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I'm done waiting. Now its time to do something about this
11 years ago
I am done being the fool. I've had it with this massive problem of commissions
I've given enough time for soo many people, I've been patient and I've been relatively calm about it all but now enough is enough. Too many people I have dealt with for soo long have done little except to grind my tolerance down bit by bit and I've reached my limit.
I don't know what it is about commissions that so many artists feel like its just something to get around to when ever they feel like it, but I don't see how any excuse they can give which justifies having to wait for months of bloody YEARS for them to do the WORK they have been PAID to do.
Yea I said it......NEWS FLASH....COMMISSIONS IS WORK.
You take commissions you need to do the work. Yes its true that it generally doesn't pay as well as a typical 9 to 5 job, Its true it does not provide a regular income as like other jobs and yes its true that you artists do have to deal with alot of pain in the ass customers who on occasion may try to screw you over. I get that
But seriously from my perspective its gone the other way around here. More often nowadays its the customers that are getting screwed over.
Artists can set their own price to an extent (market forces and such may be argued of course). More so than not they accept the money before doing the work.......leaves it all out of the hands of the customer....nothing much it seems we can do at this point *shrugs*
I know how hard work is, especially when times are being rough....my job may be contracted for a 9 to 5 schedule but boy of boy do I need to work overtime (which is unpaid) to get the job done. Times have been stressful and I am sure most of us can say that. Thats the world we live in.
But no matter what, I do the work I get paid to do. I cannot afford to say to my bosses "oh I will get back to you on the work I am meant to be doing. Don't hold your breath for it". Cause that would mean I get fired and I lose my job.
Now before anyone says it, I know no one has forced me to buy commissions from anyone. I didn't have to get them. They are a luxury item. But does that mean its my fault I got screwed over? Do I get the blame for not knowing certain artists wouldn't do the work? Is it my weakness for not being able to know if they really have been having such difficult busy times where they are or in fact they are just lazying away scratching their own behind.
When it comes to the art itself I will never argue the work artist do is not worth the price paid for them. I do believe that the skills shown justifies the prices they set, in fact I can easily say many artists should charge more for their work cause their skills and what they offer is so dam good, they should be getting what they deserve for their expertise and effort.
...but then it means little when end of the day you don't get anything to make a judgment on.
So now that I've run out of patience, I am taking matters into my hands like I should of done ages ago. I am demanding now that all artists that have been screwing me over these months and years either finally do the work I paid them for or refund me completely. I will be going to you and I will want answers and no I am not going to be abusive about it. I am just going to be perfectly straight with you how unacceptable things have been. From my experiences now, I have full confidence I am in my right to complain.
Oh I am not kidding myself it would be possible to get all the work or refunds that are owed to me back. It is a long list and from a long time.
But I think its high time I let people know WHO I have had to deal with that has been screwing me over. Frankly people should know who to be careful of, otherwise they end up in same situation as I am now. If there was a way to report people in a sort of official sense I feel I would do. I will no longer be silent about this. I want to see progress, I want to see artists take their work seriously.
Now anyone here who disagrees with me, that is perfectly fine, everyone has their opinion and experiences on here. I am not trying to badmouth all artists. If you don't like what I have said feel free to tell me on here, I will not remove your comments and I will not get pissy about them as long as your not abusive about it. You disagree then we can discuss it not argue about it.
Well that about wraps it up for me now. The final point I think I will make is that I feel something needs to change on here. Another system if possible needs to be in place concerning commissions on this site.
1. Documentation
2. TIME FRAME
3. Communication
With documentation, there's no "what I think was said", but proof of what was discussed.
Time is in caps because this is a crucial one. It helps both parties in the fact that the artist wont be bugged, asking about progress of one's commission, at the same time, setting an expectation for the commissioner to know when their commission will be done, instead of "I'll get to it when I can." The excuse of "well I work a full time job and I do this for fun/as a hobby" thing needs to stop. When someone is giving you money, you're being paid to do work. If you want to treat it as a hobby, that's fine, but it still has the same accountability as a job. There needs to be the same amount of professionalism with documentation, time frame, and professional communication. Don't simply throw this on the back burner and say "well when I'm not busy..." No, STILL give a time frame. If you're that busy, you shouldn't be taking on commissions in the first place. If you work a part time job, full time job, 2 full time jobs, that's all fine and dandy, but all that means is you the artist need to come up with a time frame that fits in to the schedule. If a full time job causes you to get 1 commission done in 1 week, give a time frame of 2 weeks to give some leniency and less stress on yourself. That under promise and over deliver will help a lot!
Finally, communication is super key here too. This does not mean have casual conversation with the commissioner and artist while the commission is being worked on, but just a keep-in-touch when possible, be it for a sketch update if that's your policy. Most importantly though, should there be ANY reason that you wont be able to get a commission done in time for a set date, give the commissioner notice the moment you know that the due date wont be possible! You can then leave it up to the commissioner to decide if they still want the commission or not, but if they do, give them another reasonable time frame (but try to under promise setting a higher time frame that you think it will take, but not by much) and hopefully then get it back to them. If even then something comes up, you could either communicate this to the commissioner again, or cancel the commission which I would probably choose cancel the commission because at that point it seems there's just not enough time for the artist to dedicate to working on said commission.
This is the problem with freelancers with little to no business skill. You would think it would be common sense but hell many small business owners still think they can discriminate based on religious beliefs even where the law says you can't. I guess it's not so surprising we have problems with artists who are more than happy to take money up front and put you on a backburner for whatever reason.
One note on art prices. Many of these artists compare themselves to the market value of commercial artists and fine art sales. Commercial artists dont make as much as people think unless they are an a-list class artist plus copyrights are surrendered. But what commercial value does fetish furry porn have? It's too niche to even be comparable to the mainstream values applied to commercial works. The reason why your common furry artist can't charge more and be lucrative is because of the market for furry art and the fact the clients are primarily late year high school / college level students on limited budgets. Some of the working class can dump a grand in a pic but at that point you can also simply hire on a top end artist. Mel Brooks only paid $500 for 3 concept poster pieces from a friend of mine. So it's laughable wheb I hear a fellow artist say how underpriced they are and act as if people in the industry make thousands per pic. False. Another friend of mine, a rather close one, is a keyframe artist on the MLP cartoon. He only gets like $24 an hour from his studio.
But ya regardless of price... work must be completed. People really need to stop paying in full up front and just goto an artist that will take partial payments and the rest when the work is complete. But people get excited for the art, they want to support the artist so... it happens and its become a big problem.