Rendering Community

[ikinman]

This is a reboot of Ernest’s earlier thread on the merits of creating a larger organized community of renderers and modelers to work together in some capacity to tackle jobs that an individual may not have the resources to do by him or herself.

There are at least two possible scenarios as I see it: one is to start up a group of people that tackle the ‘lower’ ends of production, modeling and scene setup and such. This group would then be a service group that would be used by individual renderers as a sort of temporary back-office, and similar to the type of service that is offered by remote render farms.

The second is to start up a group of people that act together to tackle larger projects that one person may not be able to do. In that case all aspects of the production would be done by the group, which would function more as a collective.

Topics for discussion include:

1. The merits of the idea
2. Should such a group be formed to work together
3. The advantages of such a group being geographically based versus not; in other words is it better for such a group to be centered around a specific locale to work together more efficiently or is it better for such a group to be dispersed and work together online.
4. Possible ways of organizing and running such a group
5. Possible ways of managing production
6. Who is interested in participating.

These topics for discussion are based on what I was able to glean from the 80 or so comments on Ernest’s earlier thread. It is an important enough discussion to merit more focus; views on the nature of outsourcing are an important topic, but there are other threads available to discuss those implications.

-Ian

[EddieLeon]

I think this idea has a lot of merit as long as it is not geographically based. I also think it should be some sort of online community.

[blowback]

Originally Posted by EddieLeon

I think this idea has a lot of merit as long as it is not geographically based. I also think it should be some sort of online community.

I would be very interested if it was something to that effect.

[RyanSpaulding]

Well, wasn't the point of EB's post 'in-sourcing'...which catagorically means geographically based, right?

So if we just band together, and then come to find out the group will consist of people who will charge well below standard US/UK rates due to lower costs of living...would we not have just created a super-group for 'outsourcing'?

I still don't know how I feel about this...as we're trying to combat the outsourcing that profit-centric business owners are taking...it seems that w/o geographical catagorization, we're starting the possibility that this backfires. IMHO.

[blowback]

I thought the point is that we charge and pay fairly, so the strength of this is the diverse talent pool, helping us to stay working, trying other markets, etc, not to pay people a wage that correlates the there present geography.

[EddieLeon]

Originally Posted by RyanSpaulding

...as we're trying to combat the outsourcing that profit-centric business owners are taking...it seems that w/o geographical catagorization, we're starting the possibility that this backfires. IMHO.

Ryan, I don't think there is anything to combat. Aren't you running a business also? Don't you need to be profitable? I think we all agree that it's ok to outsource some of your production to other artists.

So, let's disregard geography for a moment and consider what it would be like to have an online community that you can access at any time and have it do the production for you on any given day. Artists can bid to model the things that you don't have time to do. Maybe you can just select them based on your Geographical preference. That's ok.

The real beauty of the community will be that it's totally scalable to what you need done. Isn't that what Ernest is suggesting? The other advantage of the community can be that everyone will work transparently. They will be rated based on their performance, so they will try harder to make sure the job gets done correctly and on time. Another upside is that you can also list yourself as an artists that is providing services. Some clients will select you because of your unique portfolio and your geographic location.

There are some websites that already have these freelance communities. But, none of them are tailored to our industry.

[AJLynn]

I think that wherever the people are, if the standard is American/Western European scale money and the level of service is enough to get people to pay that, it will have the desired effect.

[EddieLeon]

I think market forces will determine the pricing. And that's ok because some clients will not be looking for the lowest price point. They may post a project that requires green screen, aerial video, and a brochure/website. This would obviously remove many of the artists from the running.

However, some artists might chose to band together and create "virtual companies". This is an actual business term that has nothing to do with VR. It means that the company is created temporarily by separate entities for the purpose of completing a project together. Imagine that

[AJLynn]

I'm just going by my reading of Ernest's idea here, but I thought the idea was to raise the standard for pricing. We can already outsource anything we want to in a price-competitive market.

The point of this seems to be to make an organization that people can go to to get work done to a certain standard with a certain standard of service and a simple point of contact. Not just a job board. Without making this a way to have the price of work be the Western price, Westerners can't participate, because if the interface is consistent then why the heck would anybody pay $40/hour instead of $10? The challenge then becomes how to make the service have enough value that people would go to it instead of outsourcing. This then raises the standard of pricing, whereas your idea lowers it.

It wouldn't matter where the people doing the work were, but they'd be charging the $40.

[EddieLeon]

Price controls and business don't blend well. I believe some artists will be able to charge $40 anyway. Their services will just be different from the ones charging $10.