I was approached in-game by someone offering art commissions, and given that I didn't have many done of my characters and didn't have much money, I spoke with them a little bit about it.
The price was decent and so I agreed to talk about it over discord messages.
I got information from them, and provided references as well as what I was looking for, which also included the only commissioned art piece I had of the character in question.
The payment was sent, but there was some issues over how it was to be sent to them. I originally used the payment option but was told to resend it as a friend after he refunded the prior payment.
In the end, the payment issue was fixed and the agreed upon amount was received. There was a little more discussion on available times as well as an ETA on seeing the linework.
Past that point, the next time I contacted them was a little over a week later, on April 5th, to check on the progress given what they had told me about their usual turn-around times.
They messaged me a week later on the 13th that they were finished with the prior line work for a previous commission (the draenei in the screenshot) and that they were going to be starting on mine next.
Three days later on the 16th I received a message saying that we needed to discuss pricing.
I told them that we had already negotiated and agreed on the price, and that I had paid them in full and up front and that I wanted to see the line art to see if there were any changes I would like made.
There were a few things that I had an issue with and voiced them, as well as restating that I would not be paying anything further since the agreed upon price for the digital color portrait had already been paid.
They attempted to pass blame off on me for not working with them, despite during negotiations a few weeks prior on the 19th when I stated I would be more than happy to provide further assistance should they need more references or clarification from me.
They continued to attempt to re-negotiate further payment on a transaction that was already concluded and payment rendered. When I declined, and told them that I would simply take the incomplete product, they agreed. After that, they messaged me that they would probably go ahead and finish the coloring of the art piece anyway or possibly use it as practice for shading and that I should keep an eye out for it.
When I attempted to confront them on this, Discord's bot informed me my message could not be sent because I had been blocked/unfriended by them. I attempted to go to their Instagram page where they had posted the work and reply to their work. The post was rapidly deleted and my Instagram account blocked from viewing their page.
As the payment was changed from a business transaction to a gift, I know I cannot be refunded. I wouldn't have minded being out the money for this commission, but when I was told that they were essentially going to finish the drawing anyway -after- I had told them I was done, I wanted to make others aware of this artist.
Explain; Prepaid for a YCH commission posted via her gallery. (YCH attached).
She originally mentioned that she had a queue and it would be a wait, I had no problem with that.
I paid for it right away as she needed the money for an electric bill she stated in the post.
I sent in the info to her via note and she confirmed it as well ok. Stated it would be at LEAST a month before it was complete. Again, I was fine with that.
I commented back on the same post for an update about a month and a half later, because I realized her trello never updated to show my commission on her to-do list.
She replied promptly and gave me an update.
December I noted again, right before Christmas, asking if there was any updates, as I had heard nothing from her but continued to see postings of art, YCH's for sale and journals. She stated she was almost done with a wip and apologized for the delay.
That was the last I heard from her directly.
I noted again in February, she read the note but never responded.
Again I noted for an update at the end of March. This note has still sat unread.
So currently I am still down $50 or the YCH paid for.
Obviously it is too late for me to go through Paypal and dispute the charge for a refund, but I am hoping this helps others avoid what I am not dealing with, maybe it will end with me getting either the YCh I paid for or a refund.
TLDR: I Paid for a commission I never received
Back in mid 2017 I came across a post on Furry Amino from CanineVomit offering animated icon commissions. Interested, I contact them and we work out the details, with the payment being made on July 16, 2017. Fast forward maybe a few months and the end up announcing that they were leaving Furry Amino and tell their commissioners to email them (I don't have any screenshots from Amino as when they deleted their account their portion of the chat dialog was deleted as well). I do so and never get a response. After some time passes, I ended up finding them on Instagram and re-establishing contact there. After a bit of panic due to lost contact everything seems fine. More time passes and I hear nothing further from them again, and the same thing happens. They respond, everything's fine, but THIS time this is the last I hear back from them. I attempt a few more times to message them on Instagram after a while of not hearing anything but they never respond. Eventually they also end leaving Instagram like they did Furry Amino but without leaving any contact info for commissioners (They did leave their account up with the name "doggydeadd" for a bit but completely deleted it shortly after). I find them on DeviantArt and, like with Instagram, I attempt to contact them again. After a few attempts, they deactivate their account without even responding.
This issue has been RESOLVED as I have received a refund, but I would still like to WARN others about this artist and their TOS.
On 7/05/18 I commissioned BluntGypsy for a YCH pinup slot that they had put up for sale. The pinup YCH's were offered in this journal:
And came from this DA listing:
I wanted a $20 colored sketch and here is the conversation had with the Artist to confirm the commission:
I paid them that day and added a $5 tip in advance since this was for a 'Fund Raiser' and it sounded like they were going through a rough time. Here is the proof of the Paypal transaction:
As you can see in the messages above she said she'd have it done in about a week or so, so I waited.
