Welcome to the introduction to starting up a freelance operation. In this article we will cover the various mistakes and hardships of beginning this type of venture. Most of the topics covered can be applied to just about any type of freelance operation, from 3D Design to Graphic Design to Mechanical Design, the list could go on.

The items I will be discussing have come up many times over the course of my career and if you know these things in advance, you’ll surely be freelancing in style.

Starting up a freelance operation is a lot of hard work that most cannot fathom until they step into the shoes as owner / operator. Perseverance is a key item in this venture. Most operations do not take off for quite some time and at first you may make barely enough to survive. Keeping your focus on the big picture is extremely important. If you are looking to make fast money then you are probably doing it for the wrong reasons.

This is by no means a complete list of everything to watch out for. I will be updating this article as time goes on and new topics present themselves to me. If anyone has any thoughts on new topics that I should cover regarding freelance operations, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Author: Ryan W. Knope

Ryan W. Knope is a freelance 3D Artist / Consultant with 13 years experience in the 3D and 2D industry. His main expertise lies with interior and exterior rendering. Ryan is also the architectural / interior voice for 3D Artist Magazine’s Question and Answer Panel. He lives with his wife in sunny Denver, Colorado.

Tutorial Details

• Programs: None (Advice + Tips + Tricks For Freelance Operations)
• Difficulty: Beginner

Topic 1: When And When Not To Go Full Time With Freelance

This topic is a tough one on so many levels.

I worked as a freelance artist for 8 years at the start of my career. This was an easy choice because I was living at home with my parents. Once you are out on your own it becomes much tougher to rely on a freelance operation to pay all the bills. I then worked for firms in Baltimore and Denver for a few years before deciding to start back up my full time freelance operation. This decision I owe mainly to my wife because she made it possible and was able to cover much of the income that I lacked at startup.

Ask yourself these questions:
• Do you have someone to assist bill payments during tough months? (A Spouse, Parents, etc)
• Are you disciplined enough to save the extra money from each month for those times when you’re a bit behind on your monthly income quota?
• Have you built up enough of a sustainable client base?
• Do you have a vast enough knowledge of different design sectors? Often you have to switch from different niches to get the bills paid.
• Are you business savvy or willing to put the time in to learn?
• Can you sell yourself?

The wisest option is usually to maintain freelance on a part time basis over the course of a few years and build relationships little by little. Once your base is big enough to attempt the jump you will know.

Topic 2: Selling Yourself Short. When And When Not To

When first starting a freelance operation often you have to undersell your product to get into the market share. This is especially prevalent in these hard economic times. Of course you can only do this for so long before you start realizing that you are working 100 hours a week at minimum wage.

Once a strong client relationship is built I tend to raise prices slowly. Speak with the client directly and let them know that you need to raise your pricing due to increased work volume and rising company costs.

Most importantly in the beginning you need to build a large client base even if you are making less on each job than you feel that you are worth. With some thought and work you can turn a vast cheap client base into a growing monetary situation.

On another note, as your volume expands you can weed out the clients that are troublesome or extremely cheap with the buck. Your expanding client volume much of the time means that clients either have to find another service provider or make it worth your while to fit them in.

There are times when I get booked up for the next month or 2 and a client comes to me and asks if I can accommodate them. In this situation I tell them that I am very busy and booked up although I can fit their job in for an extra fee. This is a good point to raise your pricing one at a time.

Topic 3: Being Noncommittal

Many new freelancers run into problems with being non-committal once they see that there is more work to be done than the original quoted monetary value. This definitely becomes frustrating for you, as you can see the hourly rate drain away to nothing.

I have been sucked into this several times in the past year alone. When this happens you cannot go back to your client and ask for more money. Doing so will tell the client that you do not know what you are doing and again the trust factor falls another level.

Remember that you are the professional providing a product. If a client says that they know it is a quick and easy project then it should raise a red flag. You need to take the time to assess and gather the material and make your own judgment with how easy it is and how long it will take you. Often television shows make our jobs look easy and everything is quick as can be… we all know that this is not the case.

