Game development in your spare time, and main job as front-end or 3D-Artist?

Question

3D

Hello everyone, I'm 20 years old, I've been studying front-end development for half a year, I'm leaning on javascript and
My long-term goal :
Have a source of income of ~ $ 1000 / month. spending as little time as possible on work, and in my free time working on a game, the scale of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SOMA, etc., on the Unreal Engine 4 engine. I plan to hire people to help with development for part of the money.
But a few days agoI thought that for game development it would be much better if I worked as a 3d-artist, modeler / visualizer / animator. I went to analyze the market and found that in my city there are 0 vacancies in the field of 3D, there are very few jobs on Russian-language freelance exchanges, there are jobs on upwork, but my English. is not ideal, and they rely only on the English-speaking exchanges somehow unreliably, besides, my half a year of work will depreciate.
Actually the question is whether everything is really so bad for 3d-shnikov? Is it difficult to find orders/remote work, average salaries? Maybe I didn't look there?
Interesting as wellthe opinion of people who, in addition to the main work on games, work, do you have enough time to develop games, what do you think about my situation, maybe it’s better to learn a little 3d and go “boil” in indie development for a pittance, hoping to realize your ideas in the future?
IMPORTANT , first of all, I am interested in objective "chilled" answers, it is clear that there are also janitors who earn a lot of money, but I am interested in more mundane information on which I can draw conclusions.

Answer 1

In any public engine there are asset stores where 3D modelers (studios or singles) are already present.
In large companies - money and staff.
Option 2:
1. Create a single game using your skills in 3D modeling or buy / order ready-made assets. Then sell the finished game product in large markets.
2. Get a job in a large and well-known company as a 3D modeler for a good salary, which releases A-class games and above.

Answer 2

If you have a strong desire to create games, I would still advise you to find a job that will give you experience in creating games. Well, either one where there will not be a big load, there will be free time and there will be enough money for life. And of course, it would be nice to find a team of like-minded people, the same people who really want to create games and know how to do something.

Answer 3

On 3D modeling:
1. Everything that could be modeled has already been modeled 300 times over the past 20 years. And all this is sold on stocks for a penny, or is freely available in hundreds of thousands of copies. Modelers of chairs / cars / pistols / houses, if they are in demand, then at a price not much higher than the purchase on stocks.
2. On freelance modeling, mere pennies are paid, it’s not even worth considering.
3. Really in demand and well paid:
4. 3D modeling and visualization skills are required today even for furniture sales managers for 25k rubles.
5. By itself, 3D modeling/visualization in the real sector does not bring specific commercial benefits to the employer/customer and for the majority is just a "bonus picture". The pay matches the perception.
For those who climb into 3D for money - yes, everything is definitely bad. The same "hungry artists" who have been doing this for years for fun, who are rushing from it, who create something new and of high quality, publish "awards" - they are noticed and offered good conditions. Therefore, the demand is not visible, because looking for talents through vacancies is a disastrous business.
Games of this magnitude are created by large teams, over the years (the same SOMA was made for more than 5 years) and on impressive budgets. Take off your rose-colored glasses as soon as possible, you will not create such a scale in your free time from work for "saved from lunches."
Again, get down to the ground, otherwise the harsh reality will slam your face against this earth from a height.
For frontend:
Full-fledged development of the js-stack, portfolio development, installation and development by a junior - from 3 years. Someone has less, someone has more, but on average in the hospital up to 3 years of real development experience - this is not a developer, but rather a js-monkey. After 3 years, it is already possible, with some effort, to count on the position of middle, or move to upwork / remote work (yes, here is English) and count on "from $ 1000 / month" .... that's only with relatively full employment (and not left back a couple of hours a day at a convenient time), with attempts in their free time to catch up on rapidly obsolete skills and knowledge in the js world.
According to a well-known theory, in order to become a full-fledged confident specialist in one (!) business, you need to spend 10,000 hours on real practice in it (~ 5 years, if from morning to evening, excluding training time). Without this, you will not succeed either financially or professionally, either in web development, or in game development, or in computer graphics. Perhaps there are unique people who can get into asceticism / no-life and become a specialist in 2 different areas at once in 5 years, but:
Understand yourself better, your goals and priorities. While I see a mess in my head with youthful maximalism and the desire to earn all the money in the world, wedge into all the hot moves, stir up mega-projects in one helmet, and so that it is still fun and preferably within 2-3 years.
Decent money is spinning in game development, but this is a very narrow area (in 90% of the CIS regions it doesn’t even make sense to look for demand) and there are no need for stray guys who rivet sites for food for half a day, and after dinner they run in for fun of the game to do.