First of all, since I haven’t had the chance until now, I want to wish you a happy new year, all the best and many projects and opportunities in 2010.

I’ve just came back from my winter holidays and while browsing through some arch viz forums I’ve stumbled upon the short video done by Alex Roman (Jorge Seva) and I must say I am absolutely amazed.

This is really a master piece, and with no exaggeration, probably the best cg animation I have ever seen, and I am not talking only about architectural visualization.
The guy obviously has a lot of talent as a movie director, stage designer and photographer besides the fact that he truly masters the software.

Although I can not stress enough how much I like it, I can’t help but wonder how this style would work from a commercial point of view. From my experience, every time I try something more “artistic” it doesn’t go well with the client. Even a small depth of field effect used to focus on some elements makes most clients ask me “Why 70% of the rendering is blurred? Is it a software error?” I have even had problems explaining to some clients why the white walls look bluish in a dusk rendering. Although a small part of our job as architectural illustrators is to educate the clients, sometimes we have to consider the fact that time is money, so instead of spending it explaining this and that, just give them what they need and that’s it (as long as it still looks at least “ok”, of course).

I am curious what you think about this, and even more curious if you managed to get a “sign off” doing something a bit more “different”.

If you are one of the loyal readers, you most probably already know that I keep this blog as hobby, and whenever I have some spare time, I write a tutorial related to cg, or post some free 3d model.

As you have noticed by reading the “about the author” page, I run a studio that provides architectural renderings, and I have been doing this since 2004.

For about 4 years the design of the website has remained unchanged. Although at the beginning it was ok for what we needed, within time we found out that it was quite difficult to update it, due to the fact that the portfolio section was based on flash. Furthermore, with the browsers evolving so fast, we have noticed that some latest versions weren’t showing the content properly. So it was definitely time for a change.

We have therefore decided to skip all the bells and whistles (flash animations, intro, etc.) and go for a wordpress based platform. We intend to keep it like this for a while and see what kind of feedback we receive, and think about a re-design in a few months if we consider it necessary.

I would appreciate it very much if you could let me know what you think about it (from the navigation point of view, design, color scheme, and the renderings shown in the portfolio section).

Bellow are a few examples of renderings, that are directly linked to the appropiate category of our site.

Photomontage Renderings

Interior Renderings

Exterior Renderings

Best regards,

Alex Mincinopschi

“How much do you charge for an interior rendering?”, “How much should I charge for a drive-bye exterior animation? “How much would you charge for the attached rendering?” I see this questions, (and plenty other variations on the same subject) on almost every forum I know. Furthermore, it is common practice for new freelancers or small studios to write bogus emails to others, introducing themselves as architects, just to find out what other rates are.

Although for some people it may become annoying to stumble upon this issue so often, the curiosity is understandable (up to a point). However, there are some other factors to be taken into consideration when establishing a pricing policy besides the competition’s rates.

1)     Monthly expenses

The first factor in establishing your pricing policy is represented by your monthly expenses. This should include everything from the internet bill, electricity and other utilities, employees (if you have any), to food, cloths, beer, etc. A good place to start is to make sure that if you are working at around 30-40% of your capacity you will have all this covered. That means, that if you have the capacity to do 10 renderings a month, than 3-4 renderings should cover all your monthly expenses.

2)     The Investments

The investments that you have made in hardware equipment, software, etc.,  are also a factor to    be taken into consideration. How much time do you want to allow for the return of investment? 6 months? A year? If you want your investment to be fully covered in less time, it automatically means that you need to charge more, and vice versa.

      3) Your desired standard of life

Are you a “big spender”? Do you plan to buy something expensive (like a car or a house) in the future with the money earned from this business? These are questions that you need to ask yourself, in order to know how much profit you need to make and therefore determine your prices.

4)     The quality of your work

Everybody wants to fish where the big fishes are, but to do that you need proper skills and proper tools. You need to be realistic about this, and not aim for your Ferrari yet. If somebody else provides the same level of quality work at far less price, it’s more likely that he will get the job and not you.

      5) From what countries are your clients?

All the points above are probably enough to set your pricing if you work on the local market.

However, if you are working “online”, there is still another very important factor to have in mind, and that is the geo-location of your targeted clients.

This is where finding out how much other people from other countries charge for a rendering, proves useful. You need to compare the usual rates that are applied in that specific country with your “preliminary” pricing scheme that you have established so far. If your rates are considered low for that area, than you may have a winner on your hands.

That doesn’t mean that you should be thinking of charging as much as other architectural illustrators from that part of the world… otherwise the hassle of working with a freelancer or company from overseas won’t worth. Furthermore, (from my experience, at least) most clients that look for rendering services abroad, are freelancers, or visualization studios owners that outsource their workloads, so needless to say that they won’t make any profit if you charge as much as them.

However, if you charge to low, you won’t have any credibility in front of important potential clients. Even if there is also market for cheap renderings, clients that agree to pay 200 usd for one cg image, are not professionals and in most cases they don’t know themselves what they need in the end, so most probably you will end up working a lot more for 200 usd that you would have for 500 euros.