The race to the bottom, regardless of country does no one any good (former bizdev)

[munlyleong]

Hey guys,

 

Earlier, closer to the middle of the year I tried out doing some bizdev for an archviz company that was closer to low-mid tier. Pricing was in the hundreds for an image and frankly, my boss at the time was willing to go even lower and was never really comfortable with me trying to swim to the upper end of the market instead.

 

I ended up meeting and talking with a lot of developers (as was the job) and was even fortunate enough to sit in with a bunch of them when they were budgeting out development costs. Archviz costs by far are the lowest thing in their budget especially if you are in the 3 figure range. These guys are spending at least in the thousands or tens of thousands at a *minimum* on each line item but I'm sure that's not news to a bunch of you that have been in the business for awhile. No, the *REAL* common denominator was how dismissive just about all of them were towards archviz renderings, just about all of them knew and were used to paying for about that price range and because the expense was so low to them you could hear how little they respected the profession and as an expense because of the low rates. The fundamental thing I'm talking about here is lack of respect because of bottom dollar rates at places like odesk etc.

 

For the firms that are charging 5-6 figure rates. Good for you, but the tidal wave of international freelancers and what have you that are all eager to race to the bottom, you guys are probably getting swallowed up by that sea. Not enough of you guys think about the hundreds if not thousands of hours you have to invest in learning this craft and pricing accordingly for it while everyone else in profession, be it architects, structural engineers etc do and basically value themselves as real professionals.

 

By the way, my background is more in game development on the programming/game design side and was exploring this as a bootstrap option for my own projects. I have some minor modelling and animation skills too, enough to know how much effort it can take but mostly just enough to be able to communicate to artists and also got into all this for love of the craft and imagery. At this point I won't rule out ever coming back to it, but I'd much rather be working with a firm or people that value their work as professionals and price accordingly. Was only reminded to post finally via a conversation I had with a friend today.

[Ernest Burden III]

Hey guys, ship's sinking! I'm outta here!

 

Did I understand you correctly? I think you make a point, but I am not sure what you suggest be done.

[Scott Schroeder]

 

Bob Ross loves the sweeping brushstrokes you use to generalize this industry.

 

I'm not at all worried about the "tidal wave" of international freelancers. In fact, I've got my surfboard handy.

[philippelamoureux]

I'm tired of hearing that this industry is dying etc...

I'm trying to make my place in this industry and I will enter the market once I master what I want to do.

 

Imo, there are the people who are talented and adapt/evolve fast and there are those who will be left behind. I spend most my time in the unreal engine arch-viz community nowadays and let me tell you that the tidal wave of people ''trying'' to do arch-viz isn't scary at all. I would say a good percentage of the newcomers don't even know the basics of composition. The learning curve is also steep for people without much experience.