I'd be leery of any large or professional company that would ask for free work, perhaps even more so. I mean I can understand why an individual would want free stuff, but a professional company? They don't do things they don't charge for, and when they come up with the prices for their product or services they include in the budget the costs of art or labour or whatever else they need. Anyways, doing stuff for limited individuals for 'exposure' is just a bad move. Especially when there are options for artists to participate in contests and/or display their work in places that specifically cater to giving artists a leg up and recognition and which specifically caters to the crowd they would want to be recognized by. For instance NVIDIA is currently having a Future Cities competition, if CG artist or environment artist want exposure that's the sort of thing they do. And if a trade magazine or social media thing like Artstation or Deviant Art wants to give an artist exposure, they do an interview and feature art the artist has already done. Alternatively you can buy services that increase exposure, in places like Facebook or again Artstation (I only keep bringing up Artstation is because exposure is basically the purpose of the platform, and I'm familiar with it).
I started out silver smithing, silver doodads are the first art things that I've been paid money for, and if anyone had suggested that I do free silver work for them for exposure I would have just laughed in their faces. "Ok I give you this necklace or this other doodad made of a precious metal, for free, and you get to enjoy it and use it and keep it, and you'll give me exposure in return? Sounds like a great deal!" Except who is going to pay for the silver? And who's going to pay for equipment used to make it? I was lucky because I didn't realize it then, but what your paying for with silverwork as with any other art is not the materials (because even with huge markups on just the material you'd never cover the cost of your time if that were the case), but the time spent investing in making it designing it and learning to design it and learning your craft; I say I was lucky because I didn't value my time I spent, but silver is definitely not free and so I wasn't about to give things away for exposure. In other words the material cost prevented me from devaluing my work, and prevented anyone having the gall to say I should be giving them free stuff, or I would certainly have fallen into the same trap as other artists do when they are working with pixels and bytes.
Now I know this discussion started out from Tiana's joke, but I can't just let the subject go without trying to encourage artists to value their time and experience appropriately, and say screw you too all those that would take advantage of others like that. Which has no particular reflection on the OP or anyone else here, but Im always willing to rant about this when it comes up
Originally Posted by Falconius
I'd be leery of any large or professional company that would ask for free work, perhaps even more so. I mean I can understand why an individual would want free stuff, but a professional company? They don't do things they don't charge for, and when they come up with the prices for their product or services they include in the budget the costs of art or labour or whatever else they need. Anyways, doing stuff for limited individuals for 'exposure' is just a bad move. Especially when there are options for artists to participate in contests and/or display their work in places that specifically cater to giving artists a leg up and recognition and which specifically caters to the crowd they would want to be recognized by. For instance NVIDIA is currently having a Future Cities competition, if CG artist or environment artist want exposure that's the sort of thing they do. And if a trade magazine or social media thing like Artstation or Deviant Art wants to give an artist exposure, they do an interview and feature art the artist has already done. Alternatively you can buy services that increase exposure, in places like Facebook or again Artstation (I only keep bringing up Artstation is because exposure is basically the purpose of the platform, and I'm familiar with it).
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