Hello,
I have had a huge issue for looking for 3D Animators for hobby projects.
Everywhere I look, they always want to be paid. Last project, I ended up shelling out $4K.It was a nightmare, and that was just a mod.
Has anyone else come across this bottle neck?
Any theories?
I personally think they cant be as creative as regular artists, because they have to figure out how things move in a natural way.
This seems to be the main skill that most people refuse to do for hobby.
What yall think?
GeneralJist said:
Has anyone else come across this bottle neck?
All the game students at my university have the same problem when working on their final projects.
GeneralJist said:
Any theories?
Here's a theory: people don't want to work for free. Just think about it: would you work for free, for someone else?
The thing is: if they're going to be working for free anyway, why not work on their own hobby project instead of yours? That's what you're doing right now, right? Working for free on your own project. So does everyone else, on their own hobbies and projects.
So, if you want to get someone to work on your project for free, you should look for someone who shares your hobby, so that your hobby project becomes their hobby project as well. That's pretty much the only way to get someone to work for free. Either that, or find someone who doesn't value their work, but in that case there's a greater chance of their work really not being valuable.
P.S. saying things that sound like “I can't believe people want to be paid in order to work for me” may come across as insulting to those people. You may want to be careful about that.
I am not sure about your project size etc, but for my indie project I found a lot of cool animations here: https://www.mixamo.com/
That definitely will not work for everyone, but if it is very casual or if you don't want to spend money…
I think I understand the issue @generaljist. For some reason we programmers put loads of time into open source projects. I don't know about you guys, but I just tend to help out with small projects, more - if someone needs a hand, it's just me putting a little time into teaching them or perhaps writing something for them.
I don't know why it has to be like this - but I do think it could be due to the field being much more competitive. I think there are many artists, and/or the demand or pay isn't quite as high as it is for experienced programmers. It's also somewhat more subjective than programming, which could make it tougher to “help out” without getting into a fight about the creative direction.
Is this what you were going for? It could explain your problem, just not solve it...
Your c&c moddb project got models created by hobbyist modelers, right?
Perhaps a demo reel of the project to flash what it does could attract someone to work on it for free/profit share?
I bought a lot of animations from here:
There are many other places like this. You can also get them directly for UE or Unity directly. I don't know what you are looking for, but there are tons of animations out there.
1024 said:
Here's a theory: people don't want to work for free. Just think about it: would you work for free, for someone else?
yes I would and I have. I've come across a lot of people with a range of skill levels that also are willing to work for free.
of course its better to be paid than not paid, but most hobby projects aren't able to shell out the funds to anyone. IDK your skill level and your employment status, but if your a professional game dev, I'd understand your point of view.
Games is a field built on passion.
just because you want to to be paid, doesn't mean your good enough to be paid.
Refusing to do something simply because it doesn't pay is a foolish way to live a life.
SuperVGA said:
Your c&c moddb project got models created by hobbyist modelers, right? Perhaps a demo reel of the project to flash what it does could attract someone to work on it for free/profit share?
yes, all the models were made for free.
For animations, I had to shell out 3K to 2 animators, and then 1k to a new animator to redo work that wasn't done correctly. Managing that one guy that didn't follow instructions was one hell of an issue.
That project is largely done and we are doing indie stuff now.
Profit share is not possible with a mod because there is no way of getting profit.
GeneralJist said:
to a new animator to redo work that wasn't done correctly
This is also a matter of contracts and law. Getting a freelancer to do stuff should always be covered by an appropriate contract so if work isn't done properly, they won't be payed. There are several forms of such a contract, milestone based for example or a contract which defines in detail what has to be done. Freelancing and remote work is most of the time a matter of sieving out those people that just want to scam you
SuperVGA said:
I don't know why it has to be like this
Maybe it is also amatter of the content. Art and Animations are content which won't change over time or on a different game/engine. It is done once to get certain result and you can reuse it in whatever game you like. Open source software on the other hand is fixed to a target pipeline, a target platform and a target problem. You need to know what you are doing to build, use and change it to your needs which isn't the case in Art. So copy pasting Art is more likely working than copy pasting code
