Beware: jessibean - LadyAvali / Avail/ Altana

I've been in contact with her since making this post and I believe we'll be working things out just fine! I'm going to put the entry behind a LJ cut but other than that will not be editing it or deleting it in any way for the sake of the community rules and what not, thank you!


WHO: LadyAvali

WHERE: LadyAvali and Altana on DeviantArt, Avali on tumblr

WHAT: $20 Digital Sketch Commissions

WHEN: April 20th - commissions open and paid for. Last communication on May 19th.

PROOF: Various screenshots of the dates mentioned below in case of deletion:
Journal #1 - Journal #2 - Journal #3 - Journal #4 - My last communication with her - Note about her moving accounts

EXPLAIN: Back on April 20th, she posted a DevArt Journal saying she was doing some very lovely sketch commissions for $20 USD. She had 15 slots, so at $20 a pop, that's a hefy $300 all in advance - I believe the slots were cleared out in less than 24 hours.

Now, I have never paid for a commission 100% in advance - sometimes I'll pay after a sketch phase or when the piece is half done - but this was my first time paying in advance. I normally wouldn't have, but she has done this style of commission before and it seemed to go very well, so I thought it would be okay.

On April 23rd, she posted on DevArt that she was going out of town for the weekend and would be "having a livestream on Monday" to get these knocked out.

On May 3rd, she posted on DevArt that the bad weather was keeping her from working on commissions. I understand tornados, bad weather, etc - I live in Tornado Alley myself - but considering that was 10 days after she posted about just being gone for the weekend...

On May 18th, she once again posted that the 'last few commissions' were going out. By this point, I had sent her a polite message asking if she had any updates about how long the sketches would take. The day after she made that journal, on May 19th, she sent me a note on DA asking for my reference info again (even though it was in that first post, like all other references). I sent it back to her that same day and I have heard nothing from her since. I have sent her one other polite message since then just asking for an update.

Today, I stopped by DeviantArt again just to see if she had responded, and although she has not posted anything on her account, the user GoblinCrusher94 has gone around posting that she's "got a new account and this one is dead" on her comments. The new account is the one I linked to above, Altana (which actually seems like it's an old account she left, then returned to - or at least is planning to return to. It's very confusing). And of course on top of this, she is updating her art tumblr rather constantly.

I'm not sure how many out of those 15 people haven't received their art, but I know for SURE at least one other hasn't, user nosebleeds, because he is a dear friend of mine and we've both been complaining about this a bit together, heh.

I have no problem waiting a bit for commissions, I really don't - as long as the line of communication is kept open. When an artist stops responding all together to messages, changes DevArt accounts, doesn't update about it on her Journal and I KNOW I'm not the only one that got screwed... well. I think it's at least time to step up and say something. It doesn't help that it was a pre-paid commission, so like I said - if none of the 15 people have received their sketches, that's $300 she's basically pocketed while we all wait for our art not even knowing what Deviant Art account she's on these days.

(sorry if this is a little tl;dr! I try to be as thorough as possible when I do something like this!)