My commission horror stories.
Up until a few years ago,
I’d commissioned exactly one person to ever do anything (after 10+ years in the
fandom). I always took the tack that if I wanted to see something in art, I
could just do it myself. Most of the furry artists I really liked were too busy
or never did commissions.
However, a while ago I got
some crazy idea to do a special illustrated edition of a story I wrote. In
‘96-’97 I wrote a novella called Unforgiven, which chronicled the life of my
character Jack Salem from birth up to the time of the first comic I did of him
(.357). The story had already been serialized in Yarf, and published separately
with a lot of illustrations by myself and a few by my friend Pete Stoller.
So for some reason I
suddenly decided it would be a really neat idea to get a bunch of artists I
liked to do illustrations for the story, and put out a separate edition with
these pictures.
Little did I know what I
was letting myself in for.
I guess I was naive (and by
my age I shouldn’t be). Maybe I thought I’d get a little bit better treatment
since I was a fellow artist, rather than some anonymous fanboy trying to get a
whack-off picture. Boy was I wrong.
The basic idea was this: I
would offer the artist their standard fee for one or two illustrations,
sometimes in color or in B&W, depending on where I thought the artist’s
strengths lay. After agreeing on a price and media, I would send the artist a
copy of the story, sometimes with full payment. They would then read through it
and decide to do whatever scenes caught their fancy. If they didn’t want to
actually read the thing, I could pick out something.
So this is what happened,
in chronological order, after over 5 years of trying:
(I am deliberately leaving
gender out of the accounts. It is not my intent to slander the artists or give
them bad reps. Some of them are on Yerf, some are not. And yes, a couple of them have recently offered
commissions on either Ebay or Furbid.)
This summary current as of 12-06-2004
Artists in red are the ones who actually
delivered something
Artists in blue are commissions I’ve
given up on, and are almost certainly dead.
Artist 1. Posted on a newsgroup or Yerf (I
forget which) asking for commissions to help with school expenses. Sent the
materials and full payment in June or July of (‘99). Said they were working on
it, and it was complete except for coloring. Since then any emails asking about
it have gone unanswered for months at a time. Occational email contact more
recently (Aug ’01). A friend told me they’re done with the art, but it’s not
been delivered yet. Update: Artwork delivered and in hand.
Artist 2. Very good with email negotiations.
I sent the materials and full payment. Emailed me back shortly thereafter to
say he found the material so distasteful he didn’t want anything to do with it.
Sent everything back with full refund. This whole incident left me profoundly
puzzled, since this artist has XXX material on their Velan site and website.
I’d also given them the option to do any scene from the story, including two
people standing there talking. But since I’m not trying to force people to do
stuff they don’t want to, I let it go at that. Artist #2 gets kudos for sending
back my money and generally acting professional.
Artist 3. . Negotiations went well, and the pictures were
delivered close to when they said they would be. This artist was the most
expensive, but it was worth it.
Artist 4. I approached them a while ago but was told they were too busy. They contacted me a some months ago and told me to send the materials, which I did. A couple of brief email contacts, but that’s been it. No word if they’re working on it, or anything. I’d been told by a couple of people not to give this particular artist any money up front, because they don’t deliver and don’t respond to email. I sent an email months ago asking if they still wanted to do it. If they didn’t I could then free up the money alotted for that picture for something else. No reply to my mail, or any contact for many months. When I noticed this artist was offering to do picture trades, I wrote again asking about the comission. No response. Email communication (hopefully) re-established the week of Sept. 17th. Nothing since then, up to the present date. This is one of the artists I've heard the worse stories about in terms of never getting work done and running off with money.
Artist 5. This artist is an actual working professional illustrator. Good with email negotiations. Money and materials were sent. So far I don’t have the picture. Numerous delays and excuses, including moving, other projects coming in that take priority, the holiday, family criseses ect. I sent full payment and materials back in August, and still nothing. At least this artist used to email me regularly to let me know what’s going on, but I’ve not heard anything since Christmas time. An email from me back in March/April was responded to, and they say they’re working on it again. Emailed them in November of ’01. Says they’re working on it. Another email sent the week of 01-14. Still says they’re working on it. An email sent the week of 2-10-02 unanswered, probably because it was too brusque. After I sent another email a few weeks ago, and they finally admitted they were never going to do it, and said my money would be refunded. The money was eventually refunded several years after the commission was requested.
