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Commission ettiquite. (rant journal)
13 years ago
General
Always open for commissions. Stream:http://piczel.tv/watch/Foxena
This is going to seem like hilarious nitpicking so please bear with me. It's happened alot recently and I just... I need to say something.
I get it, alot of what i draw for people, pornography or not, can be and is fetish material. I GET IT.
HOWEVER. A due sense of Decorum would be HUGELY appreciated. Just because I draw it doesn't mean i wear my perversions on my sleeve like you do. I try TRY to keep an illusion of professionalism when I work with people. Its friendly and slightly informal but it doesn't steep into getting raunchy and vulgar.
Please remember that at its core commissioning me is a business transaction and that using certain vulgar terms to describe certain "parts" of a person's anatomy is not a good way to make me feel comfortable drawing for you.
I'm going to say some bad words now, the senstive members of the audience might want to avert thier eyes for this portion of the scenario.
Words like: snatch, cunt, cooter, pussy, dick, balls, cock. <PLEASE DEAR GOD nothing makes me curl up into a ball of uncomfortable writhing artist more than seeing this in what charades as a professional transaction. I am a LADY (or trying to be) would you say such words to a LADY? No? then dear God DON'T do it to me. Seriously I know its boring but my regular customers usually use "bits" "manbits" "ladybits" 'manparts" "ladyparts"
I dont even draw most of this stuff unless your paying 3x as much.
another fun thing. ASKING IF YOUR ARTIST IS EVEN COMFORTABLE WITH YOUR FETISH BEFORE LAUNCHING INTO A DELIGHTFULLY GRAPHIC SCENARIO OF YOUR COMMISSION MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA. some descriptions ive read i almost wanted to charge just for the amount of brainbleach i had to apply to my brain after reading it.
Another less uncomfortable point.
If you're going to micromange every thing down to the position of the hands arms and legs I WILL CHARGE MORE for robbing me of every ounce of wiggle room I delight in. I like a certain level of artistic freedom, if that is stripped from me I WILL NOT ENJOY drawing your peice and it will show. In order to enjoy it in the slightest I will charge extra, i can at least be comforted in knowing "im getting paid more for this."
WHEN GIVING DESCRIPTIONS.
bullet points are your friend. i do NOT need paragraphs upon paragraphs detailing your characters descrption in flowery purple prose. If i wanted to read a book Id get one from audible or my local library's audio book secion, seeing a trend?
IF YOU WANT COPIOUS DETAILS:
Things I like to see in descriptions.
* Black wolf
*white stomach chest throat cheeks and muzzle inner ear, inner thigh paws and tailtip
*silvery white hair
*green eyes
*red dress (add reference if you a have one)
actions:
sitting in a park bench under a tree
reading a book
looking (insert emotion here)
If you want artistic freedom the character descriptor is enough.
tldr:
don't be a creepy pervert when commissioning me.
being anal about details will see you paying more.
Make sure Im open to doing your fetish/porn before launching into your idea.
for descriptions BREIF bullet points are your friend.
Don't make me get my cattleprod.
I get it, alot of what i draw for people, pornography or not, can be and is fetish material. I GET IT.
HOWEVER. A due sense of Decorum would be HUGELY appreciated. Just because I draw it doesn't mean i wear my perversions on my sleeve like you do. I try TRY to keep an illusion of professionalism when I work with people. Its friendly and slightly informal but it doesn't steep into getting raunchy and vulgar.
Please remember that at its core commissioning me is a business transaction and that using certain vulgar terms to describe certain "parts" of a person's anatomy is not a good way to make me feel comfortable drawing for you.
I'm going to say some bad words now, the senstive members of the audience might want to avert thier eyes for this portion of the scenario.
