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Meeting one of your favorite artist.....and they end up being a jerk.
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82 posts in this topic

20 minutes ago, Bird said:

I used to be annoyed when artists had predrawn stuff and were not doing specific characters, but got used to it and prefer it now (mostly, some exceptions). Jim Starlin is a great example, he would arrive and throw out a few sketches and take it or leave it. More the next day. By and large I bet he will get the same character requests anyway though. Lots of guys do it this way. You could show them off in advance to market it up as well.

Yeah, this is exactly what I'm thinking of doing.  Side benefit for me is that it alleviates all the little mini deadlines I have when I take on, say, a dozen commissions, and now I have a dozen deadlines to get all those commissions done on time. It's not the commissioners fault and I'm not ragging on them, it's just a lot of pressure to go along with the pressure of my published deadlines. Life is short, and at some point, it's nice to ease up on the accelerator. Ironically, now I have the pressure of putting out pre drawn stuff that's good enough that someone is going to just walk up and want to buy it.  Just shoot me now. :frustrated:

Edited by stinkininkin
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5 hours ago, Unstoppablejayd said:

This... and I would also note @stinkininkin is one of the nicest easy to deal with guys I have some across... whether buying or meeting .. so MAYBE OP went a bit to far..

+1 on @stinkininkin being one of the nicest guys. Met him a couple of times at NYCC, always super nice, donates any sig fees to great causes and gave me a kickass head sketch in my Jim Lee artists edition.

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5 hours ago, stinkininkin said:

I don't think the OP went too far, as I indicated in my post. Its just not how I want to handle commissions at this point. Taking it further, I'm considering starting out the convention season by not taking commissions per se, but rather just doing cool drawings when I have spare time and offering them up on a first come first serve basis when I hit shows.  Would anyone be up for that, or does the personal customization aspect of commissions trump getting a good representative example of an artists work?

Also, not to diverge too much, but what would YOU like to do at cons? Sign? Chat? Remarque? - at NYCC you had one of those aisle blocking queues (as you richly deserve) but did you enjoy your interactions with the fans or did you feel constricted by the requirements of doing commissions? 

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1 hour ago, Blastaar said:

As mentioned earlier Stroman does this now and he seems to be doing well with it. I think commissions were piling up on him for a time and he needed to try a different approach. 

Stroman had the most awful reputation for the longest time - for taking money and never delivering work. Ever. He ghosted so many people over many years (at least ten). I've never heard that any of the problems were cleared up either. It must have caught up to him enough that the only way to still make money at shows was to do cash 'n carry. I'll never buy anything from him, ever, in sympathy with my brothers that spent money on vaporart.

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1 hour ago, tth2 said:

This is a comic message board.  You can safely assume that the social skills of some members are not so, er, well developed.

Which is accurate. I worked on commission, so now that I don’t, it’s more a matter of desire than ability. 

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10 hours ago, Blastaar said:

Just had an odd experience. I was working directly with one of my favorite artist on a commission request. Not a cheap one.  Had a few back and forth emails on concepts and each response included a snarky remark. I asked if we could hop on a quick call to make sure we are on the same page and he responded with a "You are becoming a little too high maintenance for my taste". I wrote him back canceling the commission (he hadn't started yet). I'm not going to name names because this isn't about the quality of his work it's more of meeting your heroes and it goes bad. Has anyone had this happen, did it ruin your appreciation for their body of work? I'm able to separate the man from his work, maybe he was having a bad week or I was being too sensitive, but it's still disappointing. It's like seeing Jeter kick a puppy. 

I can imagine the artist may have just messaged the same 2 statements to someone, somewhere on the interwebs :)

While I see your point, I can see it more off-putting to many artists and the "let's hop on the phone" left turn if probably going to shut down a commission for a larger percentage of artists IMO and hardly puts them into the jerk category. Think about it, you are someone they don't know asking for their personal phone number ... 

Please tell me you didn't pull a George Constanza on the artist 

Image result for jerk store

 

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One very prominent early 80s artist agreed at a con to do a convention but didn't want to discuss details including price and asked me to come back the next day. I did, and eventually he said he really didn't to do anything. OK...

Another prominent 90s/00s artist took payment on a convention commission but wasn't able to deliver at the con. OK, better get a good piece than a rushed piece. I emailed him once a month, which IMHO is not inordinate a frequency of communication when work for hire has been contracted and paid. I heard nothing the first month, got a "working on it" email the second month, and got the product the third month. I consider that acceptable, though a "working on it" confirmation the first month would have been appropriate.