Commit to the job at the price that you feel is appropriate and if the client disagrees then barter a bit on pricing but don’t jump too far in the hole, otherwise you could be stuck if that client has similar work for you at an ongoing basis.

Topic 4: Marketing – Cold Calls, Portfolio, Sites

Image is everything when you are marketing yourself. Dress sharp for meetings. Spend time on creating a professional portfolio website. There have been so many times that my website has saved me numerous hours of explaining different elements to a client. It gives the client something to compare their vision with. Adding client testimonials to the website is a great way to show future clients that you have a happy list of satisfied companies and gives them the feeling that they too, will be satisfied.

Speaking on design community forums, irc, and posting to website galleries are great ways to gain credibility. With credibility, the word about you will spread.

Cold calls tend to be less productive than you may think. When restarting my freelance operation I contacted about 1,500 firms. All of this work yielded one job, although that one job led to another job and so on.

Keep a document of who you called / emailed along with the dates, This makes it much easier to sort through who is left to call.. and firms that receive double calls really don’t appreciate it.

I tend to resume my cold calls when I have no more leads from my contacts or from the freelancing website’s. Which brings us to the next topic… freelancing website’s.

Topic 5 – Places To Find Clients Fast – The Web

There are many freelancing website’s that will aid greatly in finding clients and creating long lasting relationships. Unfortunately you often have to bid much below your cost estimate, although in my experience it is a good way to get clients hooked fast and then raise slowly.

With Craigslist you simply put up an ad for service and you can haggle at your own will. This works great on so many levels, because you can post tutoring, commercial 3D and 2D design, consulting etc, just about anything you desire.

Sites like Turbosquid work fantastic because you upload a product once and every month you have residual income for doing the work once. Of course this takes time to build a steady stream. Keep in mind that these sites sell more than just 3D models. Check each site to see what categories they have. I personally swear by Turbosquid 100%.

Below you can find a list of a few website’s that may help bring in some design income.

www.turbosquid.com
www.craigslist.com
www.elance.com
www.getafreelancer.com
www.flatpyramid.com
www.ifreelance.com
www.3d02.com
www.exchange3d.com

Topic 6 – Trade Shows And Local Events

Local trade shows and events can be crucial in starting one’s operation. They allow you to make personal contact with a representative from the firms in your target groups. For example, I not only attend “Siggraph”, but I also attend architectural and interior design trade shows.

Find your niche markets and use those trade shows to get your name and services out there. Making your presence and services known is one of the biggest battles in starting a freelance operation. These shows give you a chance to touch base with hundreds in one day, in contrast, cold call emails are almost never read, which means that you probably will not get a response.

Topic 7 – Deposits Are VERY Important

Requiring a %50 from each client is another reason why you should not have to watermark your progress images. (Which is covered in Topic 11) With requiring a %50 deposit you dedicate the client to the project before you even start designing.

You should provide samples of high enough quality to view the progress properly, although do not supply the images in full size or even close to it, otherwise you risk never seeing the other %50. For example, many of my renderings I output at 3500px as a final size, when I show progress updates I send about 1000px to 1500px sizes.

There are always exceptions to this rule. If you have had a client – provider relationship over the course of years without any trouble or faltering, then I sometimes do not require the deposit. I only have 2 such clients.

Also, many large corporations have their own contracts which state a 30 day payment or so. Sometimes getting the deposit from large companies is a bit difficult. Most of the time when dealing with large corporations that have contracts regarding the issue it is not a problem

Topic 8 – Taxes – Savings

Taxes are often a troublesome subject for new freelancers. Watching the money come in gets exciting and newbies tend to spend it all. That my friend is a very bad idea. You should estimate the taxes for your country / state and put aside that figured percentage of each job that you work on. Being regimented with this will save you a huge heartache during tax time, which is already hard enough.

When I was first starting as a freelancer I spent all the money that I made each week. When tax time came around I was notified that I owed over $4,500 USD. This quickly became a huge problem and I had to pay it back with interest for quite a long time.