She did not reach out to me personally for months and I waited patiently until she began to post some pretty concerning journals. The first came in August.
I am not a part of her Discord so this was the only update I had seen since I commissioned her, but as it said something may be done by the end of September, I decided to try to wait. The next journal, however, raised some red flags for me.
I had not had any communication with the artist directly before seeing this journal, so it came as a surprise to me that they were trying to sell their tablet (which they would need to finish my commission). So, I sent them an email.
On the bottom is the email I sent to her and above it is her reply to me which came about a month later. I will point out she said she understood if a refund is desired, or to let her know if I still wanted the commission. At this point, with the selling of her tablet and the lack of communication, along with me not playing that character much at the time, I just wanted a refund and knew it may take a little while to get one back but asked for one anyway.
After sending this email I received no further replies through email from her. The only thing I saw of her was another journal posted at the end of December.
It states that her house burnt down at the end of November but also asks for people to file refund requests through her emails, which I had already done, and clearly offers said refunds for clients who do not wish to wait until she can get a new tablet and get to work on art again. I decided to wait a couple of weeks before reaching out to her and sent her a message in January to see if she had ever gotten my email about wanting a refund and to simply check up on things.
Please note that she said she'd put me 'at the top of her list' BECAUSE I'd reached out to her again. I waited another month or so but was concerned when I saw her offering money to those who would get her a tablet and talking about YCH's or designs she had bought in other servers so I contacted her for an update.
I admit that I was getting a bit impatient as I had been nice and had tried to be understanding throughout all of this since I know she had been dealing with a lot of stuff.
Two weeks later she reached out to me for the FIRST time since I had commissioned her.
On that day she said she'd send a refund THAT DAY or the next. I checked my paypal for the next couple of days and had received nothing. I decided to give her even more time and waited a month before contacting her again.
The reply I received was that I had been bumped down on the list due to a rather 'impatient and rash client' who received priority, likely because of their attitude. I was rather unhappy with this considering how patient and civil I had been trying so hard to be. She said she'd get it to me by Friday (which would have been the 5th). I waited until Friday, received nothing, let Saturday pass by and still did not see my refund so I messaged her on Sunday.
At this point I was -done- waiting and receiving nothing but excuses, but as it had long passed Paypal's refund policy I could do nothing but continue to ask and wait. I finally received a refund on Monday the 8th.
Firstly, I'd paid $25, not $20, but because the $5 was a tip of sorts, which I never should have given, I'll call the refund good. However, she chose to mention her TOS to me, which I was rather unhappy about considering she does not have this TOS listed on the front page of her DeviantArt, nor did I see it when I first commissioned her (turns out it was linked in a random journal). I WISH I would have read the TOS BEFORE commissioning her because I would have never done so otherwise. Here is a copy of it:
First of all, she has a 'Pay Upfront' policy along with a 'No Refunds' policy, which Paypal will not even back (which is how she takes most of her payments). Secondly, it states she will finish commissions in no later than 8-weeks, so the fact that I asked for a refund on an 'Overdue Commission', one that she OFFERED to me first, does not seem so wild, to me.
After this I did send her a message on Discord letting her know that I was unhappy with the entire process and why. She sent me a message back, defending herself, her policies, and then promptly blocked me.
As stated before, I count this as RESOLVED because she did finally get a refund back to me, however with the TOS that she has (with the 'absolutely no refund policy') and with how hard I had to try to reach out to her, I am wanting to warn others before they commission her so they know the potential of what they may be dealing with.
I commissioned this artist in February 2018. This one is pretty cut and dry. We exchanged notes on the animated commission I wanted and then there was a pause in communication since I was busy with work and the artist was ill. After May, I didn't hear anything back from the artist. I exceeded the PayPal chargeback time frame so I was not able to get my money back. I also did not receive any E-Mails back from Ricardo from the address he uses for PayPal. However, there were plenty of instances where he was posting on his Twitter account throughout 2018 so essentially, he took my money and ignored me. Buyers beware!
In June of 2018 I requested a commission from a fairly popular artist on Furaffinity called Psy101. The artist asked for a full up-front payment from the get-go which I am usually quite wary of so I decided to first ask for an estimated time schedule for when it would be completed, which he said would be around 3+ months so I chanced it.
The artist would post both commissioned and trade/gift artwork to their gallery respectively. Images provided show gift and trade artworks which were posted after my commission request and payment was sent. As a former commissioner myself and one who knows other artists that do commissions, the thought of putting free art before paid artwork seems very unprofessional and distasteful. But I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt, on the grounds that perhaps these were artworks he'd made before my commission request and the fact he had posted journals about experiencing real life problems which would explain delays to the commission.
