What questions should you ask a client when you start work on your first freelance job?

What questions should you ask a client when you start work on your first freelance job - or indeed any freelance job? It's your job as a professional to keep everything on track and deliver what you promised. All projects start off full of optimism and excitement, but the scope for misunderstanding is great, and the risk of things going wrong is considerable. So it's worth asking the right questions up front, to ensure that the job goes well and your happy client comes back for more. Below is a list of useful questions to get you started.

What does the client have to spend? Image: Wikipedia

What is your budget?
All clients have some kind of idea in their head of what they can afford to spend. A couple of hundred? A few thousand? A million? The answer to this question is the single most important factor in what you can deliver. After all, with animation you get nothing for free. Everything must be made from scratch.

How long should it be?
Many clients, especially those who have never done animation before, struggle to understand just how long it takes to create. Finding out what the client's expectations are of the length of their project is vital. A minute? Two minutes? Half an hour? Find this out as early as possible.

A screenplay. You need one of these

Does the client have a script?
Many clients have no idea what story they want to tell. In this case, part of your job will be to write a script based on their needs. This can be fun, but also frustrating if the client has no idea what they want. But, you must have a script (also known as a screenplay) before you begin, else you are groping in the dark.

What style of animation does the client want?
Does the client have any animation or images in a style that they like? If they don't know, show them some clips from YouTube in styles that you like, or think you can reasonably achieve given the budget you have. Everyone likes Toy Story, but few clients can afford Pixar quality animation. Part of your challenge is to find a style that the client likes and that they can afford.

What is the deadline?
Next week? Next month? By Christmas? And is the deadline in any way flexible? Unrealistic deadlines are often a deal-breaker.

What is the target audience?
Who is it for? Kids? Businessmen? Adults? Teenage boys? This will affect the style of your storytelling and the tone of the film.

Is there a message the client wants to get across? 
What feeling should the audience have after they have finished watching?

Who is directing? Photo: Wikipedia

Who will approve the work?

Ideally, you want to get notes from one person only. It's a common problem to find that the client that you thought was making decisions has a number of bosses that they answer to, and you end up getting notes from multiple people you have never heard of. These notes are often contradictory and tie you up in knots. Try to make sure that one person is in charge, and that person gives you one set of notes.

What is the final output?
What does the client want at the end? A digital file? Film? A DVD? HD? 4K? What aspect ratio? Agree up front exactly what you will deliver. Sometimes clients want editable files so they can tinker with the edit, which can cause all kinds of problems with incompatible software and non-transferable files.

Payment schedule and contract
It's a good idea to agree terms in advance. Money up front? On completion? Half and half? Big clients will have a standard contract, smaller ones may look to you to draft a basic agreement.

Below is a video made for especially for illustrators, presumably by a freelancer who has been burned one too many times.




The basic lesson of course is to agree as much up front as possible, to avoid confusion, misunderstanding and disappointment later on. Problems thrive in dark corners where both parties make assumptions about what will happen in the future.


For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work.

Graduate Panel Friday March 21st - how do graduates find work in digital media?

Last year's graduate panel discussion

On Friday March 21st we will be running a Graduate Panel from noon until 3pm for all our undergraduate students studying Film & TV Production, Animation and Audio & Music Production. The idea is to bring back some of our most successful alumni, those who have progressed well within their first few years of graduating and beyond, to share their experiences and make suggestions as to how our students might achieve that vital big break into their chosen field.

Who will be there? Our guests will be Bucks graduates, many of them working in animation and digital media, who will be returning to the Uni to share their insights into how they forged their careers. They were themselves students at Bucks, so they know better than anyone what it takes to turn a degree from BNU into a successful career in digital media.

Who is coming?
Among the returning animation graduates will be Jaffar Ali, who recently landed a paid internship at Vizrt. You can see an interview with Jaffar about his new internship here. Also attending is Andy Thomas, who has built a stellar career doing design and architectural visualisation for the multinational engineering company URS.

Why should you come along?
This 

Graduate Panel will be our third such event. We have had great feedback from previous panels, which have been full of helpful advice and guidance to students on how to forge a successful career. We encourage all our students, not just those in their final year, to make the effort to attend.

Free cakes! Yay!

Are there any freebies?
Yes! By way of a small bribe, there will be coffee and cakes laid on, so be sure to eat as much as you possibly can.

Where is it happening?
The event will take place on Friday at noon in N4.06. It is building number 4 on the map below, on the 4th floor.

