There are plenty of job roles available in the game industry (3D Artist, Animator, Programmer etc), personally 3D modelling is what I enjoyed doing so that would be the job role I’d build a career in.
I am already self-employed right now so being a freelancer wouldn’t be that hard to wrap my head round, the freedom that freelancing offers you stands out to me, being able to create whatever you want and be able to sell any of your creations on e-stores seems like a good way of making money. Obviously being a freelancer isn’t always going to be successful, you need to have good skills within the softwares to create things to good enough quality for people to even want to buy it from you.
The steps to becoming a free lancer are not easy, you need to spend a ton of time learning and improving knowledge within 3D modelling, expanding skills to learning new software or being able to rig, animate, render scenes are all part of tools Autodesk Maya offers which can be learnt in order to create a higher quality product with more variety to have on your store. Taking online courses, going to college or uni will help improve the knowledge of modelling and this may take a few years to do. However, if done correctly this can result in being a very successful individual giving you the option of being your own boss, technically a business owner.
Creating assets will be the main part of freelancing as this is what people will want to buy, rigging and texturing them will open a bigger market for sales, this will produce more income but still take more time. It won’t always be modelling what you’re doing in this job though it involves a lot of business to it. You need to know where to sell your products, what websites may be better for certain products such as different styles, some websites may specialise in one and could help sell a lot more products in that one section. Learning how to advertise your products will be a huge impact on your sales statistics, rendering your asset properly can help be more appealing to look at helping catch peoples eye more.
The fact you’re a lone wolf in this sector that does not mean you won’t work with other people in different roles. Someone may contact you who may be a programmer or a producer for an opportunity to help with their project via creating detailed assets to their requests, they could offer a good price for the assets created and it’s down to you to accept or deny that offer but it just opens more doors for you as this could be a customer who may ask for a job like this every so many month or year and could pay good money if pleased with quality of your service. You done have to just sell assets though, I could sell my services which other people could buy from me. This would involve meetngs with one another, talking about the product, the design, the product pipline, that sorta stuff comes with working with someone else but you’s would still go off and work with your own skills separately to produce things.
Being a freelancer has good benefits, not having a shift rota can be a huge stress relief for some people, being able to live your life at your timetable, managing lfiestyle and work flow inbetween each other gives access to invest in more things throughout business, life and side hustles (stocks, etc). It gives freedom to work wherever you want, this is if you are successful at it somewhat, being very successful at this will give you a lot of disposable income which can lead you to travelling whilst also working at any destination. A great benefit is you can create whatever you want, you’re not confined to one style or one project, you can create anything and jump between a few different tasks at once. In my opinion mental health is a huge factor when in workplace and being a freelancer takes a lot of negativity away from that BUT this does not mean it has zero drawbacks. What goes up must come down, this means there are still negatives. It is not easy to be successful at this, it takes a lot effort and focus, it can be draining to work on your own ideas as they not always going to work out perfect.
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