How to Love Outsourcing

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How to Love Outsourcing

• Jon Jones presents

Now in HD, with high-res normal and specular maps!
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Whos this Jon Jones guy?

• Art Outsourcing Manager.
• Builds and manages outsourced art teams
• Worked with 2K Games and NCsoft
• Blogs about it at www.TheJonJones.com
• 3D Art Producer.
• Runs a team of artists at Conceptopolis
• Contractor.
• Offers expertise on outsourcing, building and
  managing remote teams, art pipeline development,
  troubleshooting and more

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Outsourcing Art Benefits

• Can be cheaper than inhouse
• No overhead costs
• Not burning money while artists sit idle
• Access to a global talent pool
• Your pick of the worlds best artists
• Ease of scaling production up or down
• Firing slackers has never been easier!

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Outsourcing Art Drawbacks

• Lack of project familiarity
• Time zone differences
• Cultural and language barriers
• Collaborating remotely is tricky
• Keeping everything organized is hard
• Bait-and-switch tactics
• Unfamiliarity with game development
• Some artists just suck

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Dont worry, theres hope!

• Many problems are preventable.
• Setting proper groundwork is crucial.
• I will show you how.

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Documentation is EVERYTHING.

• Know your pipeline.
• Document your pipeline.
• Dont outsource until you do.
• This will save you time and money.
• Every minute you spend writing good documentation
  now will save you ten minutes later.
• Poor documentation breeds poor art.
• Dont pay for art twice! Write good docs!

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The Contractors Disadvantage

• Art studios make art, not games
• Large knowledge gap between making art, and
  making art that works for games
• Less in the Americas, moreso overseas
• No institutional knowledge
• No frame of reference for your teams preexisting
  tips, tricks, scripts, and workarounds
• Good documentation fixes this.

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Information Creates Its Own Context

• Everything in one place
• Dont make them hunt down info across many
  documents, emails and IMs
• Avoid vague pronouns
• he she it that they

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Prepare, prepare, prepare

• Spend 90 of your time up front.
• Plan for all contingencies.
• Plan for them to happen.
• Plan your way out.
• Create conditions that show a clear direction
  when decisions need making.
• Good process forbids indecision.

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The New Guy Mindset

• Youre new. What do you need to know?
• Go through the entire process yourself.
• Step.
• By.
• Step.
• In detail.
• NOT from memory.
• All of this goes in an Outsourcing Kit.

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Animation Outsourcing Kit

• Comes in two pieces
• General Information
• Technical specifications, reference, etc
• Reusable!
• Specific Assignment
• Concept art for the job, description of job, etc

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Animation Outsourcing Kit

• Contains the following
• Documentation
• Overview of animation work required
• Style, Sequences, which skeleton, who rigs it?
• Technical specifications
• Master list of animations
• Style guides
• Scale \ units reference
• Exporter
• Tools
• FAQ

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Animation Outsourcing Kit

• Reference
• Animation source files from 3D package
• Samples of every type of animation
• (idle, run, attack, death, etc)
• Animation sample videos
• Add captions to the video noting what you like
• Use a popular codec, OR include the codec

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Pre-built Animation Lists

• Four creature types
• Melee, Ranged, Caster, Boss.
• Sequences in common Idle, Walk, Run, Pain, Die
• Unique animations Melee Attack, Ranged Attack,
  Caster Attack, Boss Attacks.
• Make each type its own list.
• Describe each sequence and cite the references.
• Copy-paste the descriptions of common sequences.
• Put those four lists in the Animation Outsourcing
  Kit.
• Copy and paste into new Specific Assignments.
• Time savings ahoy!

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Take A Minute To Do It Right

• It doesnt take that much longer to turn a good
  job into a great job.
• Take the time. It will save you time later.

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Documentation Should Evolve!

• A document is never finished... Just mostly
  complete.
• Whenever a contractor asks a question, document
  the answer.
• Why answer the same question twice?

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Frontload all negotiation!

• Now the documentation is done.
• Most risk is now minimized!
• Next step Contract negotiation.
• Establishing rates
• Creating a flexible contract structure
• Setting expectations of behavior

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Partners vs Hired Monkeys

• Yes. No.

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Partners vs Hired Monkeys

• Hire a partner, not a trained monkey.
• Partners want you to succeed.
• Partners will try harder to to ensure each
  others success.
• Good partners are worth keeping long-term.
• Monkeys dont care.

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Benefits of finding a good partner

• Faster turnaround
• Lower prices
• Better art
• The studios best artists
• Preferential treatment

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Negotiate a fair rate

• Be flexible on cost on the first contract
• If the work is harder, negotiate a higher rate.
• If the work is simpler, negotiate a lower rate.
• If you change the specs, adjust the price.
• Karma aside, there are very practical reasons for
  this.

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Dividing work into units

• Separate into as few meaningful divisions as
  possible.
• First, Asset type
• Then, Difficulty
• Small Creature, Medium Creature, Large Creature
• Divisions should only be as large as it makes
  sense.
• Too small becomes too granular to organize.
• Too large feels like nothing ever gets done.

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Define what comprises an asset

• Price out the different phases
• Character
• Model
• Texture
• Rig
• Round that total up to the nearest 100 200,
  depending on variable difficulty between assets.
• Thats your per-asset price.

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Pricing Ambiguous Work

• Chunk it out into 1 2 day segments.
• Artists LOVE finishing subgoals frequently

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Hot Tip for Contract Structure

• Make it invoicable bi-weekly.
• Artists LOVE getting paid on a 2-week cycle
• If theyre finishing something every day or so
  and getting paid like this, productivity will
  skyrocket.

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Benefits of Modularity

• Pricing out everything per asset in advance saves
  time amending the contract midstream.
• Oh crap! We need five more creatures! Quick,
  lets renegotiate all this now!
  versusLets add five more Large
  Creatures. Done!

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But What About Revisions?

• Roll a preset revision number into the per-asset
  cost.
• I like 3 revisions per asset.
• Price out extra revisions as a separate
  percentage of that.
• If asset costs 1000
• 25 of asset changed 250 revision fee
• 50 of asset changes 500 revision fee
• 75 of asset changed 750 revision fee

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Revisions as a performance metric

• If you document well and chose good contractors,
  no asset should need more than two revisions
• Three revisions or more means
• I failed to spec well
• The contractors failed me
• If its my fault, I pay for rework.
• If its their fault, they fix it for free.

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The Payoff of Expectation-Setting

• Setting expectations early and planning for
  everything makes a problems cause obvious and
  its solution simple
• 1) You screwed up and need to fix the spec, or
• 2) They screwed up and need to shape up.
• No time is wasted pointing fingers.
• Honesty, humility, candor and fairness have been
  maintained from the beginning.
• If the contractor cant meet that standard, you
  cut them loose.

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Ease of Amending Contracts

• Contractor succeeds, contracts can be expanded
  quickly.
• Contractor fails, contract terminates just as
  quickly.
• Bickering over how much to pay for a
  partially-completed asset when youre cutting a
  contractor loose is not fun. Speccing well makes
  it unnecessary.

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Questions?

• Feel free to contact me offline via email
• jonjones_at_gmail.com
• Or via my website
• http//www.thejonjones.com
• Thanks for listening!
• - Jon Jones