I assume people here know the story of Michael Golden turning Gerry Turnbull's late commission into an insult opportunity: https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-art-commissions-go-bad-michael.html

On the positive side, I'll name a name. Yanick Paquette did a nice job for me, delivered at the same con, and he was excited to talk about his work and the writers with whom he had worked, a list including Moore and Morrison.  Erica Henderson was likewise great. Barry Kitson gave me two bonus figures when I only paid for one Triplicate Girl. I posted the results in the commissions thread.

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30 minutes ago, JadeGiant said:

I can imagine the artist may have just messaged the same 2 statements to someone, somewhere on the interwebs :)

While I see your point, I can see it more off-putting to many artists and the "let's hop on the phone" left turn if probably going to shut down a commission for a larger percentage of artists IMO and hardly puts them into the jerk category. Think about it, you are someone they don't know asking for their personal phone number ... 

Please tell me you didn't pull a George Constanza on the artist 

Image result for jerk store

 

He called me high maintenance and was curt with me. I have feelings, I’m not a vending machine. That was my main issue. Not the refusal to jump on the phone. And to be clear my exact words were would it be ok to jump on a call?  

And no I didn’t say that....I went straight for the “Well I slept with your wife!”. 

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This thread is beating a dead horse so I will close it out with this. I’m glad and grateful for this community. It has really helped me navigate this new passion and hobby. Learn something every week and this week was no different.  Nice to hear different prospectives.  And the main reason I didn’t provide his name was because I wasn’t sure if I was in the right or wrong. My concern was not being able to move pass the interaction and still appreciate his work. That’s just silly, Pearl Jam is my favorite band and they really don’t understand how politics work. I guess I can look pass this interaction and learn from it. 

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14 hours ago, tth2 said:

Maybe in an artists' message board somewhere, there's a thread called "Dealing with a customer ... and they ended up being a jerk". :baiting:

I can only imagine the outbreak of pearl clutching that might ensue....

2091362174_onthephone.gif.0f91d067b357b4afa30cc3e5b7aafb4e.gif

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On 2/6/2020 at 12:37 PM, stinkininkin said:

Gotta admit, if I'm asked to take a phone call for art direction on a commission, I'd probably bail. Not saying your request is unreasonable, but I really just need commissions to be as easy as humanly possible.

 

Tell me about it.  You turn down my requests all the time, and I’m just trying to commission a party!

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23 hours ago, stinkininkin said:

Appreciate the question and where it's coming from, and I really like doing just about anything other than doing commissions at shows.  I love meeting people, chatting a bit, signing their books, meeting other artists and looking at all the art and commissions that OTHER artists do, but sitting there and drawing in bad light on uncomfortable chairs while under a microscope is not my personal favorite thing.  I do it a little bit, but most of my commissions have always been prearranged where I can be more comfortable and the customer gets a much better drawing as a result.  But that's just me.  I see a lot of artists pump out huge quantities of amazing art for happy fans.  Different strokes and all that.

You also marathon through the con and don’t disappear in the back room.  Con commissions mean you have to fine respite away from the masses.  And you get a lot of attention just from people that want to meet you.  I got in your line 3 times just to repeat the experience - even if you did recognize me in disguise.

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On 2/7/2020 at 11:34 AM, RBerman said:

I assume people here know the story of Michael Golden turning Gerry Turnbull's late commission into an insult opportunity: https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-art-commissions-go-bad-michael.html

I didn't, but that's hilarious! lol

I would gladly pay $537 for a personalized insult like that!

Anyways, there's a long history in fine art of artists building insults into pieces they created for patrons they perceived to be difficult.

Edited by tth2
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7 minutes ago, Dr_Strange said:

Sigh. ?You really think so ? And you automatically assume that myself and the 3 others were being difficult patrons ? Nice

You had the audacity to ask for something you paid for before the Millenium. How dare you violate his creative process? Didn’t you know, it can take years to develop just the right pose for a 1 character commission. 🦨

🙂

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14 hours ago, RS88 said:

You also marathon through the con and don’t disappear in the back room.  Con commissions mean you have to fine respite away from the masses.  And you get a lot of attention just from people that want to meet you.  I got in your line 3 times just to repeat the experience - even if you did recognize me in disguise.

No, I recognized you each time, I just pretended not to in hopes you'd go away.

:jokealert:

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In general, there's little upside for celebrities (including comic book artists) to mingle with their fans. The fans love the work, and that causes them subconsciously to elevate the artist in general to a pedestal that no one can live up to in general. Real life can only disappoint, in any encounter longer than a couple of minutes.

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