Topic 9 – Expenses And Receipts Can Save You At Tax Time

This topic is extremely valuable. Look into your local and national laws and figure out what you are allowed to claim as business expenses during tax time. In most situations you can claim the following (Although this is not a complete list):

- Business Travel Expenses – Airline Tickets Etc.
- Software Expenses
- Hardware Expenses
- Dinners With A Client
- Car Mileage To And From A Job Site
- Office Supplies
- Printing And Marketing Materials

The laws in my area (Denver, CO, USA) normally cover anything that is strictly applied to your business. Anything that is used for personal use, home use or entertainment is not usually covered. Unless you are taking a client to a show to discuss closing a contract.

Keep all of the receipts that you accrue over the year and put them all in the same place. There is nothing worse than making a huge tax saving purchase and not being able to find the receipt so that you can claim it.

Keep a notepad in your car. Write your driving mileage for each meeting, event or trip to the office supply store. I tend to log, where, when and how many miles the round trip was. This is a great way to ease your mind from trying to remember everyone you met and where you went in the past year.

Topic 10 – Trust Between Client And Provider

One of the most important things about building a freelance business is building a tight relationship with your clients. This often means going the extra mile or 10. A week or 2 after a project is completed I tend to email the client and ask them how it is working out for them. This shows that you are sincere with being there for them and their needs.

Below are some ways to build trust quickly with new and ongoing clients.

• Sending Updates Often
• Communicating Regularly
• Showing A Strong Portfolio
• A Professional Looking Website
• Providing References And Client Testimonials
• Meet Your Deadline Or Be Early
• Being Straight Up With Your Client

Topic 11 – Watermarks

There are many different perspectives on watermarks and their usage. Some feel the need to apply a huge mark across an entire design or rendering. In most cases this is a problem for clients and they find it counter productive. A client relationship has a lot to do with trust and honesty. A huge watermark degrades the viewing of your work as well as the trust level very quickly.

Another option which many see as the more professional way is to put your logo or watermark quite small in a corner of the image. This works well in a few ways. It shows the client a level of trust and provides a small source of advertising when your client shows people your work during the design process.

The last option is to provide a watermark free rendering, which clients appreciate the most. When it comes down to it, most watermarks can be painted out by a professional. Watermarks are for the most part just quite obnoxious.

There are times when you need to use watermarks though, such as when you are selling images on Turbosquid, IStock or any stock photography website.

Topic 12 – Identifying Your Target Markets And Expanding

When starting your freelance operation you obviously have target markets that you are currently dealing with. Shortly after starting your business you need to begin thinking of other areas that your skills can be applied. The goal should be to diversify.

For Example: My initial target markets were “Interior and Exterior Visualization.” I soon started offering “2D rendered floor plans.” Then I noticed a huge market for “Cross Section Renderings” with engineering firms, then all of a sudden I was providing renderings for furniture manufacturers, then just recently I stumbled upon textile designs.

In this day and age having a diverse set of clients / services will keep you in operation much longer than only offering 1 type of service for a niche field.

My original progression of market expansion is shown below. The entire picture of the web of market expansion would take up the entire page. You can get an idea of how each market influences each other and how I drew from each one meeting contacts along the way via the image below.

Closing Notes

Starting up a full time freelance operation is a ton of hard work. Many think that it’s all fun and games because you get to sit at home and work when you choose. This is not always the case.

I work more now than I ever did before. I tend to work between 50 and 80 hours a week and I rarely ever take a day off. This is often what it takes to build the freelance empire that you desire.

The benefits are also extremely pleasing. I have the option to make as much or as little money as I care to work for. If you build the business in a smart manor, you can go fishing when you want, hang out with friends or catch the game you’ve been waiting for without having to ask the boss. With smart scheduling you can plan a day trip or vacation just about any time.

Remember, that at the end of the day the only person responsible for the success of the business is you. You will have no one else to blame or be angry with. All the weight is put directly on your shoulders to make it happen. Laziness will surely render a failed operation.

Good luck in your ventures. I wish you the best as you freelance in style.

Please do not hesitate to contact me for advice or thoughts.

No related posts.

