Freelancing Tech Art Part-Time: A Few Dos and Don'ts

[Music] thank you Tech art is absolutely booming right now everybody needs them there aren't enough to go around all you have to do is look at basically any job page for basically any studio and you'll find probably one or more open Tech art positions this is a great opportunity for those of us who already do this full-time to also Branch out into Consulting freelance work I've been doing exactly that for the last few years and in the next 20 or so minutes I'm going to kind of share with you some of the mistakes I made some of the pitfalls I found so maybe if you're interested in this as well you can avoid those uh who am I I am the senior Tech artist at Street height studios I've been in the industry for about eight years now I've worked on things like those

um but more pertinent to this talk back at the tail end of 2019 I started freelancing and Consulting as technically games and in that time I have worked on things like that but I'll get to that later uh so why would you even want to do this right you're already doing it full time during the day why would you also want to fill your free time with tech art well for me there's three main reasons one like I said the demand is absolutely booming right now in prep for this talk I checked the job pages of EA Ubisoft and Activision and between those three there were over 400 open Tech art or Tech art related positions and if you've been in any sort of position to hire a tech art a tech artist lately you've probably seen the shortage firsthand two uh it can be really lucrative Tech art is obviously a technical skill and you can charge like it now when you're doing this part time like I'm doing

you're probably not going to retire to the Caribbean you're probably not going to buy a yacht but you might be able to buy a car or go on a vacation pay off some student loans and three it can just be plain fun you get to work with people you would never be able to you get to work on really cool projects you get to expand your skill set into areas that maybe your day job would never have you see so let me show you some of my numbers um so you kind of get a sense of what I'm talking about when I started this back at the tail end of 2019 I had one contract it just kind of fell into my lap made a little over 500 dollars but it kind of broke me out of a creative rut right I did a cool thing it was fun I decided hey if something comes along I'll probably keep doing this then 2022 came along and I went from commuting for an hour and a half every day to sitting in my office for 16 hours

a day a few other contracts came along two at the beginning of the year one at the end of the year and uh made a little over three thousand dollars with that last contract especially I really found that I was kind of getting into it I really started to enjoy myself I incorporated as technically games and I decided that in 2021 I really wanted to hit the ground running last year I took on 15 contracts between January and September I made a little over twenty thousand dollars I really started to get the hang of it I really started to learn how to work with clients I started to learn what I like to do what I don't like to do how to find contracts all of that kind of stuff I got really burnt out at the end of the year and I'll go over that later I actually took October through December completely off um it was not it was not great and like

I said because I'm only doing this part time it's not I mean I'm not going to retire off of that I'm not going to quit my day job but it did help me pay down some student loans and for a down payment on a house so so you're sitting there and you're like okay this sounds interesting when do I start there's a first a few things you really need to do before you start number one always check your non-compete with your employer a lot of studios and Publishers don't allow Moonlighting whatsoever always check your employer agreement for this kind of stuff if you have any doubts about whether or not you can do this kind of stuff always talk to your lead or always talk to HR I've found that these employee agreements for the Moonlighting Clauses are always really vague and Broad they say things like you can't compete with our business interests but what does that really mean does that mean you can't work on video games you can't work

in specific genres or specific demographics and if you work at a place like say EA who makes games for everybody in every genre for every demographic that can be really limiting so you really want to make sure the last thing you want to do though is be sneaky don't try to find the gray areas don't try to find where you can kind of slip in between the cracks that can really play you in legal trouble but it can also really put your clients in legal trouble I think kind of John Carmack with oculus right um and if you are looking at a new place of employment always include this in your negotiations some places will be really strict about their non-complete their non-compete some places you might be able to redline the non-compete or better yet go to a place that doesn't have one in the first place so once you have that out of the way you know you can do this stuff you really need to lay some groundwork first the

