Q: Any highlights you would like to share in Architectural Rendering Business?

A: I was working for Beyer, Blinder, Belle in NYC.  I was living in Connecticut at the time, so I was commuting over an hour each day and I was working with some architects on some building designs.  It was pretty boring stuff, but it was a short four month stint.  Later another department called me to work on this home in Westchester.  I never worked on interiors, but this was a first.  It was absolutely immaculate. If you can think of details like the Breakers in Newport, that was the type of architectural detail that was going into this home Westchester NY.  And I got to work in the modeling and renderings.  That was a really a treat.  The project was worked on by several different freelance designers, so I didn’t do all of the modeling and rendering myself, but I got a chance to work on a really cool house.  I worked on the Library of the home. It was all wood paneling and intricate stuff like that.  These architects were really good.  It was really high class and unique stiff, and none of that McMansion dribble you see all over the place, even in Westchester County.

These architects were really impressed by my work because I really detailed the wood and made sure no two elements used the same pattern.  They were really impressed with the detail.  Some time later they wanted to hire me full time, but I was already committed to other projects.

Q: Any regrets?

A: Yeah, I forgot to get copies of the renderings for my portfolio.  I do that a lot.  It’s a real bummer.

Q: Any pitfalls?

A: You would be surprised by what people are not willing to pay for.  When I was new and very green, I was hired by an architect in Greenwich CT to create a full animation of an interior of a 12,500 sq ft home.  That’s big.

I priced my services very low at $3,400 or something like that for the whole project.  The total budget for the construction of the home was like seven million dollars or something crazy like that.  The owner of the home called me up personally [rather than going through the architect] and wanted to knock down my price.  I couldn’t believe it; he was already paying very little for this animation of seven million dollar home.

Later, I showed my animation to real people in the [3D animation] business. They  asked me if I got like $20,000 or so for it.  When I told them that I did it for about $2,400, they were disgusted and wanted me out of their face.  I didn’t blame them.  I was disgusted with me too.  Now that I know more and I am older, it burns me up sometimes when other designers seriously lowball their prices just to get a project.