The main complaints I heard over and over at Anthrocon 2009 as I talked with other artists?
poor character references; old character references; no references

And now that Anthrocon is over and most artists are at home trying to round up their commissions before they travel or go back to work/college -- the complaints I hear the most are very similar:
poor character references; old character references; no references; they won't respond to my e-mail requests for more information

...Those of you out there who have purchased commissions have as much responsibility to make sure the artwork comes out correctly as the artists do.

Also: just about every artist I met that was at Anthrocon has only a limited window of time before their other responsibilities force them to put commissions on the back-burner. If you do not move FAST on these artists' requests for more details, you could receive an improperly done image, or be put on hold for a very long time. (And then you risk making a fool of yourself by complaining to this journal about a project that you, in fact, dropped the ball on.)

Get back to work.

 Does anyone know what happened to SirTrips? We'd agreed on a few commissions, and since he'd been very reliable before I finished one and sketched another before receiving payment. I don't think he'd take off but it's been over a month; I've emailed him from two separate addresses AND noted him on deviantart and have gotten no response. Is everything okay with him?

At Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008, I approached Schala-Kitty (zeal@schala-kitty.net, animekittysama@yahoo.com) at her table about a custom needlepoint coaster of a Pokémon. She agreed to the commission and told me I could put down $5 now and $10 when it's done. I did so happily and took her contact info.

After the con (9/28/08), I emailed her and just confirmed with her I was on her list. She replied back same day, and we went back and forth that same day about which pixel sprite I wanted the needlepoint to be based from. After we agreed, I waited patiently.

On 11/20/08, I decided to check in on the progress. Never received a reply.

On 12/7/08, I tried again, and the email bounced back. I had to do a lot of googling and figuring out to find an alternate email address that would work... finally I got her animekittysama email address and she replied back on 1/28/09 telling me she's been busy and having troubles. She offered a refund, and told me if I wanted the commission done, I could be bumped up on her list by paying the remaining $10.
I asked her how long it would take to finish if I paid the rest right then, and if she'd rather just refund me if it was going to be stressful for her.
Same day, she replied and told me she'd rather just do the commission for me and that it would take two to three weeks, so I sent the $10 and waited longer.

3/26/09, I hadn't heard from her, so I replied back asking for a status update.

4/4/09, she got back to me, saying she had been busy, but that my commission was finished. She told me it would mail the very next week, so I gave her my college address to send it to.

4/22/09, I asked if it had been sent yet, since I hadn't heard from her, nor did I get it in the mail.

5/6/09, I tried again. No reply.

5/23/09, I told her I really needed to hear from her, because I was going to graduate school the next month, and my address would no longer be valid. I asked yet again if it had been shipped yet, and was greeted with the same silence.

And today, 7/11/09, I emailed her with my new address asking her to mail it as soon as possible, or just give me a refund. It's been three months without a reply... I'm tired of not hearing from her.

I know she's probably busy, but it only takes two minutes out of your day to reply to your customers and say "Hey, I've been busy, I haven't mailed it yet". If she doesn't even have time to reply to messages, I think she would do well to just refund her customers and forget it. :/ And it rubbed me the wrong way that I had to go find her when her email address crapped out instead of the other way around.
I don't know if she's going to be at AWA again this year, but I can't say I recommend her after this. I just hope I can get SOMETHING for my money. :/

I will start off by saying that, since my English grammar is not the best, I had my friend (who is fluent in English) edit this entry for grammar, spelling, and structure, so that it is easier for everyone to read. None of the notes/comments/journals quoted in this entry are edited, and that is why the English in those is not as good.

I am Wolfie83 on DeviantART, and I commissioned DerSheltie on DeviantART because I admired his wonderful artwork and envied his talent. I am from Sweden and DerSheltie is from Japan. We communicated in English because that is our common language, though neither of us are perfect at it, as you can see in the correspondences.

On 28 May 2009, I started talking to him about a possible commission through comments on his DA profile. He had no price sheet, terms of service, or any information about commissions at all in any of his journal entries (I think I was one of the first people to ever commission him). Here is a screenshot of all the comments (I have put arrows next to everywhere that we discussed pricing):

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/wolfie83/convo-1.jpg

So then, a little while passed, and I got a note from him with a pre-sketch, asking if I was still interested. Here is the conversation:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/wolfie83/notes1.jpg

From this conversation and the previous one, I thought he had accepted my offer of $20 - $30. So, on 27 June 2009, he posted the finished commission to DA. I loved the picture, even though he had left off my character’s signature eye-scars, and got the eye color wrong, but I asked if he could change it, and he said that he could, and apologized for getting that wrong (that part of the conversation was in the comments on the DA picture, which are now hidden). In the meantime (before he made any changes), I sent a payment of $25, which was in the price range that I thought we had agreed on earlier.

Here is the conversation from the completion of the commission (before revisions) to the payment:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/wolfie83/notes3.jpg

DerSheltie also did the corrections I requested, though I was not able to open the download page. I asked him if he could email the file to me, but since the problems started right after this, he did not email the file to me or help me access it. Here is the conversation about the revision file:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/wolfie83/notes2.jpg

The following link is a continuation of the note conversation above (I’ve quoted the last thing that was said), which started after I had sent the payment. This is where the problems started:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/wolfie83/notes4-1.jpg
http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/wolfie83/notes5.jpg

So, I sent the payment, and DerSheltie refused it.

I’m not that good at English, so I thought maybe I said something wrong or missed something. I made a journal on DeviantART (seen here: http://wolfie83.deviantart.com/journal/25644045/ ) and showed our conversation in the notes, to ask if I did something wrong. I removed derSheltie’s name from all the notes. However, he commented on my journal in such a way that everyone knew who it was that I was talking about.

