Bourbon. (dead_punk_fox) wrote in artists_beware,
@ 2018-11-01 15:47
Commissioner Beware - Prince_Vaxis
WHO: Prince_Vaxis on FA, Vaxi on Discord
WHERE: Through FA, then through Discord DMs
WHAT: Commission fell through, he wanted to commission me for digital artwork to have one slot auctioned off.
WHEN: October 29-30.
EXPLAIN: At first I was hesitant to post a beware about this, but the more I thought about it the more obvious that his conduct was wildly inappropriate with me. A few of my associates (commissioners and artists) also felt a beware was necessary to warn other artists about him. Especially since it can be intimidating dealing with a client who has a good amount of watchers and commissions more well known artists, and it's common for artists to acquiesce to a client's demands because of these things.
It started off as him claiming a slot on FA (since deleted) and then wanting to discuss it further via Discord, which I don't mind. I keep my Discord public and am fine talking to whoever.
At first he wanted a bust commission, which would have fit within his budget. Then he waffled and decided he wanted a much larger idea, however he fought me every step of the way on cost. He was pushing for more and more to be included, things which are way outside the amount of time I have to devote for so little pay. At the end, I told him he was demanding way too much for what he was paying, because what he wanted was essentially a two character full color, which I charge $300 for per image.
The end of it has him cursing me out, trying to call me over Discord (I assume to yell at me over voice, had this happened I would have recorded it as well), which I am EXTREMELY uncomfortable with and what really pushed me to write this beware. I don't voice chat in private with random people, and certainly not with someone who's behavior turned suddenly sour. It was likely an attempt to intimidate me into handing him a full refund (which I have done at this point). And him bringing up breaking his commissioner's TOS (??? which sounded extremely sketchy to me, since a TOS is a terms of service for the person providing a service).
PROOF: Some of the screenshots do have NSFW art in them, this was him illustrating what he wanted. The conversation is also NSFW as it delves into the aspects he wanted included in the picture.
Also included is the sketch work I had done for him that he didn't want to pay for.
I apologize for how many screenshots there are, I wanted to include everything. The only part I left out was conversation about our pets and other casual stuff.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GhKNGZqpq0ZsFPMAmvPV1k8ZPuP9MxzC
Edit: Update 4.12.19
I actually do have an addition to this caution. Several weeks ago another artist DM'd me on Twitter saying that Vaxis had told them he'd apologized to me and was trying to be a better person. He has NOT spoken to me since before he was removed from the original A_B LJ community. I have had absolutely no contact and he has not made any apologies to me. If he's messaging anyone claiming he has, he's lying.
HatchetHaro (HatchetHaro) wrote in artists_beware,
@ 2018-10-29 01:26
Beware: Talen / Talen27 / Seagull / Seaguii
WHO: Talen27 / Talen / Seagull / Seaguii
WHERE: FurAffinity, Discord, Telegram
WHAT: Design and reference sheet
WHEN: July 8, 2018 to October 27, 2018
EXPLAIN: Before I start, most of what happened between us happened in voice chat, so any evidence on the matter is scarce. I am fortunately able to salvage enough from our text chatlogs (that he didn't delete) that should be enough to piece together what happened .
This person commissioned me for a design for his character, along with a reference sheet. I charged him $50, and since we were lovers, I told him to hold onto it so we could put it towards a commission for us both. We fell out, I lost my desire to take any commission with him, but he refused to give me my $50 back.
To begin, Talen and I used to be in a relationship, and I was the one who introduced him to the scalie community. As a symbol of our love, I made for him, for free, a design for his character along with a reference sheet for it.
I'd like to say here that the process of creating that reference sheet for him was painful, with me streaming the process of the art to him and creating design after design that he kept asking for tweaks or redesigns on, bouncing between every little detail asking me to make drastic changes again and again. Nevertheless, I completed it and sent him the finished file. The date was July 8.
After a week of finishing the reference sheet, though, he asked for changes to the design, and along with some other personal disputes, I told him that I would charge him no less than $50, and he agreed. [1]
Honestly, $50 for a full reference sheet at this quality is one hell of a deal, so to this day, the fact that he is unwilling to pay up is due to pettiness.
I continued to stream to him, in the exact same process of him asking for change after change after change on the designs that I came up with. I finished up the reference sheet on July 30, and told him to hold on to the $50 so he could pay that much in my stead when we decide to go for a commission together.