Artist 6. This artist posted on a newsgroup
begging for commissions due to being out of work. Email negotiations went well.
However, I was warned not to send this artist any money up front by people who
knew them, so I sent the materials and an email asking how they would like to
handle payment. Since then I’ve had virtually no contact from this artist. I
got one brief email many months ago saying they were delayed due to health
problems, but since then none of my emails have been answered. S/He recently
told a mutual friend via ICQ that s/he doesn’t want to do the picture, and that
I was ‘pestering’ them (I sent all of two short emails in the space of more a
month) Eventually the artist paid me for the book (said it was ‘lost.’) but I
never got the commission. Heard
recently this person was doing hard-core pornography commissions, since getting
laid off again.
Artist 7. An art trade, which was
successfully completed.
Artist 8. Sent them the materials back in
Oct/November of ‘00. No communication until the end of the year 2001, when the
artist re-contacted me. Says they’re
ready to begin working on it. Good
communication since then. Several sketches
were shown via email several months ago.
Looks good.
Artist 9. Another professional working
illustrator. Sent the material back in May of 2001, no word since. An email
asking if they were still interested has gone unanswered. Wondering if it’s worth the trouble to email
again.
Artist 10: Yet another artist who’s
supposedly a working pro. They were trying to auction off a commission on
FurBid, and I asked about private commission instead. We went through a lot of
negotiations, and I eventually ended up writing (at the artist’s insistence)
detailed descriptions of the scenes I wanted, scanning a bunch of reference pictures,
and even doing a couple of rough layouts to show the action. I heard nothing
from this person for a couple of months, and when I finally emailed to ask what
the status was, they said that they ‘unfortunately’ were unable to do it. I got
pissed off over all the hoops I had to jump through to get the reference
material to them, and wrote a nasty email back. They never replied.
Artist 11:
Auction won on Furbid back in May/June of this year. Took a while, but picture finally deliver
week of Sept. 17th. Unfortunately the picture sucked.
It sucks so bad, I can’t use it, and won’t show it to anyone, because
I’ll get goofed on for thinking this person might actually produce anything
good. Mea culpa. Did I mention the picture blows chunks, too?
Artist 12: Someone else who was auctioning
work on Furbid, that I contacted for a private commission. Very good communication. Pictures a little later than I thought, but
compared to the other people, the lateness was nothing. One of the few people on this list I would
recommend.
Artist 13: Another Furbid auction. Description and reference materials
sent. No recent emails, or an estimated
completion date, or any communication whatsoever. Well, at least they didn’t ask for money up front. Last email still unanswered, no
communication whatsoever since the first week of December. I finally got fed up and send them an
ultimatum email saying that if they didn’t recontact me, I’d consider the
auction forfeit. No response.
Artist 14. Yet another Furbid auction. This one I did pay up front, mainly because various RL problems (job and the holidays) were keeping me from getting the description and reference material emailed off in a timely fashion, and I didn’t want this person to think I was planning to flake out. Email communication the first week of Febuary, and a rough sketch seen. Picture finished in April/May, and finally delivered a couple weeks ago.
Not included in this summary: A couple of artists who've done pictures on their own volition or as part of art trades. And, another artist who volunteered to do some work, then vanished without a trace without returning the reference material I sent. The artist summaries end at 14 instead of 18 (as indicated on the previous page) because I have forgotten many of the details of later commissions attempts.
Ignoring the fact of why
I’m bothering to even bid on these stupid auctions, I’m wondering why artists
put commission auctions up when they seem to have so little enthusiasm for
doing them. Is it just an ego thing,
to see how much money they’re worth?
And then they’re left with the inconvenience of actually having to DO
something afterwards? The horror! Sheesh!.
I’ve seen artists that I know have outstanding prepaid commissions (not
necessarily to me, but to other people as well.) offering additional commission
auctions, or posting doodles and saying on the post that they’re ‘bored,’
offering to do free art or art trades, or doing unrelated personal art and
completely ignoring commission obligations.