Later on, in different arguments with different people (all of which can be seen in my DA journal), he told someone else (he never told ME this, but told someone ELSE afterwards) the following:

If she paid $30, I would bear.
$40, I would compromise.
$50, I would be satisfied.
Actually I have requested jobs several times. The price that the opponent suggests were sometime over $100 per one work.
For example, I received $500 when I accepted this three logos.

Link to full comment: http://comments.deviantart.com/5/25644045/1114081914 So apparently, he deliberately made artwork that he thought was worth about double the amount that I offered him and that, I believed, he had approved.

In that comment, he also says:

Surely several points of that trouble caused by my ambiguous way of saying. I should think there are people who can't understand others' delicate expressions.

So he knew he was being ambiguous, but got angry when I didn’t pick up on his ambiguity, even when neither of us are native to English and really, neither of us are all that great at English either.

According to some of the comments on the deviation itself, he says he expected me to pay more because he assumed I was not a student and had a job, because of my age. Here is the string of comments:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/wolfie83/comments.jpg

He changed the image to be his own character (that doesn’t bother me), but what does bother me is what he wrote in the description (as of 8 July 2009), which can be seen here:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/wolfie83/description.jpg

Here is the link to the picture on DeviantART: http://dersheltie.deviantart.com/art/Indomitable-Wolf-127404330

I don’t think I can do anything to change this person’s mind. But I think I am right (please correct me if I am not) in warning others not to trust this artist with commissions. He doesn’t say his expectations, speaks ambiguously, and treats his clients with disrespect for not playing his guessing games.

Edit: refund received

In December I commissioned a number of sketches from Hobojobo over on FA http://www.furaffinity.net/user/hobojobo and everything seemed straightforward and cool. Well they vanished from FA and haven't been active for around four months now, and I haven't been able to contact them directly to find out what's up with the commissions. Secondly, at the time they didn't have a Paypal account, and so they had me pay them via their roommate's paypal account (tooiebird over on FA). I've been able to get in touch with tooiebird who I actually paid, and through them supposedly the sketches are finished, but nothing more heard for a month now, and never anything directly from the actual artist.

Anyone know Hobojobo directly and/or have any clue if they're still around, otherwise occupied by life, or has any problem with commissions? I'd be happy with either a refund or the artwork at this point, doesn't much matter to me (though seven months in, Paypal isn't going to be helpful on the matter).

Hi all! Not a warning, just curious if anybody knows if Spinelicker is around? I commissioned her for a traditional badge at last year's Anthrocon, and I know she finished it because she posted it to FA. It was great! Unfortunately, she appears to have disappeared off of FA and I haven't been able to get in contact with her by commenting on her page or sending notes.

I really, really want that badge-- it came out great. I hate to pester her, but I haven't sent any notes in a while and I'm not about to post randomly on her personal LJ about it unless I absolutely have to. It's simply that I know she's been around at cons and the like, so I know she hasn't totally dropped off the face of the earth.

I'd be thrilled if somebody could put me in contact with her or something! It's only a matter of shipping it out, after all. Thanks.

I finally got the time to post the dialogue between myself and an artist (www.trialsze.deviantart.com) I tried to commission once. Even though it has been about a year since this happened, it hasn't damped my feelings on the issue.




What happened is that I didn't get the picture I commissioned him for after a year and two months waiting for it. Check under the cut for the large picture of our correspondence, and further explanation.




( Beware Commissioning this guy... )*Fixed name in the link.

( I'm about to just say screw it )

Edit:Situation resolved. On some advice I sent her an email telling her I was uncomfortable with the commission thus far, and she sheepishly admitted that she has been too sucked into wow and told me that she'd been working on it from time to time, but didn't email me about her progress. She told me that she should have a finished piece for me by the end of the day, and she apologized profusely for making me wait so long and for getting snippy.

I need help getting in touch with an artist I commissioned about a year ago that has since fallen off the face of the internet. She lives in New Zealand so I do not know what my chances are, but I figured I would try.

That artist is http://naughty-kittykitty.deviantart.com/ . Her journal asks that those who have paid her for commissions contact her email to be refunded. I've emailed her several times about a refund and never received any communication. Notes sent to her through DeviantArt remain unread.

Her email contacts are elizabeth.leaper@gmail.com and dot.matrix74@gmail.com. I'm apparently not the only person having this problem with this artist but I know of no other way to contact her.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone may be able to give.

This is actually more an inquiry then a beware just so you guys know.

I would like to know if anybody has heard from the artist/fursuit maker known on FA as Brio.  http://www.furaffinity.net/user/brio

Four months ago I had bought a pre-made fursuit head from her and all was fine and dandy.  Contact was established, payment made and arrangements to replace the fun-fur white parts with nicer stuff ensued.  Two months later it was ready to ship but was sent back due to improper packaging and for the inconvience they had offered a set of paws with the head and of course I accepted and even offered to throw in some extra money if she could extend the paws with some short sleeves for easy conceilment with clothing, but during these final negotiations communication stopped.  I was puzzled but didn't think much of it.  Two months later still no word from her so I send an email and a pm to her FA and even added their AIM (I also noticed that her FA hasn't been updated in two months as well)....three weeks later I still haven't heard a peep...and its almost exactly one week now from AC...the very con I had bought the head to wear to and the only con I attend all year...  At this point I'm more then a little annoyed.  I know things come up and I know that everybody has a life to live....but this seems a little much...I mean all I ask is a little confirmation that she has not forgotten me.  For at this point I'm just a girl out both a head and a large sum of money (285 dollars to be exact)....

(noticing her shouts that she had been seen about two weeks or so ago at a small event by two furs, but others seem to also be having a problem contacting her....)

-ShadowRavenX