My worst experience has always been the waiting time in queues, other then that every artist has been an absolute blast to work with!

That's a fairly optimistic response, love to hear it!

two

years

after payment

HAHAHA OH NO!!!! The delivery on this.

Well, actually, strictly speaking I've had worse customer service than the artist vanishing for two years (through technicality; hell, I'd even forgotten entirely about it for a year of that). At least I got what I expected out of it. Eventually.

I did have some clown try to pass me some half-assed bargain basement quality in low resolution to boot, and they upscaled it when I tried to ask for the full resolution...

Artists that accepted my money and then completely disappeared. There have been at least 3

OOF. That's happened to me too. On a totally separate note, amazing icon?

Taking my money for a YCH (Along with 10 other people), then proceeding to say they "Don't have the time or energy to do them" while they keep posting personal art. And every time you try to confront them for a refund, they send you a hastily made sketch to show they're "working" on it.
This was 10 years ago. Still no art. They even still have our names on their queue list on their journal footer.

WHAT?? You can't make this shit up.

I'm not sure if being strung along for years in hopes of getting what I paid for is worse than them just vanishing with they money, but they have both happened.

😔 I am in pain.

An artist, streaming and taking commissions in-stream.
Accepts me for a spot in the queue. We discuss the work done and we come to an agreement.
During the work their regulars start making fun of my art.

Artist does not tell them to stop it. Actually joins in.
To this day I am displeased with the work. Despite technically a good quality, the memories attached sour the piece.

that one stings, I'm sorry you had to experience that :(

It was the sheer unprofessionalism attached.

WHAT? Oh god that gave a sour-stomach second hand. That's just hideous.

As said just above. It was the sheer unprofessionalism that did it.

Went to an artist with a request, not for a YCH, but for a commission.

Was told that "they'd stopped doing commissions of that type" even though the first line in my note was "I was wondering if you'd still be willing to do one of these, if not, that's okay."

The response I got essentially amounted to "No, I won't do those, I only do commissions of this particular thing now, I'm done with doing the other ones."

I went, "Oh, okay, well that's fine with me, would you do this character of mine?"

Short, curt answer, I figured, okay, well, off on the wrong foot, but maybe its just like them to be curt and to the point, don't want to be judgmental.

First WIP that comes back is a lined sketch. Missing part of the character's anatomy. Ask for a correction, was told it'd be extra time to reline. Okay, I was wondering why I didn't get a sketch first, but okay, different artists do updates in different ways, I'm still on board, but a bit put off by this now.

Next WIP comes back, except its the finished piece. Totally wrong colors on the character, despite providing five references. Sure, I didn't have a reference sheet, but I provided several pieces, with the character in dark, and bright lighting, with the character on a white background and well lit, and it was abundantly clear what her colors were.

I was told that if there would be any more corrections, it'd be a $15 fee. At this point, I'm done. Completely out of patience of any kind. I say (to myself, mercifully,) "If you return the character with the wrong colors, AGAIN, and charge me for YOUR mistake, and continue to get snippy with me, I'm just gonna tell my friends not to deal with you in the future, or post a short description on Artist Beware."

Thankfully, the image comes back, finished, with the character in the right colors. Along with a snarky message of "I hope this is up to your standards."

I send a short, "Thank you for your work" and then promptly unwatched them.

I understand not being friendly, or not being personable, not everyone is, and that's okay, I'm an adult, I can handle people being brusque and to-the-point, but if you're going to be rude, get things wrong multiple times, and then, when you don't even bother to ask me for clarification on whether something is done right, you're going to charge me when you make a mistake if you have to go back and fix something you did wrong? Absolutely not, I will not want to return to you for services in the future, that's obnoxious and absurd. I get that it was a small fee, I don't care that it was $15, it coulda been $5, but the attitude attached to the fee was just completely unnecessary, especially when I've had other artists do frankly huge changes to make things look better on private pieces too! Its baffling to me.

100% Agree with this. As an artist, you're providing a service to someone, and the characters involved are precious! From your description, they fucked that in every way possible. Glad you got what you paid for, but I'm sure there's no warm feelings looking at the art. What a shame!

Odd situation for me. I was friends with an artist and I ended up collabing with them on a YCH comic (I did the writing). After an exciting auction (and the birth of my son) she disappeared. Leaving me and her customers wondering what happened.

