Hey all,
Haven't make an update in a while, so here I go. Unfortunately, nothing too happy I am afraid.
When my study started back in September after the Summer break, I had the unique "chance" to find out that the government did not proceed my application correctly and I lost all my education grant for a whole year (there is nothing I can do on that, tried for months, please don't try to give me advice on that). While I fortunately have saved some money in the past for this kind of event, I did not expect it to be as long as a year and I therefore expected to got some help from the commissions I am taking.
I had hope that the October break that just ended would allow me to do as many commissions as I could and save money until the Christmas break.
... But
I have to say that things went terribly wrong during this break. I spent most of my time chasing people who commissioned me and made me work on sketches (ranging from simple drawing to couple of pages long comics) and that decided at this point that they would not pay me anymore. To be fair I always did my best to trust every one of them - and now I have lot of regrets of course - but let's face it I received all the excuses that one can imagine so people would not pay for my work and time. I even got mad when someone offered me to pay couple of dollars for a $100 worth commission.
Of course, I also received couple of interesting and honest commissions in the same time. But because of the former, I barely had the time to work on the commissions of the honest users and ended up wasting all my time chasing after scammers and dishonest people. This explain why I haven't uploaded a single commission or even personal drawing for almost a month.
I feel really sorry for these guys and will dedicate all my week-ends to achieve the commissions that were sincerely taken during/for my October break.
The resulting colossal waste of time and also loss in expected incomes put me in an uneasy situation. The only thing I can really do to prevent people from scamming me like that - sorry for calling it so harsh, but when people take my time and therefore money away from me, that's a scam - would be to ask to be paid whole upfront before even starting the commission. That's something I don't like to do, so I would not change this unless it happens again (at least I am only wasting time on a sketch, not on a full coloured drawing). Maybe I will also start to public shame the scammers by naming them in this blog. I might be told that it's against the rules, but I think that other artists should be aware that they can be scammed by these guys anytime.
Anyway
Because of all these issues and because of the commissions that I still have to complete from the October break, I am really falling behind my expectations for the next months in terms of income. The only way I can cope up with that is by proceeding to a future price revision
I really hate doing that as I don't want people to think my prices are high or anything, but it would not have been that way if everyone were always honest with me.
I still have to see what I should and/or can change to still make it fair to all of you, so it won't happen right now. Probably for December break, as I might need this time to recover from the loss from October.
But please be aware that all commissions that have been taken/accepted/discussed before the price revision will not be affected by it, even if the commissions have not been paid at this time. So even if I am still not working on your commission while we discussed it last month, it will never be impacted by the future revision.
I will probably also set a date at which the price revision will take effect once I will publish it, and price won't be affected until this date.
Apologies again for that
that's the situation I have been forced to deal with
Posted by The Saint of Ravens 4 years ago Report
I'm really sorry to hear about all of that ; ;
Though, speaking from personal experience... it's really best to just take payment up front. Trustworthy clients understand, and the ones that have a problem with it teeeeeeend to be the ones who are more likely to abscond with the base sketch you send and call it a day. Because you're right, when someone does that to an artist, it's a scam. They're stealing your time.
I hope things get better either way!
[ Reply ]
Posted by Bright 4 years ago Report
Scammers are absolute scum.
Paying up front is a fair business strategy.
[ Reply ]
Posted by Achenar 4 years ago Report
Name them. This is an artists' community, and its members absolutely deserve to know if someone has been going around reneging on agreed-on commission prices.
As to payment up front, I'd recommend a middle ground, if it's possible: when I commissioned a character picture from Sadira, they created a rough, uncolored sketch first to confirm everything was as I wanted it. At that stage, once I'd signed off on the design, was when she had me pay for the commission. If possible, you might want to adopt a similar system.
[ Reply ]
Posted by Shoelace 4 years ago Report
Yeah I know, but I have been scammed long time ago by an artist whom I paid upfront and he left without ever working on my stuff. So I just felt bad asking upfront myself. But then I think I have been here long enough to prove that I am always doing the comm. So I will see.
I know, right? Since it was all sketches I only lost like a couple of dollars. But the time wasted trying to chase them is the worst :/ It's hard to just tell yourself to move on to another comm when you are still expecting money from a previous one.
Yeah I might soon... I am really tired of this shit.
That's... Exactly what I am doing at the moment :c there is clearly nothing else between upfront and what I am doing at the moment - except asking to pay once the software is opened on my computer.
[ Reply ]
Posted by Hevy 4 years ago Report
God, that's such a shitty thing to happen to you. Personally I haven't had any experience getting shafted with artists I comm, but I've heard plenty of horror stories about it. Personally, I think you should share the names of people that you know scammed you to other artists, if you don't feel like putting them out there on public. A strategy that I've seen used before is that the customer pays after the artist does a simple proof-of-concept sketch, so it's a bit of a middle ground. Hope things get better, man.
[ Reply ]
Posted by thirdspurs 4 years ago Report
As a frequent commissioner I expect to be charged up front. I have had that burn me a couple of times, but in those cases, paypal is /very/ generous with their dispute services, and I've only lost money once, when it was a con commission instead of an online one.
[ Reply ]
Posted by Scottglass 4 years ago Report
Oh dear...I’m so sorry this happened to you...
Whatever you end up doing and/or changing I feel will be justified as this is just horrid.
I had someone do something similar, but not quite as drastic. I did the proof-of-concept sketch for them and even sent them an invoice for $25 so I could finish it up.
I heard nothing back from them for a week, so I messaged them on discord, maybe thinking their lives had gotten busy...
Nothing.
Tried again...
Nothing.
I tried for around 2 months to even get an *answer* to no avail.
I’ll be honest and say that they are an Ekas user, and within a month they posted art they commissioned from other artists, then more later...
Seriously sucks man, I’m sending positive mental energy your way ^^
[ Reply ]
Posted by MaxTwenty 4 years ago Report
You can also put a watermark on a tiny version of the sketch/previews for people to confirm everything is looking fine before sending payment. Works for me.
[ Reply ]
Posted by Shoelace 4 years ago Report
Heya~~
Thank you all for your messages
Well that's what I am already doing. The good part of this is that when I am scammed I only waste the time and effort put into a watermarked sketch and not the full finished product. But altogether, this has a lot of bad consequences for me. For example, when someone commission me a full colour comic with several pages, I am booking the slot for them and if someone else - this time an honest commissionner- come and ask, I am forced to refuse their commission because the slot is already booked. So it's also preventing me from accepting genuine orders, affecting both my schedule and incomes
Weeeeell honestly each time I had to face them, I fell on complete assholes :c I even got my account hacked once (a previous one) and I show them all proofs that the thief was stupid enough to use his real name and address when using my account for a couple of orders. Had to go through the police because Paypal said that it was not proof that someone else used my account. And well I asked for my login records (to see which IP was connected on that day to prove it was not me) Paypal refused because "the IP address on those specific belonged to someone else than me" and so I could not access them. So yeah, I prefer to not rely at all on Paypal customer services.
Thank you a lot, it's really appreciated
[ Reply ]
Posted by AlluringPredation 4 years ago Report
Any chance of turning previous unpaid work into a ych auction? Recoup some of the effort and make a profit, or some quick rework to sell some character art as an adoptable?
I've seen some artists use commiss.io to work out details and as payment processor. Be nice if we had something like skeb.jp that takes the money when the project is accepted and holds it in escrow.
If you have discord I would be happy to talk to you, my server has a section for blacklisted members of the community who do people badly in terms of commissions.
[ Reply ]