Firstly hello to you all, this a little awkward as I’ve got to be careful not to give too much away at the minute.
I’m a senior Technical Director at a large UK AAA games studio which is predominantly Maya based. Having been in the industry for 20 years, and my current company for 10, I’m starting to get itchy feet and looking towards consultancy as a possible career change.
I was chatting to a number of colleagues at Siggraph this year about career options and most seemed to think that there was definitely a market for tailored, personal consultancy support. For large studios with r&d budgets, or tech savy TD’s, Maya is a great tool, but for the smaller studios under pressure to deliver, the lack of any real animation pipeline can be a real issue.
I’m just wondering what the general consensus amongst others may be? Would remote consultancy be something your studio may consider? Am I barking mad and should I stay put and take the nice regular salary?
Many thanks for any comments, sorry I can’t be more specific and hello to those who already know me (most of you probably do under a different guise)
My company, TricksterViz (shameless promotion), just celebrated it’s first full year doing business as a Technical Art consultant. There is definitely a role in the industry for consultants.
It has been a bit of a roller coaster ride at times…and the business model is still not finely tuned…but I’ve been very happy with my choice. I made the choice to start my own business based on the goal of life-style management. I wanted more control over my time and location. Let me tell you, writing a bit of shader code while overlooking a beach on the North Shore in Oahu is pretty sweet.
However, there are some definite downsides… I find I miss belonging to a team and a project. Even with groups and people you know very well, there is a sense of being an outsider. There is no mistaking the fact that you are a mercenary doing work for hire.
There are also limitations on the scope of the work that you do. It tends to be self-contained, one-off solutions. As a full-time Tech Artist…you have two types of problems to solve…the top down tasks that come from management and the bottom up problem solving that comes from interacting with co-workers. The top down stuff is good for the resume, but the bottom up work is good for the soul and reputation. You won’t get very much of the bottom up work as a contractor.
Last but not least…as a consultant, more than half of your job is managing a business. I spent a lot of time thinking about it, believing I was an entrepreneur and looking for an opportunity. I was nowhere near ready to run a business. I couldn’t believe the amount of time spent on things like: nagging a client to pay on overdue invoices, making invoices, negotiating contracts, networking, networking, networking, printing business cards, building your website, etc.
However, all that being said…it’s worth it. 2009 was my best year ever and hopefully 2010 will be even better. Feel free to contact me privately if you have any questions… jeremiah@tricksterviz.com
Thanks for sharing your experience Jeremiah.
I’ve though about going into consulting myself someday in the future, perhaps offering that in combination with some of the products I’m developing. It’s good to hear that there is room for such a venture.
I agree with jeremiah that being a consultant or freelance, you deal with lot more than just your expertise. But those painful stuff teaches us 2 most important lessons as Tech Artist.
Deal with people
Solve almost any issue
A friend of mine who is vfx/compsiting artist and works as a consultant had to let go benefits/workplace/team for excitement/variety/travel.
I personally think that its a great career choice and anyone who has good amount of experience and ability to network, he/she can be a brand.
I have few questions for the Technical Art Consultants:
Is your work area limited to one industry(Games,Film,Animation) or you jump from one to another?
What do you do when you get offers from multiple companies at the same time?
Do you prefer to visit the team at least once, wherever its located?
1. Is your work area limited to one industry(Games,Film,Animation) or you jump from one to another?
I tend to focus on Games in the Seattle region. However, I spent most of the summer working on UI for a Consumer Electronics (think next gen mobile devices) and am currently working on a shot for a documentary.
2. What do you do when you get offers from multiple companies at the same time?
That’s a good problem to have. It’s important for your clients to know that you have other clients. Communication and managing expectations is key. Your reputation is your most valuable asset…you simply cannot risk it for a little extra cash in the short term. Turning down work has been one of the most important things I’ve learned over the last year. Ideally, I would take on the work and hire extra help…but with the economy as shaky as it has been, stability is more important to me than growth.
3. Do you prefer to visit the team at least once, wherever its located?
Most of my work tends to be local and with people I know. I have done work without having ever met the team…but I do think it’s better to know your customer. There are many ways to write a rigging tool, or a shader, or a batch script. Knowing the end user and understanding their needs is a lot more likely to have a successful outcome (and repeat business) than a fire and forget piece of code.
Jeremiah thanks for sharing that. Consultancy is something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while, the question is, how do you know when the time is right? Talking to friends at a number of midsized studios many of them are desperate for core Maya animation support, solid rigging solutions with strong toolsets. However, do you wait till you have some form of a retainer contract in place, or just go for it? It’s a big risk.
I still find it hard to believe that after all this time Maya doesn’t ship with a solid modular base rig, and as far as I know it isn’t something that’s scheduled in the near future. (yes there’s HumanIK, but I don’t know of anybody actually animating with it).
When I talk to other TechLeads we’re all doing the same repetition of the same code for our studios, god only knows how we’d be productive without these internal toolsets!
I guess I’m bored with internal NDA’s and want to share some of the tech I’ve been developing over the years and the only way to do that is to go it alone.
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When I talk to other TechLeads we’re all doing the same repetition of the same code for our studios, god only knows how we’d be productive without these internal toolsets!
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Word! Then again everybody wants their custom this and that…
On an offtopic note, what i find depressing is that when switching packages the things you gain seldom make up for the stuff thats missing… then you end up writing tools/scripts that you didnt think you’d ever have to!
I haven’t tried houdini much yet tho…
Totally agree Red9. It’s amazing that even now, with Maya 10years on, we’re all still writing the same tools. I was speaking to Cory at Siggraph about this, the lack of some simple base tools like, transform snap, key copy for heirarchies (filtered and name matched), rigging support and animation toolsets.
Mind you, if Autodesk did write everything we all wanted, we’d be out of a job and you’d never get any consultancy gigs!