Artwork Commissions Discussion

[Paladox]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Fifth if an artist does fail you it's fine to say so and give them a chance to fix things. If they are stubborn and unprofessional then pay them what you owe them and never hire them again. I have a very clear policy on this sort of thing.

Basically pay well, be polite, be clear and direct and stay professional. If they aren't then go hire someone else in the future.

Do you think it's rude to ask them to do something else that you think they actually "can" do, if they keep failing to deliver what you initially asked for?

In all likelihood I'm probably going to go through paypal and get my money back. I'm a firm believer in getting what you pay for, and usually that means having to pay before you get it. I know the guy put some time into trying to fix these sprites, but not a lot of it (nor effort for that matter). Not to mention the hand-holding. It's pretty bad when you have to point out every little detail, to the point that you basically could have done it yourself.

Will this be frowned upon if I get the money back?

 

[Cypress_z]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Do you think it's rude to ask them to do something else that you think they actually "can" do, if they keep failing to deliver what you initially asked for?

In all likelihood I'm probably going to go through paypal and get my money back. I'm a firm believer in getting what you pay for, and usually that means having to pay before you get it. I know the guy put some time into trying to fix these sprites, but not a lot of it (nor effort for that matter). Not to mention the hand-holding. It's pretty bad when you have to point out every little detail, to the point that you basically could have done it yourself.

Will this be frowned upon if I get the money back?

I always reserve a little extra money so I can write off a failure as a loss without it impacting my budget too much. The first time ANY artist works for you it should be a test of their ability. All tests can be failed; that's the point of a test.

I'd pay them and never hire them again if I were dissatisfied with their work. Is your approach the right one? Eh, maybe. But worrying over $15 isn't worth the effort for me.

I have a lot of stuff that didn't end up in Overwhored in the end. It happens.

 

[Paladox]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

I always reserve a little extra money so I can write off a failure as a loss without it impacting my budget too much. The first time ANY artist works for you it should be a test of their ability. All tests can be failed; that's the point of a test.

I'd pay them and never hire them again if I were dissatisfied with their work. Is your approach the right one? Eh, maybe. But worrying over $15 isn't worth the effort for me.

I have a lot of stuff that didn't end up in Overwhored in the end. It happens.

Well if we did a comparison based on our patreon amounts, then that would be like you paying about $1200 for a commission. If they didn't deliver, then I'm pretty sure you'd be getting your money back.

You saying you wouldn't mind losing $16 is the equivalent of me saying I wouldn't mind losing 21 cents.

It's settled then. When I win the paypal dispute I'll give the guy 21 cents back. lol

 

[Cypress_z]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Well if we did a comparison based on our patreon amounts, then that would be like you paying about $1200 for a commission. If they didn't deliver, then I'm pretty sure you'd be getting your money back.

You saying you wouldn't mind losing $16 is the equivalent of me saying I wouldn't mind losing 21 cents.

It's settled then. When I win the paypal dispute I'll give the guy 21 cents back. lol

Not really. This is what I'm making after five years of work. I paid for my art out of my own pocket for the first several years and only took up a Patreon during the last year of development. I actually took on extra jobs so I could pay more money into the development. I understand your perspective, however. It stings when you've only got a bit and feel like you've got a raw deal.

 

[Paladox]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Not really. This is what I'm making after five years of work. I paid for my art out of my own pocket for the first several years and only took up a Patreon during the last year of development. I actually took on extra jobs so I could pay more money into the development. I understand your perspective, however. It stings when you've only got a bit and feel like you've got a raw deal.

Extra jobs (or a job at all) isn't really an option for me (it's complicated).

It's more the lack of communication from the artist that's bugging me. I'm still going to give him another chance to communicate, but through paypal. If that doesn't work out then I gotta do what I gotta do.

 

[Pervy]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

@Cypress: Heh, man, I thought I was the only one having some stuff I just couldn't use for my game lying about.

@ Paladox: Cypress is right, and not the only one that first had to pay in before they even started making money, first nine months on patreon I was in the red too, just.. adding art to my game cause.. I like it.

You -are- getting something for the money you paid. You aren't satisfied, alright, but the artist did put in work, so .. I'd not say you could in good faith demand a complete refund.
.. Can you even get your money back for something under 20$ on paypal? I forgot..

 

[Perfeccia Ars]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

I always reserve a little extra money so I can write off a failure as a loss without it impacting my budget too much. The first time ANY artist works for you it should be a test of their ability. All tests can be failed; that's the point of a test.

Probably the best way to look at these things. You have to call artists and test them to see which one will be of use in the future for whatever you need.