On approach to 7 months I decided that I'd just rather take my request elsewhere and politely requested a refund which was met with no response, this request was made on Janurary 4th 2019. I knew inactivity couldn't be an excuse for not responding to my refund request since the artist was still continuing to post content to his gallery. The crux was when yet another 'gift' drawing was posted to his gallery with my refund request still being ignored, which got me to message him a second time in a much more informal and direct response, demanding a refund since I am owed it. This second request was made on Feburary 19th, 2019 and, yet again was ignored and has still not been responded to.
I've put reason in my refund requests, referencing his journals and sympathizing with his situation but ultimately the ignoring of my messages has lead me to conclude he is not professional in how he conducts his business and I would highly advise against supporting him.
This is an old Beware, but I was unaware of this website's existence at the time of this commission. To date, the commission has still not been completed as detailed, and the user continues to have me blocked, so I consider it still relevant. The commission took place on FlightRising, and thus all screenshots are from Private Messages and Crossroads (transaction history, basically) from that site.
On a side note: all icons and names from PMs show up as Panicat because that's how the website shows them. However, I have marked clearly which ones are my replies and which are theirs.
This is the original post I had made looking for art. Take note that it has not been edited since almost a week BEFORE any of our correspondence took place, so you're seeing the exact same message that they did when contacting me. The text links --
Tattoo Reference:
Pose Reference:
And a link to the original thread which still exists and has not been edited since, to verify that I'm not altering any of that information.
On Dec 09, I received a PM from Panicat offering to fill the commission.
The References link:
Not perfect, necessarily, but most of it seems solid enough.
So I replied:
Their reply:
For an idea of the cost, 1.5k gems is somewhere between $15 and $20. That was about 3x the going rate for that kind of commission on the site itself at that time, but since I was asking for a PSD to be edited by me later, and because I trusted in their ability to provide a quality commission given their sample images, I was willing to pay it.
My reply. I should probably have waited to send payment, but honestly, I've commissioned dozens of pieces of art (not including adoptables) and had never been burned before (or in the three years since.
Proof of payment. The diamond at the bottom is gems, the premium currency on the site. As you'll see, though, they did NOT keep me updated, though that's a minor complaint compared to anything else.
This is what I received almost a full week later.
Take note that this is NOT the pose I had asked for, nor do I believe this is "solid human anatomy," as the character looks like he's going to topple backwards. Also, should he put any weight on that left hand, with his fingers bent like that, he would BREAK HIS FINGERS. Regardless of knowing anything about the character or not, this not only does not match the reference pose, but I'd argue, isn't solid anatomy at all, nor is it representative of the samples they provided.
So I contacted them, mentioning the various problems with the art they'd provided:
I tried to provide positivity (what a cool breakdancing pose!) to soften the blow of the art being so wrong that it would probably need to be scrapped and done again. I also provided more specifics on WHY I liked the pose reference I had provided, hoping it would prevent a second mistake.
I do not feel that I am in the wrong to request that they ACTUALLY draw what I paid them for.
Their reply.
They messed up, and they want ME to pay THEM to fix it. Just... WHAT?
And 1kg? That would put it at 2.5kg for what is basically PARTIAL LINEART that is PROBABLY on top of a very, very rough sketch. That's absurd levels of payment, in my eyes, even given that I was asking for the license to animate the resulting image with a basic glow effect. For reference, that puts it very clearly above the $25 level. For again, what is essentially partial lineart.
On principle, I refused to pay someone to fix their own mistake. I asked several artists (both friends and strangers) whether they felt I had been clear enough in the original thread, and they all replied that yes, the misunderstanding was on Panicat's end, not my own. So I replied:
As mentioned there -- if they had questions, I would have happily answered them. If they'd "kept me updated," as they claimed they would do, I would have pointed out the error the moment I saw it. But they did none of those things, and instead blatantly ignored my requests.
Their reply:
They're insisting that I still pay, because "well how could I know better?"
So my reply:
I feel my solutions are pretty fair. They didn't deliver the commission as ordered. I would have PREFERRED a redraw, but it's entirely possible a YCH auction would've earned them money back for the (incorrect and inaccurate) work provided.
Their reply:
They delivered the WRONG work, and decided to blame me for not accepting blatantly inaccurate work that didn't reflect the original commission.
My reply:
I never received an answer to that PM, and soon after posted the entire exchange to the website-specific version of ArtistsBeware.
I have since learned that they've blocked me.
