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Scenic artist vs freelance designer

The differences between scenic artists and freelance designers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 4-6 years to become a scenic artist, becoming a freelance designer takes usually requires 6-12 months. Additionally, a freelance designer has an average salary of $57,260, which is higher than the $52,584 average annual salary of a scenic artist.

The top three skills for a scenic artist include theater productions, art directors and scene painting. The most important skills for a freelance designer are sketch, CSS, and HTML.

Scenic artist vs freelance designer overview

Scenic ArtistFreelance Designer
Yearly salary$52,584$57,260
Hourly rate$25.28$27.53
Growth rate6%3%
Number of jobs4,09745,914
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 70%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age4038
Years of experience612

Scenic artist vs freelance designer salary

Scenic artists and freelance designers have different pay scales, as shown below.

Scenic ArtistFreelance Designer
Average salary$52,584$57,260
Salary rangeBetween $24,000 And $113,000Between $39,000 And $83,000
Highest paying City--
Highest paying state--
Best paying company--
Best paying industry--

Differences between scenic artist and freelance designer education

There are a few differences between a scenic artist and a freelance designer in terms of educational background:

Scenic ArtistFreelance Designer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 70%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common majorFine ArtsGraphic Design
Most common collegeDuke UniversityUniversity of Pennsylvania

Scenic artist vs freelance designer demographics

Here are the differences between scenic artists' and freelance designers' demographics:

Scenic ArtistFreelance Designer
Average age4038
Gender ratioMale, 45.4% Female, 54.6%Male, 48.0% Female, 52.0%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 4.5% Unknown, 5.6% Hispanic or Latino, 15.0% Asian, 7.1% White, 67.3% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.6%Black or African American, 3.4% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.6% Asian, 10.4% White, 70.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%
LGBT Percentage11%13%

Differences between scenic artist and freelance designer duties and responsibilities

Scenic artist example responsibilities.

  • Airbrush, touch up guns, car sprayer equip.
  • Solo shows in NYC, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
  • Maintain the integrity of the show by touching up paint on scenery and repairing costumes.
  • Work as a stitcher, sewing costumes, making alterations, and general maintenance of costume pieces.
  • Match colors to paint chips and utilize various spray equipment including binks, hand hold pumpers and airbrush.
  • Create a multi media advertising campaign by creating a Wix base website, Facebook page and several print methods.
  • Show more

Freelance designer example responsibilities.

  • Lead the transition from paste-up, typesetting, pasting up page layout to digital ad/page building and web printing.
  • Hand-Code HTML, CSS, JS and PHP for custom design solutions and form processing, validation, and animations.
  • Provide identity and stationery design, web design, HTML / CSS development and WordPress integration (content management system).
  • Image manipulation in platforms such as Photoshop and illustrator as per assign.
  • Develop high-qualityshop drawings for all casework to be build by in-house woodshop.
  • Design websites, landing pages, banner ads, pop-ups, and HTML emails.
  • Show more

Scenic artist vs freelance designer skills

Common scenic artist skills
  • Theater Productions, 18%
  • Art Directors, 17%
  • Scene Painting, 14%
  • Scene Shop, 12%
  • Faux Finishes, 12%
  • Fiberglass, 7%
Common freelance designer skills
  • Sketch, 11%
  • CSS, 7%
  • HTML, 6%
  • Adobe Photoshop, 6%
  • Adobe Illustrator, 6%
  • Photography, 5%

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