers. I was competing against a $25 asset kit. Smaller developers aren’t going to spend money on a world builder unless they REALLY need the help, or have no interest in doing it themselves. And let me tell you…if they don’t want to at least try to help out with these aspects of development, don’t work with them.
Between freelancers in Russia and former Eastern Bloc countries costing a tenth of what a North American freelancer does and the popularity of purchased asset kits today, it’s a brand new and potentially more difficult world to navigate. We’re all racing to the bottom now.
That doesn’t mean I, and you, can’t be successful moving forward.
Future Trends In the Year 2000….
Automation and AI
I foresee the larger business and economic trends that have affected manufacturing and some service industries eventually affecting games, media, and entertainment to varying degrees; namely AI and automation. The good news is that AI is going to take a while before it’s able to really truly populate a game with assets for us that don’t require an artists’ touch, and it’s going to be even longer before it’s able to create a 3D asset from start to finish. AI’s main help to developers is going to be in helping to automate existing processes to take over the mundane, allowing developers to focus on the challenging and new.
For those that are interested, here’s a cool look at where AI will be helpful the most in the near term:
For freelancers in the virtual arts, this means that WE have to get ahead of this and start finding ways to automate our workflows. Substance is one easy to point out tool. Between free assets on Share, quality materials here at GameTextures, and our own personal creations, Substance (when done right) makes texturing a breeze. I struggle with letting go of having ownership of the entire process, but in 2018 and beyond, it’s almost more important for artists to have a broader view of how their final asset will look rather than if the wood material is crafted by hand. In short, for personal work, make the Substance yourself. For professional work, use a service provider (like GameTextures!)
Along the same lines, Houdini is making strides in being able to automate things like good LOD creation, modular kit building, and FX work. I’m not the resident Houdini expert at GameTextures, but I’ve seen that, with just a bit of work, you can create modular sets and LOD’s in half the time it would take by hand.
Don’t forget that Unreal features a large number of little automation tweaks as well, from LODs to Light Map UV’s and even creating HLODs and Impostors. If you’re working on an Unreal Engine game for a client, try to keep as much of this work as possible in the engine. It’ll make life better for both of you.
The main takeaway is to reduce the amount of work you need to do so you can move from client to client faster, or so that you can ‘stack clients’ easier without working yourself into the grave.
VR and AR will stay small-ish, but will require more freelancers.
VR and AR (VR especially) have not seen the big adoption uptick that many of us were hoping for. VR paid my bills in 2016 and it helped…sort of…in 2018. There is no shortage of VR games and AR applications that are in development right now, and many of them are going to need our help.
The problem though, is that many games that are made for VR and AR just don’t make any money.
I believe that freelancers who want to work in VR/AR need to focus on securing corporate type gigs. They will likely be a form of sub-contracting, where you work for a company who has been hired by a large corporation like Proctor&Gamble or General Electric. If you’re lucky, you could be hired directly to work on a proof of concept. Either way, corporate VR and AR is where the money for freelancers happens to be. Proper VR Game Studios in this segment generally don’t pay market rates (unless they are being funded with outside money). I don’t think this will change for a few more years, so until then follow the money.
Prepare to be on-site unless you are a f*uckin’ rockstar.
This is what I observed first hand and I think it’s going to continue to be the case. If you aren’t a rockstar who’s at the top of their field in your chosen discipline with lightning fast internet and some serious hardware, you will need to be on-site for most high end contract positions. With outsourcing to work for hire studios being prevalent in AAA and mid size teams making use of pre-made assets on a more regular basis, artists are being hired to assemble the game more than make singular trees and plants. If you make guns, vehicles, and characters, you have a somewhat better shot at working remotely. If you are an environment artist or some sort of designer though, you should be prepared to move around.
I’ve heard of a studio or two shipping a dev kit to a remote contractor a time or two, but those are usually extremely trusted individuals with a history at these studios. Additionally, that’s a HUGE risk by the studio, because devkits are quite expensive.
Moves I should have done that You can do Now
Just because I didn’t make the proper moves in 2017 doesn’t mean that you can’t in 2019. I firmly believe that there are key aspects to freelancing today that almost every freelancer needs to have a grasp of to succeed in this current climate. The following list is what I should have done looking back at the end of 2017 to early 2018 to update my business.
