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How not to be annoying to commissioners (repost)
9 years ago
Looks like there's a resurgence of "how to not piss off artists" posts going around, and a few people found a rebuttal I did about five years ago: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2155815/ , So I thought I'd bubble it back up to the surface since I never really update my journal these days.
Here you go. How not to be annoying to commissioners.
Don't offer commissions if you don't have the time. I'm certainly aware that "artists have lives." But if you're going to take on a backlog of work -- and take money up front -- you are now on the hook. And if you sit on that stack for months and months (and in my case, I have a few that's going on YEARS) you deserve the bad reputation. It's not nearly as much if you take reservations without a deposit, but even still -- don't offer the work if you can't manage your time.
Don't remove commissioned art from your gallery without telling us. I'm only saying this from my experience. I don't use my FurAffinity account as my own personal gallery for Duncan artwork -- with the exception of avatars and profile images, if I didn't do it, I don't upload it. When the artist uploads it, I favorite. But for some reason, artists tend to get all emo about old work and simply decide that they don't want that commissioned piece mucking up their gallery. So now I'm left with "gray X" Image has been removed from the gallery" in my favorites. Unless I do a lot of investigating, I'll never know which of the pieces was removed, and it may be months later when I'll realize a specific image I paid for is no longer on FurAffinity...and I never saved a copy to my local computer.
Don't get bitchy if we do ask "What's up?" Especially if you ask for money up front. If I have to fork over money just to reserve a spot in your coveted list of Iron Artists or commissions, you better believe that as time goes by I'm going to wonder what happened to that cash. Again, I know how the system works: if I pester the artist beyond their comfort zone, they may not enjoy working on my piece, and I may get a less than ideal final image. I'll give you a nice cushion of time because I know that there's more going on in the world than just furry art -- but don't snap when I send off a nice little note to poke you into finding out where my pretzel money is.
Don't always expect praise. You may do the job requested, and it may end up being merely adequate. I'll certainly give thanks to work, but sometimes paid work isn't all that amazing. I'm polite and considerate, but again, I'm realistic -- if I'm not floored I'm certainly not going to shower you with energetic compliments telling you how amazing it is. I'll thank you and proudly display your art at the bear minimum. Do a fantastic job and you'll hear how I feel. But that's entirely subjective. Feel free to "wow" me to get that.
And there you go. Easy as that!
Here you go. How not to be annoying to commissioners.
Don't offer commissions if you don't have the time. I'm certainly aware that "artists have lives." But if you're going to take on a backlog of work -- and take money up front -- you are now on the hook. And if you sit on that stack for months and months (and in my case, I have a few that's going on YEARS) you deserve the bad reputation. It's not nearly as much if you take reservations without a deposit, but even still -- don't offer the work if you can't manage your time.
Don't remove commissioned art from your gallery without telling us. I'm only saying this from my experience. I don't use my FurAffinity account as my own personal gallery for Duncan artwork -- with the exception of avatars and profile images, if I didn't do it, I don't upload it. When the artist uploads it, I favorite. But for some reason, artists tend to get all emo about old work and simply decide that they don't want that commissioned piece mucking up their gallery. So now I'm left with "gray X" Image has been removed from the gallery" in my favorites. Unless I do a lot of investigating, I'll never know which of the pieces was removed, and it may be months later when I'll realize a specific image I paid for is no longer on FurAffinity...and I never saved a copy to my local computer.
Don't get bitchy if we do ask "What's up?" Especially if you ask for money up front. If I have to fork over money just to reserve a spot in your coveted list of Iron Artists or commissions, you better believe that as time goes by I'm going to wonder what happened to that cash. Again, I know how the system works: if I pester the artist beyond their comfort zone, they may not enjoy working on my piece, and I may get a less than ideal final image. I'll give you a nice cushion of time because I know that there's more going on in the world than just furry art -- but don't snap when I send off a nice little note to poke you into finding out where my pretzel money is.
Don't always expect praise. You may do the job requested, and it may end up being merely adequate. I'll certainly give thanks to work, but sometimes paid work isn't all that amazing. I'm polite and considerate, but again, I'm realistic -- if I'm not floored I'm certainly not going to shower you with energetic compliments telling you how amazing it is. I'll thank you and proudly display your art at the bear minimum. Do a fantastic job and you'll hear how I feel. But that's entirely subjective. Feel free to "wow" me to get that.
And there you go. Easy as that!
I practice what I preach. If I say work is going to be done by a certain time, then it is. If something comes up and it takes a little longer, than I keep the commissioner in the loop. And I always treat people with respect.
As of right now, I'm trying to get a decent job and trying to at least go to a community college and get my life straight again. So, in conclusion: I'm too busy & won't be able to work on commissions. The least I can do for the moment is request to all my friends & etc. It's really upsetting, but that's the best option for me.
So, again, thank you very much for reposting this again & I'm going to post a journal in the future about my situation. It really helped me a lot.
It gives us artists a reality check that we.. really need.
Well said! ^^
Also something something my ego loves to see the work I got on artist pages for everyone to see.
Also at the beginning, I never even considered people removing art cause it just never occurred to me. I probably lost several pieces due to this. My own fault, sure, but still sucks nonetheless.
It's not necessarily about not saving the picture, it's also leaving those mysterious X's in the favorites, or blanking out once live URLs that are used as references. We don't know it's gone until there's this magical image void of Xs and 404 errors.
And I think you might be overstating the value of a favorites gallery on just this one site; it wouldn't really BE gone if you saved it, even if it was something you didn't commission.
I have the original saved to my harddrive, just in case. Well said, Duncan.