Pixelation
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: AzKai on June 21, 2013, 03:52:17 am
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Hi everyone!
Someone approached me today and asked if I would be interested in doing paid sprite work for them! :O Floored as I am, I really don't know where to start and there's a few things I need to find out.
- I have 2 years of personal experience, no "field" experience yet. I've never taken a real, paid gig. How much should I charge? Do I charge a flat rate or by the hour?
- How do people expect things to be delievered!? If I am doing tiles... do real games use chipsets, or...? I've done stuff for myself but I don't know how to even start delivering tiles or sprites for games developed on the iOS or Android.
- If the person asking to hire me isn't based in the US, will a contract still hold up? Do you usually ask for 30% or an amount up front? (I always do with my web work.) Does anyone have a template contract I could have or build off of?
- Is there an easy way to tell if someone is trying to scam you? Does that usually happen a lot in the pixel art world?
This person wants me to get back to them so if anyone has any answers that would be greatly appreciated!
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Im doing some work for a couple people right now and Ive found that they all want theyre stuff formatted differently. So just ask them how that want theyre stuff arranged. Some people are super specific about how they want it, others arent.
For payment probably best to discuss with the other person and come to an argreement on whether youre payed per asset, all at once, per hour or whatever. But try to figure out what kind of rate you would be willing to accept first.
I like to send a sample image first, which is the finished imaged but with blur and noise added. Then once they send the payment I send them the actual file.
When I do commissioned work I started logging in th exact time I spend on all the work. Because people always like to ask how long you think certain work is going to take, and I had no idea how long I spend on stuff until I actually started keeping track of it. This helped me figure out what kind of rates to take too.
Sorry I dont know about any of that other stuff though, I just started doing payed work recently myself.
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Thank you for the advice! :D
Do you use a specific program to log the time you take on certain pieces? I need to start doing that. I told the guy I'd charge $15 per hour, since I heard that was a good 'entry' / 'student' rate. I think it scared him off, though. >.> Either way, I also don't know how long it might take to do a certain piece, so I need to find a program to log my time and start making averages.
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I just log the times in a text document. 15/hour sounds reasonable. Maybe some people are scared off by /hour pay because they dont know how long it will take you, and a per assett rate it the same no matter whose doing it. Theres probably alot of people here better suited to help you, but I just noticed no one else was replying.
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Would people just trust the #hours you mentioned, or would they instead insist on their contractant to use tools like http://procrastitracker.com/ ?
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estimating how long a job will take you is key for a freelancer, and unless you find someone that brings you inhouse you'll be a freelancer for a good while. I would reccomend assigning a price per hour, then estimating how long you think the job will take you and charge that, this way you build on your skill to estimate how long things take you.
Then track yourself and see how much you actually took, ask for more payment if the client was very satisfied, otherwise adjust for next time.