very first thing you need to do the very first thing I wish I would have done is to form an LLC an LLC basically is just a corporate entity that you work under that protects your private assets so if somebody decides to sue you they have to sue your business they don't sue you personally if they want to get to your money your assets they have to go after the company's assets they can't go after your personal stuff really important you're going to want to make a separate bank account you do not want your invoices from your clients going where your W-2 income comes from that just muddies the water it can really introduce doubt if somebody decides to sue you so you really want to keep these things separate additionally that really helps with taxes makes taxes a lot easier when everything's in one place it really helps with expenses as well you know that basically everything that's coming out of the account is probably an

expense because you need to get an accountant an accountant will help you with expenses I really wish I would have done this sooner I only did it about six months ago um Tech art is already pretty stressful it's a really big subject you don't want to compound that by also having to learn tax law and in the U.S there's this thing called estimated quarterly taxes and it doesn't make any sense so please hire somebody to do this for you whose job it is to do this for you it's money well spent I promise you you're also really going to want to pay uh figure out your payment processing sooner rather than later this is kind of a really big subject but for me I never accept Paypal anymore they're kind of shady right and I also don't accept credit card payments anymore basically all of the payment processing websites or whomever out there they will charge a three percent to five percent

fee on all credit card transactions so when your contracts are a little smaller maybe that's that's not much but once your contracts get to a certain size that's a car payment right so now I only take ech or wire transfers usually there is also a fee on this as well but they're almost always capped at something like five dollars so it's much more manageable um okay so we have all the boring stuff out of the way now there's a little bit less boring stuff but still kind of boring stuff you want to make a list of things that you actually want to do get it out on paper prioritize a list you want to do rigging do you want to do tools you want to do Shader work get it out on a list so you can see it whenever you're talking to a client and probably more importantly make a list of things you absolutely don't want to do because when a client comes to you and they're waiving a big paycheck in your face with something you don't want to do you want

to have that list in front of you to remind you why you don't want to do it for instance I don't do any contracts that involve Unity anymore and I don't do shaders I did a contract that involves shaders I'll kind of talk about that later it wasn't good I'm terrible at it I don't really enjoy it it was bad um unfortunately I think social media is kind of required at least to start with probably half of my clients have come from just seeing random Twitter posts it's unfortunate but I feel like it's kind of necessary design and invoice make it professional make it easy to read and if you can um design a logo for better yet hire somebody to design a logo for you and going back to those expenses logos are expensible which is very nice when you first start out you really want to brush up your portfolio when you're real especially I've found as the more

Junior you are you really want to have a rock solid reel this gets a lot less important as time goes on once your kind of word of mouth starts to grow with your clients and among their networks you don't have to pay so much attention to this but you know it's probably always good to have okay so all that's out of the way you're ready to do the thing before you start the thing always charge for art tests I know this is a very controversial subject for some people I think we should just do it as an industry if you're asking somebody to spend their time you should compensate them for it um but especially more so in this case remember that you are not a candidate for a job you are a company they are one of your clients a potential client if they need you to do an art test you should charge them for it I usually charge a flat fee to make it a lot easier on everybody but still you should do this

and be really Discerning about your clients do your homework check Glassdoor that can be a really good option talk to people who currently work there that you trust talk to people who don't work there anymore see why they left all that kind of stuff the way a company treats their internal employees will be magnified with how they treat their external contractors bad clients are always worse than no clients remember you're doing this in your free time and yes this is still a job it's not always going to be awesome but you don't want to compound that by working with bad people so setting your rates could probably be a talk all in and of itself but just a few tips for doing this charged like an engineer we were actually just talking about this at lunch Tech artists A lot of times kind of pigeonhole themselves into well I'm just an artist right no you're doing a

highly technical job you should charge like an engineer so my tip whenever you're first starting to get your rate like in line just add 50 to it doesn't matter what it is just add 50 if a client can't pay it they'll tell you but a lot of clients will do it um your rate also doesn't need to be static you don't have to set a rate and then that's your rate for the rest of the year or whatever you can probably charge a bigger Studio or a publisher your full rate because they can afford it but if you're working with some Little Indie outfit maybe a solo Dad working on a passion project you know don't undercut yourself but still be cognizant of their resources set your rate accordingly there's three main variables I take into account whenever I'm setting my rate for a particular contract one the enjoyment of the job how much do I think I'm actually going to enjoy doing it to the time frame in which they need it done do they need it done in a month do

