not sure I follow your thinking - if you currently have a permanent position, and have only zero’s on your bank account, buying a computer and freelancing is not going to solve this – quite on the contrary.
freelancing is an unstable income, at times it might cost you more than you gain. you’re going to have to find/win projects, execute them, get invoices paid, do the accounting (or pay someone to do it for you) pay taxes and social security – and hopefully manage to have some money left in the end – and there will be periods with no projects coming in, so no money at all. In other words – make sure you have some money on the side before you start freelancing – enough to live a few months – half a year even – on your own costs. if you regularly have people proposing projects and you have to turn them down, then yes, freelancing might be a good idea - but otherwise – watch out: projects are not going to happen out of the blue just because you turned freelance. in any case, when you start, it’s a much less steady source of income than a permanent job in a studio. if you heard freelancers are making easy money, it’s a lie and only those who never freelanced believe it. I could continue – but of course it’s not up to me to say you shouldn’t freelance – I’ve been making my living mainly as freelance for a decade, and if I can, so can you. with that out of the way, about a “workstation for a freelancer” you have to think about the kind of projects you are going to do and what kind of situation you will be in. freelancing at other companies/studios on their projects and equipment (= get a good laptop) versus working from your home office on your own equipment. (= get a comfortable workstation, monitor, as well as desk/chair!) working at a client’s site (but not a studio) - client coming to your home office or not? for briefings only (=again: good laptop) or interactive sessions as well? (= full office with the best workstation you can possibly get) If you work in front of the client then you need something that is fast and looks fast as well. Since your subject is: “how low can you go”, I’d make this very clear from the start, to yourself as well as the client: no working in front of the client. Do everything through briefings - face to face, confcalls, email whatever – then go and do what was said in the briefing without the client looking over your shoulder. Keep this for later, when you are really on top of things. (or better yet – never do it at all) Configuration will depend to a degree on the type of work and projects you expect to do and what you need to deliver – with special attention to rendering as this is your most likely bottleneck. if you do outsourced work for a studio, such as making assets or animation and need to deliver scenes, then you don’t need a heavy workstation. if its highres stills for print – you need something that renders fast enough – a single fast processor or dual CPU. graphics card is less important, but a decent monitor is. for rendered animations where the client does postproduction (up to HD, a few seconds, say 30 seconds tops) – get as much renderpower as you can afford - focus on CPU power, unless your rendersoftware uses the GPU extensively you don’t need a very costly graphics card – get enough RAM as well. If you want to deliver complete commercials or shorts and you handle postproduction as well – think again. You need more horsepower than you can afford. if you need to deliver blockbuster quality work – you need a reality check. Practically speaking, I’ve always worked on a single workstation, and every ~3 years bought a new one. The old one becomes a backup/renderstation – by the time you get the third computer, the first one is totally obsolete. “what you can afford” is the proper workstation to buy – I’ve started with a cheap workstation (less than 1000 euro everything included – lower specs than your current phone probably), and little by little, when the freelance work got better and income more steady, I got something more high end – pretty much a workstation like you’d find in a studio. Shop around a bit on internet – when specifying each component, don’t get the best of the best, get the third best or so – which gives some less performance for a lot less money. Don’t forget: give some thought to how you are going to upload stuff to a client. (internet connection, upload space and speed,...) get DVD burner, a few usb sticks, external harddisk - to deliver physically when it’s too much to upload. in a workstation I’d get at least 2 harddisks – one system disk and one for project data – with more disks you can even make a RAID. Get an external disk for backup copy – consider a real backup solution. if you don’t have a decent computer store nearby with plenty in stock, get some spare stuff - if you’re on a deadline and some stupid piece (the mouse!) freaks out and you need to get it delivered you are loosing precious time. I’ve said it above – think about your office furniture. if you ruin your neck/back/wrists... your fancy computer is going to be idle. ... Good luck! From: Johan Forsgren Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 9:01 PM To: [email protected] Subject: OT: How low can you go (Hardware) Hey all, I'm currently hold a permanent position i small studio, but I'm starting to wonder if freelancing isn't the way to go for me, This brings me to the question of hardware, and I'm wondering if any of you freelancers can't give your input on what the minimum spec for a workstation should be. I cant afford anything beyond basic, really the no 1 reason that I'm thinking about freelancing is the complete lack of zero's on my bank statement. But it also limits my options equipment-wise quite a bit. I'm thinking something-ish like this: intel i5-3350P 8 gig ram geforce 640 gtm no ssd :( So I guess my question here is if there's possible to do simpler 3d work on a personal workstation like this? I understand that its POSSIBLE but how badly will I want to chew my arm of after say 6 months of freelancing doing product viz and motion graphics? -- JOHAN FORSGREN CG ARTIST Phone + 46 31 752 20 00 [email protected] Direct + 46 31 752 20 07 Follow Edithouse at at twitter.com/edithouse Edit house Film Works www.edithouse.se Lilla Bommen 4a, S-411 04 Göteborg, Sweden www.twitter.com/edithouse