To find out more about what you can expect, see our post about last year's Graduate Panel here. In the meantime, put together a list of questions for our panelists. How, really, did they get their jobs? Was it talent, connections - or just plain luck? Come along, ask the tough questions, and hear the answers.

---Alex

(Editor's Note: To see more about how we're taking active steps to help our graduates find work, check out our commercial project for Rocketseed, and our short film done for a global aid agency.

Steve

The Freelancers' Survival Guide

If you work in the animation industry, the chances are that at some point you will be self-employed, either running your own small business or working as a freelancer. Even if you do land a good job as an employee of a company, most likely it will last at most a year or two, since jobs in our industry tend to be project-driven. Even well-established companies tend to expand and contract according to the size of their order book. So what’s an animator to do to stay afloat and pay the rent, let alone finance a mortgage and a family? The answer is, you have to be smart, and you must understand the rules of freelancing.

Your first and most important task is to get really good at what you do. This is an obvious rule, but many animation students don’t realize just how competitive the industry is. At university, the pace of life can move slowly. But your life as a freelancer is a world of perpetual deadlines – any of which you will miss at your peril. You have to be on top of your craft, and be better than the rest. It takes a while to get really good, so you must use your time at uni to study hard and practice. Make your work entertaining and fun to watch.

Students worry a lot about grades, but the most important thing that any student will have on graduation is not their class of degree, but their demo reel. A graduate’s demo reel is their shop front, their display of talent. Nowadays it will be online at a website or blog. A great demo reel brings in work. The number one rule of demo reels? – no mistakes. Most studios get piles of unsolicited demo reels. The good news is - they will probably look at your reel. The bad news is - they will probably look at your reel for ten seconds or less. So you have, in effect, ten seconds to impress. If there are any errors in your work, they will notice, and they will assume one of two things: either you saw the mistake, but could not fix it, or, worse, you didn’t see the mistake. Either way, you’re in the no pile.

If you want a successful freelance career, you must be a generalist and a problem-solver. The more parts of the animation process you can master, the more useful you are to an employer or a client. Animators often double up as storyboard artists and character designers. The more technically minded can do 3D modeling, maybe some rigging, possibly even some texturing and lighting. The smaller the studio, the more you will be expected to be a jack-of-all-trades. Plus, if you are going to take on short projects for clients yourself you will need to know a bit of everything in order to deliver a final product, or else have quick access to someone who can. Lots of freelancers work this way, in informal teams, pooling expertise so that all parts of the project can get completed on time.

Graduates also need to learn the nuts and bolts of freelancing. These are the kind of technical skills that universities tend not to teach, because it falls under the ugly heading of training rather than education. But whatever it is called, freelancers need to know it. They must learn how to draw up an invoice, how to manage their taxes (freelance income is typically not taxed at source – you have to pay the taxman later), learn how to deal with clients and learn how to manage client expectations successfully. Hopefully your school or university will teach you this stuff, but plenty won’t. In practice, there is no substitute for a live project to teach you how it all works, which is why we try to encourage even second year students at Bucks to take on small commercial work for paying clients.

How do graduates land their first freelance project? Pro bono work is a good way to start, working for free or at very low rates, often for friends, family, or friends-of-friends. Try not to turn down a job; instead find a way to embrace new work even if you don’t have time and you’re not sure how to pull it off. Juggling projects and taking calculated risks is what freelancers do. Feeling overworked? Join the club. Don’t know how to use a piece of software? Me neither. Stay up late, work Sundays, do online tutorials at YouTube - do what it takes. The more and varied jobs you can turn around, the better you will get and the more capable you will become.

Along the way you will have to become your own IT department. You can run a small studio from your bedroom these days – which is one of the reasons we give our students at Bucks a free laptop when they arrive. We want them to become self-sufficient professionals at the earliest possible opportunity. 
 

Free computers at Bucks!

Get yourself a good laptop, and find ways to get the software you need. Become a problem solver; learn that most technical problems can be Googled – someone out there has faced the same problem you have just stumbled across, and found a solution.

Freelancers must learn to manage their finances. One of the challenges of starting out is the shocking reality that clients often don’t pay on time. A common rookie error is to start chasing up an invoice a few days after it was issued. Don’t. Clients don’t like it, and they will think you’re desperate. Many companies pay at the end of the month, or even the end of the following month. Get used to waiting. If someone doesn’t pay after 2 months – send a polite email. But know that almost everyone does pay in the end. Unlike employees, freelancers don’t get a steady paycheck – your income will fluctuate hugely. That means you need to save money and be financially defensive.