Words like: snatch, cunt, cooter, pussy, dick, balls, cock. <PLEASE DEAR GOD nothing makes me curl up into a ball of uncomfortable writhing artist more than seeing this in what charades as a professional transaction. I am a LADY (or trying to be) would you say such words to a LADY? No? then dear God DON'T do it to me. Seriously I know its boring but my regular customers usually use "bits" "manbits" "ladybits" 'manparts" "ladyparts"
I dont even draw most of this stuff unless your paying 3x as much.
another fun thing. ASKING IF YOUR ARTIST IS EVEN COMFORTABLE WITH YOUR FETISH BEFORE LAUNCHING INTO A DELIGHTFULLY GRAPHIC SCENARIO OF YOUR COMMISSION MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA. some descriptions ive read i almost wanted to charge just for the amount of brainbleach i had to apply to my brain after reading it.
Another less uncomfortable point.
If you're going to micromange every thing down to the position of the hands arms and legs I WILL CHARGE MORE for robbing me of every ounce of wiggle room I delight in. I like a certain level of artistic freedom, if that is stripped from me I WILL NOT ENJOY drawing your peice and it will show. In order to enjoy it in the slightest I will charge extra, i can at least be comforted in knowing "im getting paid more for this."
WHEN GIVING DESCRIPTIONS.
bullet points are your friend. i do NOT need paragraphs upon paragraphs detailing your characters descrption in flowery purple prose. If i wanted to read a book Id get one from audible or my local library's audio book secion, seeing a trend?
IF YOU WANT COPIOUS DETAILS:
Things I like to see in descriptions.
* Black wolf
*white stomach chest throat cheeks and muzzle inner ear, inner thigh paws and tailtip
*silvery white hair
*green eyes
*red dress (add reference if you a have one)
actions:
sitting in a park bench under a tree
reading a book
looking (insert emotion here)
If you want artistic freedom the character descriptor is enough.
tldr:
don't be a creepy pervert when commissioning me.
being anal about details will see you paying more.
Make sure Im open to doing your fetish/porn before launching into your idea.
for descriptions BREIF bullet points are your friend.
Don't make me get my cattleprod.
he's sending bribes again. i keep refunding them with the same message. 'please leave me alone.'
i'm wondering at what point it's considered cyber-stalking.
while i'm fine with that, i really appriciated that they were willing to proceed on the safe side and CHECK with me before insisting i draw it.
like when you buy condoms at the store you don't leer at the cashier and salivate talking about how hard you're going to get in those condoms. when commissioning an artist for art for your fetish it really should be no different.
But thats naive of me to think that way, thank god I think before I go into full detail...not like I comm anything that has had more than the chest of a woman, but you get the picture. The way I see it, its best to let the artist have their own freedom when doing comms since thats the reason you're comming them anyways. Going into anal detail just eliminates any bit of personality the said artist has on the comm other than just style.
Just kiddin hehe
Here have a seal man for your troubles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUfo6ZADLtk&
Seriously, good on you. I'm actually glad.
If someone is being a creeper or just plain vulgar, that IS where a lot of artists end up with things becoming more difficult because they have become unnerved. In such cases, we can either charge more and or drop them, but the latter is hard to do with the economy the way it is, where one client can mean starving or having food on the table. If a person is willing pay for what they themselves cause, then so be it. If not, they can find someone else better suited and with thicker skin. In both my experience and my other half's, people are willing to pay a little extra for whatever the reason. In the past, I've been willing to pay it myself.
Again, it probably wouldn't be a problem if people had a little bit of manners and a better way of putting things. Like I said, a lot of the times, it's not what you say, but how you say it.
UGH. Some people...
I recently had a commissioner like this who was a bit much to handle...he hid the fact that it was a fetish piece, and when I asked him about it (The art he wanted was TAME at the time), he changed his order to make it dirty. If I knew about the fetish part, then he was going to go all the way with it... :T
The art made me uncomfortable, he required daily (Or hourly, if I was online) sketches and 'fixed' (micro managed) them to his liking (Bigger boobs/butt, waist so small she couldn't stand x.x"), and when I wasn't online he would spam my inbox with new ideas, and ask me how far I had gotten on his work as soon as I got online.
I was happy when I finally finished it, but he threw a huge fit and started slinging names when I refused to take three more commissions from him...