This is what I see when I try to view their profile:
And this is what anyone not blocked by them, or me via incognito window (logged out) can view:
So no resolution will ever be found, it seems. They scammed me out of my gems, refused to correct their mistakes, and blocked me when I tried to find a resolution.
@kurothepone to @kurovrchat to @kurolatex to @kurooof to @kurosuccubuss to @kurosuccubusVR
Accepted a commission from this dude. He commented on my art one day, decided to look at his FA profile since I'd never seen it before. whatever.
, I noticed that he was having thoughts of selling his character.
had commisioner in the past was having falling out w/he community while commission was in queue, I ended up refunding them b/c didn't want to deal with the drama, honestly thought it be best if that was how it ended.
This is commisino he wants for me
thats his character that he wants me to draw. the same one hes selling. didnt want to deal w/the possibility that by the time i reach his comm in queue (~200 from my pi day sale) i'd have to be dealing with a new owner who maynt like the commission or whatever
this is the response i got
after chnging his twittler handle multiple times
he threatens to dox me for posting my negative experience w/him on twitter
after which, he did dox me on my public post and then threatened me more in dms which i have legal grounds to have him arrested for. however, he deleted my twitter messages. idk if this is twitter or if it's b/c i blocked him but all messages i sent him and he sent me are gone. i do have the emails that twitter has sent to me of each dm he sent, though, so if he continues, i will contact law enforcement in germany regarding his blatant violation of the law.
please dont support bad behaviour like this.
after which, he did dox me on my public post and then threatened me more in dms which i have legal grounds to have him arrested for. however, he deleted my twitter messages. idk if this is twitter or if it's b/c i blocked him but all messages i sent him and he sent me are gone. i do have the emails that twitter has sent to me of each dm he sent, though, so if he continues, i will contact law enforcement in germany regarding his blatant violation of the law.
please dont support bad behaviour like this.
Hi there~ This is my first post on here, so sorry if I don't do everything right ;0; Just had a pretty intense interaction with a buyer, so I'd like to warn anyone who may come into contact with him.
I contacted EylonFerrousa on Telegram after he had made several posts in a few chats we shared looking for an artist to draw his dragon character. His budget was $40 and I was willing to work with that. I generally do commissions differently than most (this experience has made me change my methods, however); I usually try to complete the sketch before requiring payment, so after receiving a text description of the dragon he wanted drawn, I got to work and made a few sketches with minimal tweaking. Once I had gotten it to a point that I thought would be good enough to go forward with, I sent it to him but didn't receive any response for well over a week. I sent a quick "hey just checking in" message, and he informed me that some things had come up and he needed to cancel the commission. No biggie, life happens, and I totally understand ? I said as much, but mentioned that because I had spent quite a long time on that sketch, I would probably recycle the pose to fit one of my dragon characters that I had been meaning to draw (I would not be stealing his character, just using the pose and anatomy that I had spent around an hour perfecting on his dragon to make drawing mine go quicker) He was irked by this, saying that he'd rather I not reuse it, since he would be using the sketch. After I insisted that he did not own that sketch since he had not paid for it, he responded, saying that in his ToS (apparently commissioners have ToS's? I haven't heard of this) he claims that all art drawn for him belongs exclusively to him, whether he's paid for it or not. This alone is something you can't enforce, as artists own the art that they draw, especially art that hasn't been paid for, but prior to this, the idea of him having a ToS was never brought up, mentioned, or linked to. If he really did have such a ridiculous condition in his ToS, this should have been the first thing brought up. He then proceeded to go on a bit of a tirade, claiming that if I did anything to that piece, he would have full grounds to sue me, and he ensured me that I "didn't want a lawsuit on my hands." I responded, practically refuting everything he said, and I promptly blocked him. I have the entire chat screenshotted (good thing too, because he nuked the chat as soon as I replied to his lawsuit threats), but the only truly important parts are the end where things got heated, and I'll put my response in there as well just for a little closure. I'll include them below, but if any more info is requested, I'd be more than happy to provide it. I'll also put in the original message he had sent when looking for artists to draw his dragon, as well as the sketch of the dragon I completed as proof that I had done the work in the first place.
Unfortunately, I seem to have missed the text he sent me after his long tirade about suing me; he made sure to mention that he had business to attend to with the CEO of Hasbro (an obvious scare tactic, and a poor one at that).
Requested a commission of 2 female OCs spending time together. D.Orange presented me with 3 sketches to choose from and then pay the amount when ready. Paid $225.00:
Months go by with little interaction. D.Orange claims to have working issues irl, gave him the benefit of the doubt and gave him space. Months roll by and the responses gradually diminish to zero from him:
Being part of a discord group, even had a mod step in to get it rectified, but even he didn't get a response from D.Orange.
A bit old, but Orange is still active. Wanted to bring awareness.