Fast forward to early August when he broke up with me for other relationship-related reasons. He still wanted to be friends, and though it hurt me, I continued to be friends with him, and he was still holding on to the $50 that he owes me. [2]
Since then, throughout the next two months, I've made repeated mentions for him to just return me my $50, though every time he tried to convince me to just get a commission with him. He never denied it, but he knows he owes me $50. [3]
Fast forward again to mid-October, I made a request of him to stop mentioning all the new friends he's trying to date because I was still hurting from the breakup, and he straight up flamed me in voice chat, in the most toxic manner one can imagine, all for being "soft" or "overreacting". At that point, I snapped, and demanded my $50 back, but he refused, going between excuses such as "I can pay you the $50, but I won't" to "I only have $7 in my bank account, I can't pay you", all between a lot of name-calling, flaming, and accusing me of "blackmail" (in his technical terms, "defamation for the purposes of monetary gain", which you can totally twist "I'll tell peeps you're a thief if you steal money from me" into). He proceeded to block me from all communications. [4][5]
Upon contacting one of his friends who know him better, I learned that Talen is simply that way and that my $50 is lost.
I have contacted another of his friends recently, who willingly acted as an arbiter between me and Talen, and given him an ultimatum: pay me, or stop using my design. At this point, Talen had removed my reference sheet from his gallery, and currently plans to use one of the art commissions he got from another artist as his new reference sheet, except that commission's character was fully taken from my design and refsheet.
[1] July 26: https://i.imgur.com/zRfFAgj.png
I have blacked out all things related to our personal issues; I can provide the non-censored text if inquired.
[2] August 10: https://i.imgur.com/zx96ExG.png
The "Option A" and "Option B" was, explained simply, "cut off contact from each other" and "remain friends and help each other recover" respectively.
[3] August 10: https://i.imgur.com/7yULthl.png
This one is where he suggests artists and I explain fully what I meant. In the end, it is still clear he owes me $50. I have blacked out the exact values that he had bragged about spending on commissions and toys already as well as how much he still had at the time. I have also blacked out other names and the segue into the discussion about our own personal issues.
[4] October 18: https://i.imgur.com/Vs7uxB8.png
This is our full conversation on FurAffinity directly after the last straw. Since they were all separate responses, I have taken the liberty to format the screenshots into a chatroom structure for the sake of readability; no content has been altered. Personal issues and discussions have been blacked out, except for the final one.
[5] October 19: https://i.imgur.com/sLEJ1Dy.png
These are excerpts from our final argument in a separate Discord server, highlighting his denial and hypocrisy. There have been many repeated mentions of "blackmail" and threatening legal action on his part that do not contribute to the discussion, so I have cut those out. I have also blacked out what he claimed to have in his bank account; the decimal place should tell you enough.
Honestly, I was very angry at that point, so some things I said was cringe-worthy; I have left those in for the sake of context.
There are lessons to be learned from this story, in particular for me. I have learned to recognize red flags that would ruin a relationship, and I have also learned that I should never provide the final finished commission without payment first, whether I trust the person on a romantic level or not.
I understand that this may be a more "special" case of Artist Beware in that the business is intertwined with personal feud; I have tried my best to omit most of the personal stuff from my images, but some I have kept in due to their vague relation to the transaction at hand.
Another thing I am unsure of is whether I should include the artwork in question in this post for clarity and also as proof in case he actually does continue to get commissions with the same character design. I'll edit it in underneath all this if you guys want me to.
I currently plan on selling the character design and reference sheet to someone else with little to no changes to the actual design, since the design of the character is still mine.
sergallysergal (sergallysergal)
@ 2018-10-25 20:53
Just A Little Mixed Up
WHO: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/just-a-little-mixed-up/
WHERE: Discord and Telegram
WHAT: Eight flat pinups.
WHEN: February 2018 to October 2018
EXPLAIN: Asked to buy 8 pieces in a discord we both shared. Was given an invoice, and gave her payments to the invoice(1) for the images she completed as she did them. First went pretty quick, the next one took a month, and the latest was not received until August. Between the second and third, she claimed she needed to get money together to move, and my response to that was to finish paying off the invoice completely. I also attempted to try to make the investment easier to handle by suggesting we switched out things, which is why I talked about getting a ref sheet instead of the last four pinups in the log. At the time I wanted to at least get something for the money I put down, and asking for a refund was the last resort.
After that I waited a month assuming it would take that long, without response, until the artist asked for email communications in reply to an inquiry on telegram that I had sent her(2), which threw me off since we had been working through telegram for the majority of the work. I inquired about it, but complied and resent her the material she needed for the work to be done.
( Read more... )
Another month later (and three days ago) I tried getting in contact with her again, with no response.(3) After asking a mutual friend I learned that she's been refusing contact under claim that she will only respond to email. I was frankly, tired of my investment going nowhere so I sent an email asking for a refund for the 5 pieces that were never started. As of this post I have yet to receive any compensation, not even a reply.(4)
Under the artist's ToS, linked here, the artist is responsible for keeping open communications to the best of her ability. This has unfortunately been broken seeing as she's still working on commissions while ignoring my inquiries, and with no faith that I will ever get a refund, I am washing my hands of this.