Welcome to STL and Rapid Prototyping 101. Here we will be discussing the modeling preparation and use of a few applications as well as how to bring your model through the rapid prototyping or 3d printing process. At the end of this article we will output a boxer from a Stratasys Dimension SST machine in an ABS Plastic material.

The first question to ask would be, what is Rapid Prototyping? Rapid Prototyping can be described most accurately by calling it a collection of technologies which are driven by CAD Data to fabricate physical models through an additive process. This process can be stated to be the opposite of machining, since it is not subtracting the material, it is instead adding it. There are a few other names for Rapid Prototyping, such as Additive Manufacturing, 3D Printing, Free Form Fabrication, Solid Imaging and Direct Digital Manufacturing are some of the names it has been given.

The second question to be asked would be why is Rapid Prototyping the choice for output of a boxer model. This question needs to be asked so that we can decide what Rapid Prototyping should be used for, and what it should not be used for. Rapid Prototyping should be used for detailed, compound shapes with undercuts or complex curves. If your model is simple such as a cylinder or gear, you should go with a subtractive method such as a CNC milling machine. In this case, it is Rapid Prototyping that we need.

Now that we know that we definitely want to go with Rapid Prototyping we need to identify the limitations of such a process. Some limitations of Rapid Prototyping is the inevitable fact that you will get stair stepping since each object is built layer by layer in this process. When choosing a machine or company to produce a physical model by means of Rapid Prototyping you should look at the layer thickness and the tolerance that the machines produce. A thinner layer will obviously produce less stair stepping than one that produces thicker layers.

We have identified the process and we will now continue onto the file format in which 3D Printers use as the standard. The standard file format for Rapid Prototyping is the STL file format. In the next section we will take a look at the file format and how to properly set a file up for RP.

*Note* The physical model was produced in mid 1995. Newer machines are available today with greater tolerances and detail management.

Tutorial Details

• Programs: Autodesk 3dsmax 5 and Up
• Difficulty For Session 1: Beginner to Intermediate (Prior Knowledge of Software is a plus.)

The STL File Format

The STL (Stereo Lithography) File format is used to describe the geometry of the object that is to be created by the 3D Printer or Rapid Prototyping machine.

In more detail, the STL file is a triangular representation of a three dimensional object. The object is tessellated into a series of facets or small triangles. Each triangle has a perpendicular direction and three vertices to describe the corners and size. A unit normal is also identified for each facet. This normal lies perpendicular to the facet and has a length of 1.0. An STL file can be in many ways described as a list of the vertex and normal coordinates. There are 12 numbers stored for each facet or triangle. The units of measurement in a STL file are arbitrary, the file does not store any size information.

Common Rules Of Model Creation / Export

There are a few rules for model creation for STL export.

1.) The model must be “Water Tight.” This means that there can be no “holes” in the model. If there are holes, then the machine will not understand what to do and the physical model cannot be created.

2.) The Vertex to Vertex Rule: What this means is that each triangle of the mesh must share 2 vertices with its adjacent triangles. For example one triangles vertex cannot lie on the side of a triangle, it must be attached to another vertex of the triangle. For a visual of this Rule please refer to the image below.

3.) There cannot be duplicate nodes or overlapping triangles when creating a model for STL export.

The Modeling Process

In this article I have decided to use 3DSMax and Z brush for the model construction. The model originated in 3DSMax as a low poly model built by Enrique Caballero for the PC Game “Online Championship Boxing.”

Below, you can see the low poly mesh before exporting to Z brush. The model was then exported to a .obj format and imported into Pixologic’s Z brush using “Import Tool”. In Z brush the model was subdivided and detail was added to the model. Detail such as muscles, veins, boot laces, boot soles, hair and other small details were added as to test the detail of the machine output. Once finished in Zbrush, the model was exported out of Zbrush in a dxf file format and imported into 3DSMax.

Once the model was imported into 3DSMax it had to be checked for errors using the STL Check Modifier. This modifier investigates the model for any errors that would make the 3d model unusable in the STL format. Below is a side by side comparison of the wireframe and shaded model, settings are also shown for 3dsmax’s STL Check Modifier.

