Beware: Jace

Originally posted on Jun. 6th, 2013 by animakitty 

Mod Note: The NSFW flag has been selected for content of some of the later conversation. Additionally, one sentence at the end with speculation how much Jace's health issues keep him from work has been removed as this would not be allowed if this were to be submitted today.

Brian Harp (He uses his real name openly on his current place of business, http://www.furaffinity.net/user/jace/ ) aka Jace, owes me for ~300 dollars of money and goods paid for two multi-character full color commissions never delivered, one ordered in 2005 and the other in 2008. This year I offered him a final chance to do right by me, giving him four months to deliver what I was owed. That deadline passed May 31st, thus this account to warn potential commissioners of his inexcusable behavior.

I approached Jace for a commission in 2005 when he still did business out of his website www.sharkie.net, requesting a piece of traditional art using one of his established characters and my personal character. I paid his rates at the time for a color piece, and though it's been so long I could have sworn it was more, the one reference I could find below indicates the first payment was $120.00 Jace insisted on being paid via check or money order instead of Paypal. (This of course prevented me from disputing the payment via Paypal. Small claims court is not an option for me, as {as I understand it} I would spend more than I've lost simply flying to California to attend the first court session.)

(The mailing address is censored, as are a couple words to keep the rating down. This one-sided conversation was drawn from my web-mail account. My side is missing because apparently my web-mail doesn't retain the contents of my outbox nearly as long as the inbox.)

Over the next two years I received nothing, not so much as a sketch, though Jace claimed he had gotten to work on my commission and had produced a sketch. I communicated with him every few months, not wanting to annoy him into giving up on my commission entirely. I had commissioned him expecting there to be delays, based on what I'd heard from some of his former customers, and I was prepared to wait months, even as much as a year. As the occasional pokes continued to produce no fruit, I grew increasingly frustrated.

In 2008 Jace commented on a photo of some painted Nerf guns I had done and posted on Furaffinity, expressing enthusiastic interest in doing a trade for some Nerf work. I reminded him he still owed me art, and he said he'd finish the first piece and do a second for me if I would send him some guns...and some more money. I foolishly believed that now, having captured his attention, (I have personally witnessed that he is much more willing to actually deliver on his promises to people closer to him) that he would deliver on his promises. I boxed up several Nerf guns, some off-the-shelf, some personally modified, sent him another sum of money as well, and gave him the specifics on the second commission, another multi-character full-color traditional piece, which he showed every sign of being enthusiastic about. I had to go back through my notes on Furaffinity to find the details about the original commission for him, because he didn't have the faintest clue about what I had ordered from him.

(Censored to keep it SFW.)

Jace fell into exactly the same pattern. He told me he was working on it, then stopped communicating. I gave him a few months between reminder-pokes, and each time he had totally forgotten that he owed me anything, and made excuse after excuse about why he wasn't working on my commissions. These included medical complaints, 'I am moving,' 'I have a block on [that particular subject matter] right now,' and more.

I watched with growing outrage as despite these excuses, he continued to draw for other people, taking their money and actually producing for them.

January 2013 I finally emailed him and confronted him, kid-gloves off. I told him I'd been waiting eight years for one commission, five for the other, that I had been more than patient with him, and that I would give him one more chance to make things right between us. I gave him a deadline. I wanted my art by the end of May 2013. It was near the end of January when I contacted him, so realistically this gave him four months to deliver. I did not specify what would happen at the end of the deadline if he did not deliver; I made no threats.

He opened the excuse floodgates again. Medical issues, moving... He insisted my deadline could not be met. I told him if he couldn't meet the deadline he could always refund my money. He said that was impossible, and claimed he was doing commissions for medication and food to live on at that point. To meet the deadline then, I told him he may have to put everyone else who was waiting on art on hold. I seriously doubted anyone on his current queue (that hadn't given up already) had a longer-standing claim than I did. I told him I would not yield on the deadline.

Then he told me both commissions I had placed were impossible for him to complete. The character of his I'd wanted him to use was too personal and spiritually-linked to him for him to use at will, and the content of the second commission involved something he found repulsive. You can imagine how infuriating this was to hear. If these things had been true all along, he had never intended to do the work. If these things weren't true back when he took the commissions, it certainly looks like he's just inventing reasons not to do the work.
He also insisted he could not do color work and still meet his deadline. I told him that if he wasn't able to produce the quality I had paid for, then the quantity must necessarily increase, so two color commissions should become three inked commissions. He stated he did not feel this was a fair exchange for me, and while I privately agreed, I told him *I* could decide that, and had.

Literally having nothing to lose at this point but time and patience, I told him 'Fine, I'll come up with new commission ideas.' I came up with five new concepts. He rejected all of them.

He suggested a sequence, using a new character. I set some parameters, and he told me he would create a concept sketch of this new character for me to approve.

It was mid-March before that sketch appeared. (Given some of the things I suggested that he rejected for the character, it's possible he had already drawn this character and just pulled it out, claiming he'd just sketched it. I'll never know.) He even seemed excited about the character. I approved of it, and we agreed on the last details for the commission.

Before that sketch, and since, he has streamed almost weekly, and submitted other art on FA. He is working steadily, just not on my pieces. I told him back in February I would not be hounding him. It hadn't worked in the past, and I didn't expect it would work this time around. As long as it was done by the end of May I didn't care what pace he worked at. He could do it all the day before for all I cared, as long as the work was up to snuff. But he delivered nothing, has probably forgotten about me again, and I am finished wasting my time trying to recover what he stole. I have other emails and IM logs available for anyone desiring further proof.

Whatever his intentions were, Jace took my money and my goods while reneging on his side of the deals, exhibited extreme disrespect and callousness in how he dealt with me, and betrayed my trust. Even after being offered a chance to make things right, even being permitted to completely change the deals he had entered into with me to accommodate him, he failed to put things right. That's all his doing.