There are no commissioners that haven't felt burned when hiring an artist for the first time, there's always a few that don't deliver with the level of quality they expect or want. Some artists work better for the stuff they like and put a lot less effort into commissions, others just don't have the motivation or are just outright unprofessional, and sometimes you just don't like the quality when the commission is done, after all its completely subjective.

Since there's always a risk just get used to the fact that you might lose money when testing artists. Like Cypress I pay for the stuff that I can't do with my money, sometimes art, sometimes music, and not all of them will appear in my project.

 

[Paladox]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Well the general opinion seems to be that I shouldn't ask or try to get the money back. Alright.

Let me turn the question around then. This time you're the artist.

Let's say someone asks you to do an art commission. They're super eager and go ahead and pay you the full amount up front (plus $1 on top of that).
You make a few attempts and they keep correcting you on what they think is wrong. After this, they finally tell you that what you're doing just isn't working out for them. They then ask you, instead, to do something completely different.

What would you do? Would you ignore them? Maybe you feel like they're asking for way too much work, and/or you feel like they're just trying to get some freebies now (and you think you did a good job on the other thing).

 

[Changer]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Well the general opinion seems to be that I shouldn't ask or try to get the money back. Alright.

Let me turn the question around then. This time you're the artist.

Let's say someone asks you to do an art commission. They're super eager and go ahead and pay you the full amount up front (plus $1 on top of that).
You make a few attempts and they keep correcting you on what they think is wrong. After this, they finally tell you that what you're doing just isn't working out for them. They then ask you, instead, to do something completely different.

What would you do? Would you ignore them? Maybe you feel like they're asking for way too much work, and/or you feel like they're just trying to get some freebies now (and you think you did a good job on the other thing).

Are you asking them to draw a completely different thing for free since they couldn't draw the first thing? Or are you commissioning them a second time for something different? That makes a pretty big difference.

 

[Paladox]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Are you asking them to draw a completely different thing for free since they couldn't draw the first thing? Or are you commissioning them a second time for something different? That makes a pretty big difference.

Free. Why would I commission them again? That would be like this:

You order a burger and they give you only half a bun. You take the burger back and ask them to fix it. They ask you how to fix it. You tell them to put it on a whole bun. They do, but there's still no lettuce, mayo, tomato, etc.. You hand it back and tell them you want that stuff. They put lettuce, mayo, etc.. on it, and now somehow it's missing the meat. You hand it back again and tell them it just needs the meat now, like before. They hand it back to you again, and now it's just got meat on it and half a bun, like it was originally...

SO you decide to give up on the burger, and instead pay them (again) for some fries and a milkshake. Who would do that? NOBODY!
Plus I can guarantee you that most people would ask for their money back. But then, I guess you could argue that they "put time and effort into making the sandwich".
Yeah.. right.

I'm starting to get the feeling that, "All artists are good, all their clients are bad."

Well I've decided that I should go poke the artist and see if they have anything to say.
Edit: I decided to part on as friendly a note as I could muster.

Maybe that big list was a bit unreasonable of me. My apologies. I was just frustrated that the request just didn't seem possible for you to fix properly.
On a positive note, your attempts at fixing it did show me where I might have gone wrong when I was making her walking animations. Maybe I can use your work as a guide on how to fix it myself sometime.

At any rate, enjoy the cash. I'm guessing you need it more than I do.

Take care and good luck.

Actually I feel better now that the weight of what to do is gone.

 

[Changer]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Those are not analogous at all. A major corporation like McDonalds or Burger King doesn't even notice the loss of a single free meal to make a customer happy. In fact, they probably have a budget that specifically allows for a certain amount of food to just be randomly destroyed by freak accidents.

An artist is one person, who has an extremely finite amount of time available to them. 16 dollars for a commission is, honestly, dirt cheap. Especially if it takes them more than one hour to do what you asked. If it takes them 2 hours, you are right on the cusp of not even paying them minimum wage for their work.

So when you have them do a project to completion, then say you don't like it and want them to start on an ENTIRELY NEW project for free to "make up for it" you are asking for even more hours of work, still for just that initial 16 dollars.

If it takes them 2 more hours to do what you want, you are paying them a grand total of 4 dollars an hour. Those are some slave wages right there.

What you are experiencing is a natural consequence of buying cheap art. It's usually cheap for a reason; and that reason is usually that the artist isn't very skilled yet.

 

[Paladox]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Those are not analogous at all. A major corporation like McDonalds or Burger King doesn't even notice the loss of a single free meal to make a customer happy. In fact, they probably have a budget that specifically allows for a certain amount of food to just be randomly destroyed by freak accidents.

I didn't say it had to be a major corporation. Maybe it's a local restaurant? In that case, they're even more likely to make sure the customer is happy. A place like Burger King could care less if they lose a customer or two.