they need it done in a week that's really important and three again the client resources is it some person in their basement or is it you know a multinational corporation but for me what I always do I always prioritize enjoyment over the other two again you're doing this in your free time you want to enjoy yourself if you have a bad client who's going to pay you a lot of money or a good client who's probably not going to pay you as much money for me I will always choose the latter every single day of the week life is way too short not to enjoy yourself and let's all be honest we're in like 2020 part three right you need to enjoy yourself especially in your free time even if you're doing work uh get to know your client in the kickoff you'll probably usually have a Discord meeting or a zoom meeting or something like that just get to know who they are you don't have to be friends with them necessarily but you want to

know their idiosyncrasies are they gregarious are they a straight shooter all of that kind of stuff will really help you when you're talking to them throughout the contract this isn't always applicable though if you're just working with like the outsourced manager that's probably just going to be a bunch of cold emails back and forth don't sweat it it's not a big deal so I've only been doing this for a while that's why the question mark is there because these best practices are probably going to change as I keep doing this I do not have the definitive answers of how best to do this I still make a lot of mistakes but these are some of the things that have really helped me you want to really stretch yourself right Tech art is huge if you ask 10 different Tech artists what tech art is nine of them will give you a different answer and then that one guy is going to try to convert you to blender don't be that one guy you really want to stretch your

abilities and open up your wheelhouse um your day job is probably going to see you do a certain set of things probably over and over this is your chance to really do that thing you've always wanted to do but never had a chance to do you want to know your limitations certainly you want to be honest with yourself about your limitations also don't be overconfident though like I was um so one of my first contracts was doing a bunch of Shader work like I said earlier um I thought hey this seems pretty easy there's a lot of resources out there that will really help jump star me into it I set my time range my time frame based on what I thought it was going to take instead of actual real data don't do that always set always do your research before you accept the contract it turned out that I was not good at shaders not near as good as I thought I was and I ended up spending twice the

hours but in the same amount of calendar days so I just crunched for a month it was brutal don't ballpark your hours based on what you think it's going to take really get the data beforehand so working with multiple clients that all have different proprietary plugins and modules can get really overwhelming so to manage this I always set up environments for every single contract because the last thing you want is for say client X's custom deformer module to get into client wise scene file that would be really bad and especially bad if that stuff got into your employer's files that would be really bad so what I do is actually pretty simple I just create like a bat file that just shuffles around all my modules and scripts and I just double click on it before I start some client work it removes everything it brings everything in so there's no chance of

that kind of intermingling it doesn't have to be complex this doesn't have to be some like huge bad script some of my bad scripts are literally like three lines just don't overthink it uh get perforce definitely always I mean I'm sure everybody in here knows this version control is absolutely crucial and especially perforce I don't know some people love git um just use perforce um it's it's free for under five users and you are obviously under five users super quick to set up a repo it's been invaluable for me especially when you open that one file and Maya corrupts it for like the tenth time in a week you really want to be able to roll back so this one sounds like a huge no-brainer right you just need to know your ndas and it probably is a no-brainer but I don't have common sense apparently um about a year ago I disclosed some

confidential information in a public setting I checked my own NDA first and I was totally in the clear but oops a few frantic messages later I learned that I had not broken my NDA with my client but I had broken my clients NDA with their client can get really tricky just because it's not in your NDA doesn't mean you're free to talk about it especially if you are a subcontractor this can get really tricky as that rabbit hole kind of goes deeper so now I just don't talk about anything and that's the the slides at the beginning it can be kind of a bummer right because you're doing a lot of cool stuff and you really want to talk about it just don't talk about it if you have to in order to kind of land that next contract be really vague say what you need to in order to prove that you know what you're talking about but never go into any sort

