I have an idea for a set of character rigs and I want to work with a character designer to help flesh them out. I'm curious, what materials should I have ready ahead of time that gives the designer the information they need to best do the job? Also, I'm trying to understand the budgeting side of projects like these. Anyone know of any references to hourly rate ranges or salary information? Thanks, I appreciate any insight.
Being on the other end of that for the most part, I can only say that it would be helpful to have all the specifics about the rig you have in mind clearly defined (foot roll, bendy bones, corrective shape keys, works with Unity, etc...) before asking anyone so that there's as little ambiguity as possible about the result that you want.
As for hourly rates, I would budget for at least $100 per hour of their time. Without the full details in place they can't know how many hours it will take them, which makes the total cost a surprise (and usually not a fun surprise), so it's even more important that you plan out the project on paper to the last detail, with the understanding that you may have to be flexible on some points.
Does that help? This would probably be a better question for @theluthier or @waylow since I think they have more experience in that department.
That's extremely helpful, thanks Jonathan. The rigging part makes complete sense to me. I've messed with enough rigs to know what features I would like to have implemented and what they are commonly called. Its the part of describing a character to a concept artist or modeler that I get stuck the most. How do I best transfer a character idea from my head, to somebody else's pen? Should I have some kind of back story; or something more descriptive like body type, hair color/style, height?
I've tried talking to a concept artist before and it felt a lot like this. I was asked to describe the character. It felt like no matter the description I gave it was met with, "That's great....but describe the character to me." In the end it was frustration on both sides, because I didn't know how to answer and the artist wasn't getting the answers they were looking for.
Maybe I can write that off as a bad experience but with this project I really want to do my homework. It would be great to know what I can do to best "describe my character".
I would recommend you go through our Concept art courses on creating characters to understand the process a bit. Here is one on the Robot Character, it might help you understand the terminology or possibly even just understand what parts of the character should you explain a bit more in detail. Here is another character course, aptly named Character Design Process, both discuss some unique elements from an organic human character to a more "cold" and mechanical robot character.