I wish I had made some sort of journal on etiquette, maybe things would have been easier. I hope things are easier for you after this...
That being said, I feel for ya! Hopefully people will respect your wishes when it comes to commissioning you!
that I never got paid for it was just the icing on the cake.
Now don't get overly detailed mixed with overly complex. I would agree that a rise in how complex the drawing would be deserves a respectable and reasonable lift in pricing, but specificity doesn't necessarily equate complexity. On all other counts I agree with you Fox, but threatening to jack up prices because someone wants you to do something the way they want you to do it just doesn't sit right with me. I still love you though. Please don't use the cattle prod on me.
The anal detail is basically the difference between:
"i want my character walking and conductiing with a baton in a band unifrom that looks like this:insert picture here"
and
"I want my characher striding right leg out first, sligtly bent and raised and the other firmly on the ground i ant her left arm upraised and her fingers splayed holding a baton with the index finger pointed along its length, i want the other hand resting on her thigh middle fingers together, thumb pressed against her hip, i want her hips angled slightly to the left, and shes wearing a super detailed uniform with lots of tooled work and ribbons that looks EXACTLY LIKE THIS PICTURE:"
i don' like being robbed of everything i don't like deailing with anal retentive detai. I will charge more plain and simple if people feel the need to micromanage everything i do. I will do anything within reason if the price is right, and yes I have a detail tax the same way I have an adult artwork tax. It's not a threat its "if you want me to have to read and re-read your description over and over again that takes time, time=money and i will be slower completing the work than i would be normally.
THAT is why.
But I did say that there was a difference between specificity and complex details. And everything in that "don't do" example was specificity up to the super detailed uniform and lots of tooled work and ribbons. That is bumping up the complexity from simple colors and uniform and deserves a rise in price. But wanting the pose and position of the fingers doesn't make the image any less complicated and I don't think it warrants an additional charge.
"...doesn't make the image any more complicated..."
Not less. :c
If someone writes you a short story then yeah I could see that being frustrating. And if you rarely do it then it must rarely happen. I'm probably making this out to be way bigger than it is. I won't go into the reasons of why I'm being defensive about this. I just hope you don't think less of me for disagreeing with you on a rant point. :'C
huuuugggsss JUST FOR THAT i'm giving you a free sketch because I want you to know we're cool, Im sorry i didn't mean to get all defensive and such. We're cool we're cool. You're not a jerk you were bringing up good points i was countering with my reasons, discussion! don't worry I respect you and your view and you do respect mine even if you disagree theres a huge difference between that and obviously trolling and I can tell the difference I just felt that clarification was in order ^_^
Oh! Fox! Thank you so much for a freebie. I wish I could give you something in trade so that it'd be an exchange of gifts. Uhm, how about a... little short story? What do you like to read about? If you like to read?
I look forward to the sketch! *Sings a song for Fox*
You made a very strong system to keep commission list in order and not scattered everywhere. ^^
and please not the cattleprod!!!anything but that!
It must suck to have to put up with all that. But hey, money, right?
GunRacer
but the bullet points thing is a good idea, because peoples descriptions (when it's not artistic freedom) usually range from a simple un detailed sentence to a 4 paragraph long story.
That said, I've found that you tend to just get better work if the artist is able to have a bit of freedom with the pose and the little details. As you know from working with me, I will ask you to change things occasionally, but doing it overly often to get something 'just right' just isn't being fair to the artist.
Again, that too will weed out creeps.
HUUUUGGGG*
Furries are the basement dwelling live at home folks with lots of disposable income ebcause no girl or guy wants them and thus buying porn (the nastier the better) seems to help pass their days! (I used to be one! Still sorta am... well I don't live at home or in a basement any longer) Oh well! *looks as innocent as possible and hugs back!* And perhaps not ghey >.>
I also apologizes for all the times I might have bugged you about details in a commission as I know I can tend to lean toward that end too at times ^^;
This is a completely hypothetical scenario, mind you, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone comissioned that from someone in the next few weeks.