of specifics just again kind of Common Sense stuff uh Tech art can definitely be mentally exhausting at the best of times once you start filling your free time with it burnout is almost inevitable but there's a lot of things you can do to mitigate this just always remember that this is your business it's not a grind it's not a hustle you want longevity so you really need to take care of your mental health here you need to set boundaries with your clients and with yourself about the amount of time you're going to spend and you need to be really firm about it for me I limit it to 15 to 20 hours a week at Max excuse me um if a client needs more of your time than that turn them away it can be brutal at times especially when it's something you really want to work on but if they need you for 30 or 40 hours a week don't do it it's not worth it there will always be more

clients like I said about the huge Tech artist shortage right now everybody is looking for a tech artist I promise you there are more clients out there and document your hours for every contract even if the contract is on a per deliverable basis I'm going to go into this later um but time estimates a valid um good time estimate is so crucial and then on the back end always add 15 to all of your time estimates I call this my Maya crash padding I love my I really do but it crashes so much um you you can just never kind of expect what's going to happen right they're going to want something in an older version of unreal and you have to download that and you didn't think you were going to have to a Maya file will not open for whatever reason you just need that extra padding um finally keep your work life and your

freelancer life separate and this is especially important now in this world of work from home when your work work and your freelance work is right in front of your face at all times of day your employer is paying you for your 40 hours a week so honor that don't double dip don't do two things at once it's kind of unfair to your fellow workers you really want to set boundaries with your clients right out of the gate about communication and how much they get of you for instance I'll email during the day because it's usually pretty quick but I will stay away from slack because it can be a huge time sink and obviously I'll never get on meetings like Zoom calls or something during the day because those can be a huge time sink there will come a time there will absolutely come a time when your client will expect and demand you to do work throughout the day the correct answer to this is always no

um they'll push you but you really need to stand firm on this it's really important if you can try to create I know this isn't doable for everybody but try to create a different physical environment for your day job and your freelancing work so maybe your office is during the day and then the couch is at night with your laptop or something like that or it can be even simpler than that maybe move some potted plants around maybe change the color of the lights just anything to further that delineation between those two environments so looking long term like I said um I burned out really hard at the end of uh last year I took October November and December off I think some of the things I could have done to avoid that were to mix it up more mix up the work you're doing remember that one of the reasons you're doing this is for fun and

that's not to say it's always going to be fun but going back to prioritizing enjoyment between contracts is when you really can reassess this and do it actively seek out clients that need something different than your last client the first three contracts I took on all heavily involved skinning I was also doing skinning in my day job I got really burned out so the next contract I decided to do shaders which didn't turn out so well but I think the thought was there really take your time finding the right client that's for you again there's always going to be more clients you don't have to take every single job that walks through the door if they need you for something that doesn't sound particularly interesting look for another one or if it's something that you just did look for another one this is really a good time to reevaluate that list that you made at the beginning and kind of Shuffle it around get a new number one and new number two really kind of reassess yourself after every

contract coming back to time estimates I think this is probably the most important way to avoid burnout um you really need to keep track down to the minute if you can of how long different things take you so your time estimates can be more and more accurate as time goes on one of the like once you have these numbers absolutely stick to them so what I did was actually just make a little a little python tool that I can just say like I am working on a biped and I'm doing skinning and it'll keep my times and it'll export all of that to an Excel file and then I can filter that Excel file I can tell exactly how long the skinning a biped will take me I can tell exactly how long right in a new tool will take me and that just helps further along when you're going to that next client really keeping your time in track and then add that 15 percent

aggregate this data from one client to the next as well again you're just trying to get to that convergence right you're trying to get to a very specific number of how long it'll take you that's not to say that every biped will take you the same amount of time but it's an estimate and you need to get it better annotate it like I said if you can um it's going to take a different amount of time to work on a biped skin than a quadruped skin so you just need that data again and finally probably most importantly you really need to take time off remember that this is your business and I know every business how-to book and just kind of capitalism at large tells us that if you're not growing your business you're shrinking but that's just not true in this case it can really feel good to make more money in the last year it can really feel good to have

