Friday, 19 June 2015

How to earn some COIN on the side as an Animation Student



By James Ball

Our lecture this week was titled Your Income & Your Art”.

Now as I’ve stated in previous posts, I’m Studying Bachelor of Animation; and one of the topics discussed during our in class discussion we had yesterday was that of “how are you as a creative artist going to fund your creative endeavours?” Whether it be for Graphic Design, Music, Games, Film, or in my particular case, Animation.  In my research I have discovered 2 interesting things that I can start doing right now to slowly build an audience and make a little extra coin on the side.

In the course I’m studying, one of the things we get to learn is 3D character/hard surface modelling, UV unwrapping, Texturing and Rigging. As I’m slowly getting better at these tasks and improve on my speed of production, I see myself probably getting a high definition model out in 3 Weeks. Guess what? 3 weeks is how long my end of trimester break is. Seeing any patterns here? 

 Image 1


Okay, okay, but what would I do with such a model you ask? Well sell it on the interwebs of course. But where would you sell it you ask? Why a friendly and awesome site called “TurboSquid”. TurboSquid and it’s 30 000 plus library of 3D models are used by game developers, news agencies, architects, visual effects studios, advertisers, and creative professionals around the world. TurboSquid’s Mission statement goes as Follows:

“Our goal is to save artists the time of making a great model, and instead let them add their own personality to their creations. Our customers tell us they save 27 hours per model purchased, which can be a lifesaver in a time crunch.

TurboSquid's secondary mission is to focus the creativity of artists around the world to continually improve our library of models, while helping the artists who supply those models build a career as professional 3D modellers.”

So I did a bit more digging and “oh boy did I find the jackpot!” Let me elaborate a little shall I. If you sign up to their site, upload your Model and stick with the standard membership then it doesn’t matter how good or bad your model is, you still going to get a flat rate return of 40% Profit back from your sale.

Example: If I sell my model for $100 and someone buys it, I get a $40 Return and TurboSquid gets a $60 return for the sale.

Now on the other hand if I were to TurboSquid’s “Squid Guild” and be on their Loyalty Program (meaning I Upload My Models to their site and on their site) then my return can go from 40% to a staggering 80% per sale.

Example: If I sell my model for $100 and someone buys it, I get an $80 Return and TurboSquid gets a $20 return for the sale.

The second thing I have learnt from my research is that “Content is King” when it comes to blog posts. So to all of the people who have read or are still reading this Blog I going to try and make a conscious effort to post 2 times a week to start off with and see how we go from there.

Finally I would like to leave you with this. A clip from and up and coming animation Flip book I’m working on for a different unit.

100 frames in 4 seconds.



As always, this is James Ball Signing Out!




References


TurboSquid Mission Statement – Retrieved 19/06/15 - http://www.turbosquid.com/AboutTurboSquid

TurboSquid’s Sales Info – Retrieved 19/06/15 - http://www.turbosquid.com/PublishYourStuff

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