BadCoyote / CritterCanvas

My personal journey with BadCoyote begins circa mid 2017, when I discovered his art on FA, and fell in love with his more realistic rendering of muscle. He had one pic in particular, of a bald eagle (Shown later below), that I just adored, and when he was open for commissions circa mid-2019, I created a PayPal account and made my first purchase:

Specifically, I paid $250 USD for a character reference sheet, which included "Front, back and side view of the character, color swatch, and choice of font" and "A collaborative design session" (Included here is his newer commission form, circa July 2020, and his older one from early 2020, same prices and listings, but added a bullet point for "Complex armor/outfit/tattoos" costing $50 extra):

I paid in full on June 22nd, 2019, and would not hear from BadCoyote again relating to my commission until April 24th, 2020, a full ten months after the invoice date:

Now, lets talk about BC's Terms of Service (ToS): he has two separate versions, an old one (Used before July 2020, as far as I can tell) which he now claims applies to me based on my purchase date, and a new one (Screenshot taken in October 2020):

Now you will notice the old ToS on the left has no set time-frame and refunds section, and is rather vague on when pieces will be delivered. If I give him the benefit of the doubt, the vagueness was not intentionally set up as a slippery way to get out of refunds, but rather run of the mill incompetence. This is seemingly corrected with the updated ToS on the right, which has a fairly comprehensive policy in the "TIMEFRAME & REFUNDS" section, specifically:

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All commissioned work will be completed within three months of the invoice date, excluding Painted Illustrations which will be completed within six months of the invoice date. Commissions that fail to adhere to this clause will be subject to a full or partial refund contingent on the amount of work produced prior to their deadline.

I would consider a character sheet in the same level as a painted illustration, given the work involved, which would have given BadCoyote until December 22nd, 2019 to finish my commission. The fact that I didn't even hear from him until late April 2020 means he is in breach of his own ToS.

And to be clear: He did not start work on my commission, as far as I know. BadCoyote does not run a Trello board, note system, regular tweets on progress, or updates to a profile like FA, Weasyl, Inkbunny, DeviantArt etc. with WIPs, nothing. BadCoyote routinely goes completely silent, for months on end, and no one has any idea what he has been doing in the months since his last tweet or last art stream on Picarto. The few updates commissioners or fans get is through his Twitter, which, for our purposes here, does not routinely give updates on commission progress or WIPs. He will post finished pieces randomly, usually weeks or months between such updates, and I never received any indication my commission was ever worked on.

This leads to my character commission. On Twitter, I sent him examples of what I was going for:

Here start and ends the "Collaborative Design Session". This is me telling him what I wanted with the commission, and then it just ended. I would send him more examples of what I wanted from bodybuilding references...

Doesn't matter. He never acknowledged these additional images, or that he got my messages. Thus ends the "Collaborative design session", I guess. Personally, it did not feel collaborative, nor a session. Pretty unsatisfying, tbh.

On June 28th, 2020, BadCoyote updated his Twitter with a list of 23 commissioners waiting on pieces:

A few days after this tweet, BadCoyote announced one of his random Picarto streams, where he did art live, and his husband, Lobo, ran trivia, with prizes being either sketches or chibis (btw they still owe me a chibi from a year ago when I won trivia) done in an hour or less, live on stream.

I take this as proof that he can work fast, as the following two pieces of my werewolf sona, TK, were finished within 4 days for the weightlifting piece, and the forest piece was finished live on stream since it was a $30 sketch commission, in under an hour:

I would also like to point out his response to posting a queue of 23 separate commissions waiting to be completed was to draw sketches as trivia wins and take on stream commissions.

Because he announced the stream, I figured that was a sign he was working, and decided to ask for any updates:

Note that I did not say "I agree" or "I like it", because I did not want this to happen. But this was the first and only indication from BC that my piece was finally going to get worked on, a full year after the original invoice date of June 22nd, 2019. So I made a point to watch the stream, win trivia again (because that's what I do dab), and have people admire my eagley boi. This is the only piece I have received from BC regarding my $250 color character sheet, a full year after I commissioned him, paid in full:

I'd like to note I was never sent a draft or image, and instead had to screenshot the stream.

I will be honest: I don't fully like it, and I would have liked more changes, as I detailed on Twitter; such as a v-taper waist and more prominent obliques, as well as some changes to the muscles overall. This is a starting point, I fully get that, but BadCoyote and Lobo were seemingly against any changes made in the chat on stream, I guess because it made more work for them?

Now, what I imagine BadCoyote will say is that because I have this pic, I will only get a partial refund from him, if any at all.

My argument is that I paid for a character sheet he described in his commission form as being "Front, back and side, with color swatch". This is a black and white draft, barely the front view, and was started and completed on July 4th 2020, well outside the 6 month maximum outlined in the ToS, given an invoice date of June 22nd, 2019. This here represents the first and only piece of evidence BC did any work on my commission, and it was preformed a full year plus after invoice date/the commission was paid in full. I have not received what I paid $250 for, given the only work preformed is this black and white sketch, when I commissioned him for a full color eagle character reference sheet including front, side and back views.

Since the Picarto stream on July 4th, 2020, I left Twitter because of personal reasons (Twitter was stressing me out, basically). This had the unintended consequence of cutting off my only communication line with BC, so I made a new Twitter account solely to communicate with him. He told me it would be better to email him, so I did just that:

I never got replies when it came to updates on my commission, but he did reply to an email relating to his husbands health:

I take this as proof he is reading this email address, and therefore is selectively choosing what he does and does not reply to. He told me on Twitter to email *this* email account.

After speaking to a fellow BadCoyote commissioner about how long its taken and not hearing anything from BC, I finally decided enough was enough, and sent an email to BC saying I am posting an ArtistBeware on him because it has been over and year and a half now, and I have not received any updates on my commission. He did not reply. So I decided to leave a warning in his shouts to anyone considering working with him:

BadCoyote deleted these shouts a day later, and reached out on FA:

Let me be clear: There is no good time to ask BC to preform his work duties. Anytime I have seen anyone bring up the fact he owes them art or a refund, he treats it like he is being bullied, followed by a bevy of excuses ("Multiple Surgeries", "Burnout", "Been feeling sick because of my [censored]", "Dealing with family drama" etc). If I did not contact him on his holiday, I would have interrupted him while he was *totally* working on someone else's piece, or was sick and not feeling well, or was dealing with his dog, or whatever. There will never be a good time to make BC do his job, in my personal view. To ask him for updates regarding my $250 commission from a year and a half ago is quite obviously rude, and how dare I.

The finale to this is I sent him a note on FA asking for any updates, and BC sent me a note back saying he is willing to do the piece, so long as I remain civil. So I accepted his offer, specifically because of this line:

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If you still desire for it to be completed and promise to be civil when addressing issues with me in the future, I will see that your eagle ref sheet is completed by the end of the week. (December 7th, 2020)

I reiterated what I wanted for my eagle design in response:

Like the past year and a half, no response, no updates on Twitter, nothing. The week passed. Its been 18 months at this point.

When BC talks about civility here, what I believe he means is "Go easy on me" and let him continue operating as he does. The way he conducts himself has lead to a queue of 23 people, all of whom paid in advance, waiting in some cases years for their drawings. When you criticize this simple fact, you are being uncivil in BC's view, and in fact, bullying him.

BC says in his FA messages to me that he plans on leaving the fandom:

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I cannot be any clearer: my answer on your ref sheet is "no". Full stop. I am no longer doing furry porn as anything other than occasional personal art, and am moving on from this fandom to a more stable and rewarding career path that I can feel proud of.

To BC, all I can say is good luck.