more clients than last year but it's not the end-all be-all what I found this year is that when I was doing all this work I wasn't really enjoying the reward I was getting all this these invoices in and I wasn't using it for anything I was just kind of sitting on it like a dragon I wasn't going on any vacations um so what was the point you really need to take time off in order to enjoy the fruits of your labor and I've said it plenty of times already but there will be more clients if you need a break this isn't your day job you're not dependent upon this to pay rent or anything like that if you need a break take a break if you can feel yourself getting burned out take a break even if it's just a few weeks even if it's a month or in my case it was three months you have to look out for yourself if you want to do this long term life is really short and time is really precious and I promise you you are not

going to regret spending that extra time with your family or your dog or doing that hobby you love instead of working on that client project um so hopefully I kind of uh gave you a little bit of sense of if you want to do this as well kind of some of the things you should avoid some of the things you should do right out of the gate that I didn't do yeah thanks and I think we have like two minutes for questions yeah so uh I was wondering like um you know you talked about like ndas how do you like starting out how do you build a portfolio to really show that

you can do these things for your clients right um again I think it just goes back to the real you don't want to uh you don't want to kind of advertise yourself as doing something you're not good at so if you have a really good rigging reel or something like that go after those contracts in particular um but really I think it also comes down to just being on social media unfortunately especially to start out with that's where I found most of my starting clients just right they'll post something on Twitter and then you'll message them and then you'll talk for a little bit you just have to have that real up to date so when something does come along you can kind of jump on it sweet thank you hi a great talk um I'm just wondering where you find the work you mentioned social media is about half of your work um so where do you find the work and

second question what do you think of freelancer platforms I find most of that social media work on Twitter gamedev Twitter is Bonkers right everybody is on Twitter in this industry that's kind of where I found all of that I've never used any sort of freelancer platforms for anything like that I've been really fortunate in that the word of mouth has been really good so the other half of my clients are all from Word of Mouth so I can can't really answer that I guess perfect thanks Hey Taylor hey um okay I had a quick question about when you take your breaks like in this case you took like a three-month break I'm assuming you're going to jump back into it how do you make that transition from like not working on stuff not talking to clients to just jumping back into working with clients um I'll tell you when I find out um most of this year as well has been on other things uh just bought a house and

all that kind of stuff so um I've again I've been really fortunate in that a lot of my clients are still asking like Hey whenever you're available we have work for you um but I think going forward I can actually start to I've never really advertised myself before on Twitter or any other Forum I think that's something that I'll start to do actually actively look for clients okay thank you hey dude nice to talk um could you tell us a little bit more about the kinds of work that you're doing is it like hey rigged five characters skin five characters make 10 materials or something like that or is it a more broad like hey we need you to help out for a month yeah it's kind of both honestly um what I've found is that skinning in particular everybody needs somebody to do skins for them nobody really wants to do it right so quite a few of my contracts have just been hey we have 12

characters and we need you to skin them and turn them in when they're done um but then there are others where it's like hey we have this big project we need you for two months just do whatever the art director says kind of deal um which can be a double-edged sword because you can get put on tasks that you don't particularly want to do and maybe you're not even good at but again that just goes back to the communication you need to get to know the client in that kickoff meeting what they actually need try to discern what they actually need instead of what they say they need because those things are never the same um but yeah you just kind of have to work that out as it goes along cool thanks to be our last hi thank you for the talk by the way so how do you go about trying new things or like new skills to like build up your skill set especially when you talked about shaders versus rigging

um like do you do it between clients or like even when you're working a day job and doing this like how do you find the time to do that usually it's between clients yes um or again if you've done something for a client and that might be relevant to your next client talk about it but be really vague about what you worked on maybe I worked on this particular system but don't go into the specifics of it um yeah thank you good thanks [Applause] [Music]