I have had a few experiences, one actually ongoing. The one ongoing is an artist who has not started my commission after almost a year. Though the keep opening for everyone else and frequently post. I have to remind them and even purchased a sketch stream from them just to get some work done for some of the commissions. They are an absolutely amazing artist, but I guess bad time management with an over need for new income.
The one that was really the worst was an artist who I had trouble with money with. I sent the money but because of their account paypal wouldn't give it to them, or so they said. They seemed fluent in english at first when I commissioned them and talked with them, but when the problems started they seemed to misunderstand my every word and their sentences became increasingly choppy. Simple sentences would be taken to mean different things and it was a struggle to even ask if they got the money yet, and I couldn't ask for a refund. Finally it was settled and they had me send money to a second account. It went through and after 3 months after that I got my image. I still don't understand why it became a problem to communicate.

So, I was friends with a new artist and I was their moral and mental support, since their life was sort of shit thanks to homophobic father of his. We followed each other and were friends and that and when he first started to open his commissions, and when ever he advertised them, I would retweet his tweets also in an attempt to get him more audience, even tho my own audience is very small. But when I had my ads posted, he did no such things, but that is okay, a bit rude but I was able to manage that because there was a possibility he did not even see those, but what happened later makes me doubt that.
When he made a fanart for some popufur and got a bunch of new followers from that popufurs youtube shoutout and got an actual audience, he unfollowed me from every single image sharing site we used and I became a nobody for him. He pretty much got piss in his head for getting a large audience in a single night, and ditched me to the trenches pretty much.
And if my memory serves me, he never thanked or said anything for the birthday art I made him once.

Worst one I've ever had was 2.5 years to get a sketch wip for a big painting comm that I spent $300 on, and that was after not-so-gently telling them I'd be pursuing legal action. They then sent a wip, closed comms, said they'd had a mental breakdown and disappeared from the Web. They owed upward of $16,000 in refunds to people, last I'd heard. It was really sad but at the same time, if you can't deliver, don't take on 600+ commissions. In fact, don't take on600+ commissions anyway, because that's just too much for anyone to handle.

This one is ROUGH. I know how those avalanches happen, but I've got a cap on never taking more work than I can produce in two weeks. It's why I'm often closed, but then everybody gets what they want/need!

I've sadly had a few over the years :c first was a long, long time ago with a very high profile artist. Communicated what was to be worked on and what we wanted out of it, payment sent, and then, nothing. His wife supposedly handled his communications and such afterwards but my commission and notes on DeviantArt just didn't go anywhere and had to sadly write it off as lost. $750 gone. Few years ago had a same thing happen with a different artist except I got the art though it was very low quality and not to the examples shown, they stopped communicating afterwards and never addressed anything or why they sent a low quality resolution image. After that, I took a hiatus from trying new artists to commission and then went out again to try a hand at finding others to work with, commissioned one person and pretty much accepted my commission but had little to no response, except seldomly. A year later I fired a message out asking for an update and they offered me either a refund or waiting, excuse being they had more money than time. Though I've seen them with plenty of time to do things. Ultimately I wrote it off as it felt obvious that they didn't have any desire to continue working on the piece. And finally, there was one that we talked and had gotten in the process of doing a commission and I had paid for but they didn't go beyond the sketch and said I only paid more than the sketch but their commission price chart would say I paid for a colored sketch. They retorted with, "That's an outdated commission price sheet" and never told me how much it would cost, so I said that what was done was fine. Never went back to them and pretty sure they never updated the price sheet.

Yeah, been around the block a few times sadly

Oh that's a LOT 😭 You're so communicative and kind, I can't believe you'd be taken advantage of like that. Some artists, I'll NEVER understand.

Never write it off. It just reinforces their bad behavior and besides, that's YOUR hard-earned money going away for a service that was not satisfactorily rendered, y'know?

I payed for a commission that had to be paid in full upfront for my husband($200+) and was hoping to get it for him before his birthday that was in 3 months at the time...I had no updates let alone where I was in the queue and any answer I got was when I asked/noted them was, "I've been busy or I'll work on a sketch soon" You know while they are posting new ych's and coms are opened in their gallery/journal...2 years later after giving up on this artist they gave me the finished product with the note saying, "Any changes will be extra" and not wanting to wait another 6 months to a year to make the horns smaller I just said thanks.
(Also before I payed for this I asked the artist if they were comfortable drawing and even let them have artistic freedom for the pose and facial expression. and during that 2 year wait I noted them 6 times to make sure everything was ok(covid at the time) with usually getting no response while they were very active during that time.)