Throughout the modeling process the STL Check Modifier was used several times to try to catch the errors as they would occur. After importing from Zbrush several errors were found.

3DSMax’s STL Check Modifier will check for the following:

Spikes: Spikes are isolated faces that only share 1 edge with the object.
Open Edges: Open Edges are simply holes in the mesh.
Multiple Edges: Multiple Edges refers to faces that share more than one edge.
Double Faces: Double Faces refers to a face or faces that share the same 3D Space.

If you find that you have errors you can do a few things. You could use the “Cap Holes” Modifier, which in my situation had fixed my errors. To apply the “Cap Holes Modifier” go to the modifiers tab and select “Cap Holes.” After using the Cap Holes Modifier make sure the use the STL Check Modifier again to ensure that it has capped the holes and fixed the errors.

You can also manually fix the errors if the Cap Holes Modifier does not fix them. You may have to weld the vertices if there are any holes that the Cap Holes Modifier does not fix. It is good practice to use weld with a certain tolerance while prepping your model. The tolerance would be specific to each model and the scale.

Note: 3DSMax’s STL Check Modifier is not 100% guarantee to find all errors. There were still a few errors that had to be cleaned up by a technicians more advanced software.

Exporting To The STL Format

Now that we have confirmed that our model should be water tight and not have any errors we can prepare ourselves for exporting the final STL file to send in for Rapid Prototyping. This part is simple. In 3DSMax you go to Export, pick the Stereo-Litho format, name your file and press save. Once you press save the option dialogue will pop up that is shown below. Now you will notice a option for binary or ascii.

Most of the time you will use the Binary format due to the fact that it is much smaller in file size, which makes it more practical for general use. Generally an ASCII STL file is 6 times larger than the Binary STL file. The ASCII format is used mainly for testing CAD interfaces. After exporting the boxer model with binary, the file size jumped to 50mb.

There is also an option for “selected only”. Use this option if you have multiple objects in your scene and only want to export the selected objects for STL export.

The Dimension SST 3D Printer

Here is a bit about the machine that created the boxer model. The Dimension SST 3D printer is manufactured by the Dimension 3D Printing Group, which is a business unit of Stratasys, Inc. Below the Dimension SST 3D Printer is shown.

This machine has automatic operation, which imports the STL file, slices the file, and builds support structures for the file if they are necessary, then builds the ABS model.

The machine is run on a Microsoft Windows platform (NT, 2000, XP) and has a maximum build size of 8” x 8” x 12” (203 x 203 x 305 mm). The ABS plastic standard colors are white, blue, yellow, red, green or black. Other custom colors are available upon request. Layer thickness is between .010” and .013” (.245mm and .33mm) of ABS Plastic material. Layer thickness refers the the vertical dimension of each slice. The more minute the vertical dimension is, the more smooth the surface will be, although this will usually concur a longer build time.

The rate at which machine operation is charged is between $40.00 – $50.00 USD an hour. The Dimension SST 3D Printer’s starting price is $24,900 USD. You can view more information on this 3D Printer at www.dimensionprinting.com

The Final ABS Plastic Boxer Model

Figure 7 shows the physical model fabricated from ABS Plastic side by side with a render of the boxer model from 3DSMax. The machines build time took a total of 20 hours and 15 minutes for the model’s fabrication.

The basic structure of the model was nearly perfect. All muscle groups were formed excellently with a minimal loss of detail.

Loss Of Detail And Stepping

There was minor stair stepping which I plan to resolve by sanding the surface lightly. You can view the stair stepping on the shoulder of the boxer model in the image below. Some detail was lost, such as in the eyes, ears, veins and boot laces. The underside of the boxer’s trunks (shorts) came out perfect. The veins were slightly visible. The model will need some work to gain back the details but all in all the project was a success.

Related posts:

1. Creating a Detailed Master Plan Rendering in 3dsmax and Photoshop
2. Creating A Detailed Master Plan Rendering – Part 4 – 3dsmax and Photoshop
3. Creating A Detailed Master Plan Rendering – Part 2 – 3DS Max and Photoshop

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