So what do you do when you finally land your first freelance job? Let’s assume you've pitched the idea, you've agreed a price for the job, and the client is shiny-eyed with excitement about the amazing work you're going to do for them. Now all you have to do is deliver what you promised. What can possibly go wrong? Plenty!

First of all, you must agree a price, and a schedule, and stick to both. Clients want to know what is going to happen, and when, and they don’t like to be told the job is going over budget. Set out the main milestones in advance, such as Script, Storyboard & Design, Animatic, Animation and Final render. Explain to the client that meeting deadlines will depend on getting their timely approval at every stage, but that whatever happens you will do your level best to deliver on time. And make sure you can deliver what you promise.

Second, Get the script approved as early as possible. Your client may have a script already, or they may want you to write one. Often they will never have done this before and will need a lot of help to get the story right. What is the story they want to tell? Who is it for? They may have no idea, or only the vaguest idea. Part of your job is to help guide them through this early, so you can get to work.

If it’s a film, the next stage is a storyboard animatic, usually edited together with sound and music, and a style guide, so the client knows exactly what they’re going to get. Show them samples of other films and agree a style for their project. Once you start animation it will too late to change this, so make sure you are agreed in advance.

It goes without saying that you must deliver on time. Clients don't care how busy you are with other things - they want their work done on time, when you promised it. They don't care if other clients are keeping you busy, or your dog is ill, or your broadband went down, or your hard drive died. Make sure you back up your work, and if you run out of time, work through the night to get it done. Do what it takes to deliver on time and be reliable.

One of the hardest things about client projects is learning to take client notes with good grace. On every job, clients will give you notes which you don’t agree with. Try not to disagree openly with the client. The best response to a dumb idea is to say "that's a great idea, why don't we try this..." and try to steer them in a less silly direction. Sometimes though you just have to do what you are told and make the best of it. Make it look as good as you can. Contrary to popular belief, you can polish a turd.

Finally, be positive. Clients want to feel that you are as excited about the project as they are. Even if you've just done an all-nighter and you feel like screaming at their latest ridiculous changes that they should have told you about weeks ago, be upbeat and optimistic. Make them feel good about working with you - remember that they are taking a risk by using your services for the first time.

And try to have fun. Over time you will build up a portfolio of work that you will be proud of and that will help you find work at other studios. Every job is a learning process that helps keep you up to date on the latest techniques, and keeps you employable.

---Alex

(Editor's Note: A slightly different version of this article was first published at Skwigly magazine on 31 January. For more practical advice on freelance careers, check out this post on your first client project, and read out our post on Portfolio Careers.  Learn the nuts and bolts of freelance life by reading our guide to invoicing clients, and our guide to freelancers and taxes.  For more on careers in general, check out our guide to animation careers here, and also take a look at this map of digital studios - a great place to start your search for work in the business.)

Introducing Nano Films

Everyone needs an animated film, even if they don't know it yet. Ten years ago, no-one could have imagined that every plumber would need a website. I predict that, in ten years time, every business will want a short animated film that tells the story of what they do.

Maybe it will be an animated logo, a mini infomercial, something to play on a smart phone, or a short film on their website, something that makes their business unique and different, something that reaches audiences (especially younger ones) who don't want to read pages of dull text on a static site.

The only trouble is - the cost. Animation is time-consuming and expensive. But what if we could make animated films really cheaply, for a tiny budget? Then, surely, everyone could afford one, and businesses all over the world would queue up to commission small films.

In September 2012 I set up my online school at www.animation-apprentice.org, training students to become animators and reach a professional standard where they can find work in the industry. All the lectures are online - there is no physical classroom.

At the same time I started working here at Bucks, helping to develop and launch our new Animation and Visual Effects course, designed to compete with the very best courses in the UK. Universities are slow-moving beasts but we launched the course successfully in October 2013, and applications for 2014 are way up on last year.

One of the key selling points of Bucks is employability, but how do we actually put this into practice? One solution might be to find work directly for our graduates and undergraduates, but how do we go about this?

Poster design by Monika Dcikowicz

The next step then was obvious. Why not start to find work for all this emerging talent by bringing in small freelance jobs, starting with friends and aquaintances, and slowly building up a business that can take on many small projects. Tiny films don't require much management, and they don't need to be expensive. So our pitch is simple - at Nano Films, we make tiny films on a tiny budget.