- Focus on diversifying income streams via Asset Kits, Paid Mentorships, Paid Tutorials, and more. I talked about the bucket theory in my 2016 article (multiple income streams and side gigs) and I stand by that today. Online Store fronts are but one set of buckets, but they are an ever more important set of buckets today. Every major site that a 3D artist uses in 2019 likely has some sort of a marketplace for you to sell content. Take advantage of it. The middle and low end of the freelance market is always at risk when it comes to competing against pre-made assets. As a freelancer, you have to find ways to make up the difference and selling assets, tutorials, and mentorships (if you are qualified) through sites like ArtStation, SketchFab, TurboSquid, and the Unreal and Unity asset stores will help make up the difference. If you’re skilled, or offer unique products, you may just become one of the artists who goes full time into making kits. While I am not much for streaming or making YouTube videos currently, it can also function as a secondary income source via ad revenue or paid subscriptions through a site like Patreon. There’s 100 ways to skin a cat when it comes to income streams today and if you have the bandwidth to take advantage of all of them, I say do it.
- Develop Multiple Visual Styles. I have a preference, and dare I say reliance, on realistic visuals. I prefer to work in two lanes: Photo-real (Call of Duty) and Hyper-Real (Uncharted). I have a visual look and style to my work that fits those two motifs, and I’ve gotten to work on cool games because of it. Unfortunately, I missed out on at least one (and likely more) remote, long term, paid contracts because of my reliance on that small set of styles. Even one of my long time clients often had work that I wasn’t suited for because of my “stay in my lane, do what I like” mindset. The lesson I’ve since learned is that you need to generalize these visual styles as a freelancer so that you can be ready to take those stylized (or realistic) projects as they come up. More and more artists are making realistic pieces BECAUSE of Quixel or Substance. This means it’s even harder to stand out. Trained AAA eyes will notice the difference more often than not, but the less experienced won’t. Unless you have a lengthy resume of AAA games and indie darlings, you have to find a way to stand out from the crowd.
- Look at where you are as a business and decide to cut costs or invest. I had a few months at the end of 2017 where I could have chosen to cut my costs a little and shift to free or cheap versions of my primary software. I had 3 classes at Drexel and a fairly light contracting load. 3D freelancers seem to have tight margins (maybe that’s just myself and my friends). A few hundred dollars in savings is a big deal. I missed the opportunity to cut my costs in 2017 and needed a full year before I chose to move from Maya to Blender (2.8) for my future paid work. In the same vein, if you are using old hardware that’s slowing you down or need to purchase software to speed up or maintain your work speed, do so. Business investment is important and if I didn’t make the jump in 2014 to overhaul my workstation (it’s still doing OK today) I would have failed as a freelancer. Maya LT came out at the right time for me too, as it was a huge upgrade in UV workflows over what I had before (Maya 2012 or so) and was a fraction of the cost of ‘big boy Maya’. 2014 was an expensive business year, but one that was well worth it.
- Up the social game. It’s vital that freelancers be on almost every platform imaginable. At the least, you must be on Artstation, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I also highly suggest Twitter. From there, Upwork and it’s ilk are not bad ideas. Upwork was formerly a race to the bottom platform but, like I stated earlier, that’s become the general motif in this segment of the industry. Get on these platforms and be as visible as possible. A big mistake of mine was waiting until the end of 2018 to join Instagram. Within a few weeks, I had sold an old material to a customer without even trying.
Parting Words
Freelancing is hard, and I miss it. The feeling of self reliance, the freedom to schedule your work around your life, and the variety of projects are some of the best parts of the freelance life style. You are truly in control. My new work has its perks, like super cheap (and good) health care and a predictable pay check but the freedom and ownership I had before is gone.
Everything I mentioned in this article is something that I will be working to incorporate, and you should consider it as well. With prices for our labor on the decline, we’ll have to find ways to combine a volume of projects with alternative income streams to really thrive in 2019 and beyond. Leveraging existing services (GameTextures) with automation will allow freelance 3D artists to have the option to do that. All of us, active or dormant, have a lot of work to do in order to prepare for the future that I see.
Like most things, a little spit, elbow grease, sweat, and innovative thinking can handle what’s next.