PROOF:
(1) https://www.dropbox.com/s/draztmtjxc9bslc/invoice.PNG
(2) https://www.dropbox.com/s/p8xl0judwcz4fbj/log1.PNG and https://www.dropbox.com/s/ayvni8aecpsw6tg/log3.PNG
(3) https://www.dropbox.com/s/qc05x9n8ox74kq2/log2.PNG
(4) https://www.dropbox.com/s/ccupob7bh138nhw/photo_2018-10-24_05-22-09.jpg
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October 25 2018, 17:48
Artist Beware: Baasil
I shall begin this with a little warning. I was uninformed about the actual stipulations of Paypal; I have always thought it was only 60 days, and not 120 days for buyer protection. With that said I was a bit assertive to this commissioned person. I thought my time was running out and dry, but this could have easily been resolved with some reassurance by this commissioned person.
WHO:
Baasil [http://www.furaffinity.net/user/baasil/]
SpicyBaasil [https://picarto.tv/SpicyBaasil]
WHERE:
Stream: SpicyBaasil [https://picarto.tv/SpicyBaasil]
WHAT:
This was meant to be a quick icon and a full color commission that stretched at most a 2 or 3 week period as stated by the artist.
WHEN:
August 31, 2018 - October 21, 2018
EXPLAIN:
The situation all started on August 31st 2018… I commissioned this artist in the early hours of 6am, but their stream ran short and they had been up all night for that day. They said they would complete my commission the following day.
I am always forgiving and being an artist myself was totally fine with waiting until tomorrow. Tomorrow came, and nothing had been done. I did not expect the requested art of a full color commission the following day, but I did expect some progress on this icon we had discussed in stream before.
Shortly after there was a Hurricane that struck their area, no damage other than power outages on Sept 9th …
I went along with what they said to me in that journal, that they will be working offline for their owed art due to those who had worked with them prior to the storm. Being patient I waited until days passed.
Sept 24th came I asked for n update since their queue listing isn’t quite listed anywhere I can find.
My sketch was promised the week of Sept 24th September 24th was a Monday and the 29th would be the end of this week After these following messages my patience became stale and I had to be a bit more blunt as I have seen little to no action by this artist to do their duties.
I was giving the benefit of the doubt to them and letting them tackle on a new icon since it’s been rough times.
Again another false promise “tomorrow” my patience is already running thin by now.
As I do not want this artist do to any more work than is required I wanted to make it clear that this is replacing what we had previously discussed.
Now comes the true fallout and where I feel insulted by this artist.
[for some reason it has “RE” even tho this is initial messages]
This is the point where I thought I am running out of buyers protection and being a bit more blunt with this artist.
Tomorrow promises yet again still being forgiving to this artist as I know how times can be tough.
Confirming and thanking on the new family member, at this point it has been a total of 46 days from initial commissioning. The icon was meant to be done the DAY after I commissioned them, and the art was to be done in 14/21 days from commission date.
Things turn sour~
It was at this point that I thought my buyers protection was running out and thought 60 days was the final cut off for my protection. This could have been so easily retorted by the artist letting me know I had 180 days but they decided to go a different route.
Their claim is that they have had my work done, but I do not believe them. I have no means of guaranteeing or not that they had my work done. I also felt sympathy for them because I do commission work too but of a different kind.
This was the most insulting thing of our interaction. As a client it is not my duty to keep notes on what you as a professional artist are owing me.
This is a blurry pic just where we had a verbal agreement of work we had done. It’s the best I could do I am sorry. Their vod was low resolution.
They got the idea of me being under the YCH through my personal Furaffinity Page. As I thought my time was running out I had to pressure them.
Things got hostile.
They got really mad at me, granted I was being very direct and blunt. I was just tired of hearing the three or four confirmations of getting my art done “this week” // “tomorrow” that I was basically done with this whole situation and wanted my money back.
This is where things turned sour and I lost trust in this person.
The fact that they are threatening defaming my name even tho my only fault was being assertive made me wary of their intentions.
“Rest of refund, you’re even making money on it because I can’t be bothered to figure out fees. If you still action, I will be pursuing theft by deception charges and reporting to FA. :D”
After issuing a 30 USD charge when I specifically told them the amount.
After this moment I just refunded both their initial 10 usd and their 30 dollars sent.
The saga ends there. This was the worst interaction I’ve ever had with an artist in my time on Furafinity. Could have simply been reassured by some condolences to me. Letting me know I had extra time vs when i assert myself threatening defamation.
I am not sure what circles they run with, but hopefully I am blocked by anyone who sides with their antics.
PROOF: Inline linking as conversation goes on, but will include all here in order of all my messages on FA.
https://i.imgur.com/B3xOVqw.jpg