Our first film was made last year and has the snappy title "What is Wrong with the Global Development Organization"? Designed and directed by Bucks graduate Monika Dzikowicz, it is playing at the Exeter animated film festival next month. It's all about the problem of what happens to an organisation with good intentions which get taken over by bad management - which is to say pretty much most organisations anywhere. Almost everyone can relate.

The second film we did was for Rocketseed, an email banner company that does some complex tech stuff that can be kind of hard to understand. The purpose of the film was to help the company explain what they do in a simple, clear way that their non-tech customers can easily comprehend.


Making short films is fun. Often clients don't really know what they want, so much of the job involves figuring out what is the story they want to tell, and then working out the best way to tell it. Part of the challenge involves keeping it very short. Almost everyone has a minute to spare to watch a short; but few of us have five. It's easy to write a long script - but writing a short one takes time.

Both my shiny new online course at Animation Apprentice and my old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar classroom at Bucks produce a constant stream of talent. Making short films on small budgets is a great way to keep graduates and undergraduates busy, help kickstart their careers, and provide companies with a simple way to get their message across.

But most of all, it's fun.

----Alex

(Editor's Note: You can see more about Nano Films at www.nano-films.com. To find out more about our films, check out this post on What is Wrong with the Global Development Organisation?. You can read more about the Rocketseed project here. For more practical advice on freelance careers, check out this post on your first client project, and read out our post on Portfolio Careers.  Learn the nuts and bolts of freelance life by reading our guide to invoicing clients, and our guide to freelancers and taxes.  For more on careers in general, check out our guide to animation careers here, and also take a look at this map of digital studios - a great place to start your search for work in the business.)

How Do I Find a Job in Media? - Our Graduates Reveal the Secrets

How do graduates in digital media find that crucial first job? And the second? And how do you build a career? Last friday a dozen Bucks graduates who are currently working  in the creative industries came back to their alma mater to talk to our undergraduates about what it takes to find work. They They discussed many things, but the recurring theme was employment - and how to find it. Below are some of their tips for graduates looking to find work.


1. Turn up on time 
A number of members of the panel mentioned good time keeping as important, which is as much as to say - be reliable.

2. Don’t be a d**k
No-one wants to work with people they don't like. Be nice!

3. Don’t smell bad. 
Try not to smell like a hangover. 

4. Learn to blag it – but not too much. 
Be confident, and try to say "yes, I can do that". But don't promise to do anything you know you can't pull off. No-one likes to be let down, and Producers will not forgive you if you make them look foolish. Be protective of your reputation - it's a small industry. 

5. Surround yourself with people who like doing the same stuff as you do
Be part of a community of artists who enjoy doing the same kind of work. You will learn from them, and they will learn from you. You might even set up a company together.

6. Work for free or for low wages – but not for too long 
Be willing to do work for modest sums, or for travel expenses, or just for the experience - in order to break into the industry. Unpaid internships can lead to a job. 

7. Contact as many companies as possible
Expect rejection, don't take it personally. Do your homework, research companies that need your skills; offer to help them out for low wages or for work experience - it may lead to a job.

8. Offer to help out on a shoot
Film shoots always need bodies - offer to help out. Again, you'll probably be doing it for free, or for travel costs, but this can be great experience.

9. Create your own mystique.
Find the thing that you do well, and get known for it. Make people feel confident in what you do. Like the sound guy who walks into a room, taps on a table and listens for the echo. It means nothing – but it looks good

10. Watch out for what’s on your FB page
People looking to employ you will check you out, so make sure your public profile isn't embarrassing. Your hilarious views on politics may make your friends laugh but it might cost you a job.

11.  Be really good at what you do
This is the obvious one. If you are not confident in your work - who else will be? 

12. You’re only as good as your last job – and your next job.
As a freelancer you will be judged on the last thing you did. Make sure everything you do is completed to a high professional standard. 

13. Ask not what your client can do for you, ask what you can do for your client.
Clients are looking to you to solve their problems, not create more. Try not to be too needy or high maintenance. Be a problem-solver not a problem-creator.



(Editor's Note: To see more about how we're taking active steps to help our graduates find work, check out our latest commercial project for Rocketseed, and our short film done for a global aid agency. For more information on working as a freelancer, check out our recent post on Portfolio Careers.  For advice on careers, check out our guide to animation careers here, and also take a look at this map of digital studios - a great place to start your search for work in the business.)