THIS IS SO ROUGH! I have a "birthday clause" in my T.O.S that time-sensitive commissions get top priority. This makes me so sad. I'm sorry you got so yanked around.

I got a gift commi of my fav artist to create my first ever sona.
It was amazing and he is still my fav but he does to this day mock me viciously from time to time. . .

over all 10/10 would comm again

He sounds like an asshole lets all collectively get his ass

not counting the times pieces took literal years or the thousands of dollars I think I will never see again from artists who lef tthe fandom or ghosted me.I think the crappiest experience would be when some female artist owed me a commission and after a few months I politely asked for an update and they snipped at me " I got better things to do then draw your Sonic porn" well BEyatch if thats the case give me my money back and go to h e double hockey sticks! I did end up getting a pencil work of ok quality when her boyfriend artist shamed her.but the whole experience was bitter. Too many unprofessional non business types in the fandom. not a high % mind you.but when you commissions hundreds of artists unfortunately you`ll get a few beavis and buttheads "wouldnt it be cool if you could get commission money but like not do the commissions?""yeah yeah! drawing for others sucks! but money is cool!"

I personally find being paid to draw sonic porn a dream come true. That being said, I agree, the lack of professionalism I see here and there astounds me. Lots of amazing artists to make up for it, though!

Maybe they were having a bad day? Ouch though. Revision is part of the process, I had no idea so many artists on here were so finicky!

I paid an artist nearly $400, which he never started, for 4 years, before he finally refunded me. The refund was sent to my PayPal instead of back to my bank account, so I had to transfer it myself. It cost $30.

So basically, I gave out a $400 loan that cost me $30.

Ffffffuuudge, dang it, been sitting on this all day and NOW IMGONNA WHINE AND CRY, TOO!!
So, Im an artist, not the best one, obviously, and I totally understand that thing come up, and yadda yadda. It happens to all of us, I get it.

HoWeVeR,
Not everything excusable.
Frik, how can I can gripe without naming names...

Oddly enough, my worst experience with an artist was when someone ELSE commissioned them.
Someone commissioned an artist to draw a NSFW piece of my sona and his. It had multiple versions, was extremely graphic, and then he paid to have it private (so that the artist didnt post it here, and I didnt know about it for a while). I cant divulge how I found out about it without giving his identity away, but needless to say, when I questioned the artist about it, she said may as well have said ‘Go f*ck yourself’, and cut contact with me.
I was LIVID, because this was my most personal character that I have, and she totally disregarded me as the OWNER because someone paid her. It might sound silly to most people, but I genuinely felt violated on so many levels. Having been through a real instance of sexual assult as a teenager, I had a lot of the same feelings get brought back to the surface when I discoverd all of this.
Anyway, yeah, its a BIG reason that I updated my TOS recently in regard to this kind of potential behavior. Now people hafta pay extra for me to hide work, and unless its publically posted for all parties involved, I contact the owners of the characters to make sure they’re okay with what Im drawing.

EDIT TO ADD: Not to mention, I also had a very clear statement saying that I DID NOT want her drawn in nsfw situations without my express permission. I guess thats what hundreds of dollars of incentive will do to some people, ugh.

while it is just lines on paper not a real person. the facts of the matter is that personal "fursona" characters (or even sometimes any characters owned by someone) can be very personal and precious things to people.And to use them for your own whims is at the very least quite rude. If the person who comissioned it isnt apologetic,then theyre an asshole.If the artist who drew it knew they are too,
If they didnt know and then if they arent sorry once they found out the made an accident, then theyre still an asshole.Thats why a lot of artists ask for proof of some sort when I get art of other peoples characters.Which I`ll gladly provide if I have it,or encourage them to contact the owner before starting to confirm I have permission.

My heart dropped reading this. It's not remotely silly, it's EXTREMELY violating. This is how we choose to represent ourselves, to express our most intimate feelings. Our identities are in these characters. She may as well have shared nudes without permission. I'm so sorry that happened to you. Thank you for sharing it with us.

holly hell! That's terrible! And they couldn't even apologize for doing that.