An artist is one person, who has an extremely finite amount of time available to them. 16 dollars for a commission is, honestly, dirt cheap. Especially if it takes them more than one hour to do what you asked. If it takes them 2 hours, you are right on the cusp of not even paying them minimum wage for their work.

Maybe I should charge them for all the handholding. How much do babysitters make?

So when you have them do a project to completion, then say you don't like it and want them to start on an ENTIRELY NEW project for free to "make up for it" you are asking for even more hours of work, still for just that initial 16 dollars.

If it takes them 2 more hours to do what you want, you are paying them a grand total of 4 dollars an hour. Those are some slave wages right there.

What you are experiencing is a natural consequence of buying cheap art. It's usually cheap for a reason; and that reason is usually that the artist isn't very skilled yet.

I'll just quote Pervy:

... I really hope you comissioned more than that little spriteset you share there, cause going by its quality, that.. is not too impressive, feel free to check out my Demonhunter game, it also uses comissioned sprites.. for less money, and at a much larger size.

 

[Changer]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Even a local restaurant is a poor analogy. Compared to the cost of renting or buying a building, paying utilities and employees, the amount of food you need to sell in order to cover those costs means a single meal is a microscopic fraction of the amount of money being managed. Heck, even a hot dog stand you run by yourself requires you to own a large enough number of hot dogs, buns, and toppings that you should leave room in the budget for some of it to be written off for one reason or another.

Plus, there is a major difference in time commitment. It takes fewer than 10 minutes to slap together a burger. It takes most artists hours to draw something.

If the artist doesn't meet your standards, just don't work with them in the future. What you are suggesting though is less asking for a replacement meal, and more like having a kid shovel your driveway for ten bucks, then saying it doesn't look good enough so they need to keep doing random chores around your house until you think they've earned that money.

 

[Pervy]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Yeah, I will say that 16$ for 6 unique frames (remember, you can mirror most of those, don't need to create them at all) is actually pretty expensive, at least at that size and quality. Theres nothing complicated like armors or cloaks or etc to do, only the bow is any complicated.
I'd say half the comissions price (5 for the base sprite, 3 for the trickier bow) Is more of a fair price, this is not a work that should take an experienced pixel artist more than half an hour to create, and this artist wasn't even creating, but doing correction work only, if I followed things right.

p.s. All this talk about art inexplicably makes me hungry.

 

[Changer]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

If you say it's overpriced for that kind of artwork, I'll have to cede to your experience on the subject. My experience with pixel art specifically is pretty limited, though my experiences have always seemed to be fairly time consuming.

 

[Perfeccia Ars]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Pixel stuff is a pain to commission when it's this small, you never know if you're paying too much or too little. But as someone that has a little experience on pixel art it is overpriced in my opinion. For 15-20 I would make the walk cicles, the attack animation AND dress the character, if it's naked, maybe 8.

It's just too easy, it might take a bit over an hour to do this work if you go at it slowly.

 

[Pervy]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Pixel stuff is a pain to commission when it's this small, you never know if you're paying too much or too little. But as someone that has a little experience on pixel art it is overpriced in my opinion. For 15-20 I would make the walk cicles, the attack animation AND dress the character, if it's naked, maybe 8.

It's just too easy, it might take a bit over an hour to do this work if you go at it slowly.

Plus, your art is higher quality, just going by your presentation page on here.

There you go Paladox, got someone to comission. ^^

 

[Paladox]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

Maybe I just have no patience, but at the beginning of the month I decided to try and commission some art and a couple sprites (3 different instances).

Guess what? It's like they all just disappeared off the face of the planet. All at the same time. I hope none of them up and died or something horrible like that, but it's just super annoying that I seem to have encountered such bad luck all at once. xP

I gave one of them $5 to start working (on about the 4th). They did say they were in the middle of moving, but 20 days to move (and no response) just seems like way too long. I'm thinking I should probably tell paypal to give me that back. I can always repay them later if they come back and/or start working on my project.

Next month I'm thinking of posting in the job offers section of Deviant Art. That might be a better recourse than actively searching for artists.

 

[Pervy]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

uh.. I put fire under my artists asses if they don't contact me for over a week. Don't need to be finished pictures in a week, but I want communication, when I pay them to do something. Not all artists are honest.

I dunno the details of your comission, but sprites REALLy don't take long to make.

If you wanna go for Deviant art joboffers I could give you some tips, I used it about half a dozen times by now, I'm usually pretty satisfied, but you have to know how to weed out the bad offers.

 

[Paladox]

Re: Artwork Commissions Discussion

I just started the refund process through paypal. I guess I have to wait a few days or something (should have started it sooner, but oh well).

Yeah I think I'm a bit too lenient sometimes.

As for the tips, sure. I'm going into the Deviant Art job offers blind, so any tips would be much appreciated.