Artist Beware: LoserDoge/Demonic-Fag

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

WHO: LoserDoge on DA, Demonic-Fag on FA, lozerdoge on tumblr

WHERE: They seem to do most of their commissions through LoserDoge on DA

WHAT: $8 for a digital flatcolor, and a digital 'journal doll'

WHEN: First note sent + replied to on April 25th 2014, payment sent same day, first sign of trouble May 3rd

PROOF: 1st Note, Payment Date, Personal Work Since Payment, Proof of Personal Work Date, 2nd Note, 3rd Note, 1st Submission Date, 4th Note, Dispute Date

EXPLAIN: I found LoserDoge on DA and had a little extra money, so I decided to commission them. I sent the first note on April 25th which was quickly replied to, and I sent the payment the same day.

I waited around through the week waiting for my commission, while watching them draw and post a lot of personal artwork. I sent my second note on May 3rd to ask why they hadn't worked on either of my commissions yet. They said that they would be gone for the weekend and that they might work on my commissions the next week, saying they were "just a very slow worker". This set off alarm bells for me, considering they obviously weren't slow when it came to drawing for themselves.
(The passive-aggressive comment was me offering to make them free minecraft skins if they finished my commissions, since they posted a journal looking for them. I realized after I posted it how it could have come off, and as seen in the note, promptly apologized.)

I waited for the next week and continued to see them post personal artwork. It was the end of the week they said they'd be working on them, and I was feeling extremely uncomfortable watching them post multiple submissions for themselves every day after they told me they were a slow worker. I sent my third note on May 8th stating this fact, and warning that if both weren't finished that weekend, I'd be sending in a claim.

Finally, after giving warning, they finished ONE of my commissions on May 9th. I had asked for both to be finished by/before the weekend, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. I waited another week, and sent my last note on May 15th.

I would never have had an issue if they had given me a different reason for being slow, or if they had been posting commission work, but 90% of what they had been posting after I had paid them was personal work. They posted multiple flatcolors and other types of works within the same day, so they could have easily finished both of my commissions in a day.
Here is a link to a screenshot showing all of the personal artwork they did between me paying them and the submission date: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ltcr6whxvdncs5c/PersonalWorkSincePayment.PNG
And proof of personal work date: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s95efs4p203uyku/ProofOfPersonalDate.PNG

With no response but continuing activity on their DeviantArt account, I sent in a paypal dispute. I had escalated it to a claim a week or so later after receiving no response there, either. They never responded to the dispute/claim or my last note, and the claim closes tomorrow.

Comments

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

First, the artist shouldn't have ignored you all this time. Nothing excuses them for ignoring you.

Second, I think you were being incredibly impatient. Once payment is received an artist doesn't drop their entire life to devote themselves to your commission. One week in an they're already getting passive aggressive comments on their journal? Yeesh.

Lastly, not only are you getting your money back for the unfinished commission, which is fine, but you're also getting your money back for what they did complete. Did you ask for a refund for the remaining piece? =\

[wickedstarz.livejournal.com]

I was about to say the same thing than you did..
You should have been more patient with the artist.

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

I realize that I was impatient, but there is a difference between doing things IRL and simply ignoring your commissioners to draw your own stuff. As I keep saying, I wouldn't have had a problem with seeing them doing more commission work, but every day it was personal stuff.

When I originally wrote the comment on their journal, I had good intentions. It's only after I posted it that I realized how it would have come off, and I promptly apologized.

And yes, that is still no excuse for them to ignore me. I gave them time to respond, and they never did, and still haven't.

I asked a friend about them and later found evidence that this being extremely slow/ignoring commissioners was common-place for them, among other things, which was the reason I came here.

MOD COMMENT

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

Oops, apparently while my comment went through it appears your post has an error displaying on dark layouts. Take your post, select it all and copy, and ctrl + shift + v back into the same window under plain text to fix the highlighting error.

[wickedstarz.livejournal.com]

First, artist are allowed to post personal work even when having commissions
Second, you were very impatient toward the artist, and be passive aggressive towards them will just stress them more or have your piece rushed.

Ignoring you was not a good approach but I would have been scared to write you back after those notes/comments..

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

I understand this, and like I keep saying, the passive-aggressive comment was written with good intention and just came out wrong which was /why/ I apologized for it. I made a mistake and I was going to own up to that.

I can't go back and change my own actions, but there is still no excuse for ignoring a commissioner.

I will be more patient in the future, this is here because they ignored me.

[thaily.livejournal.com]

"This set off alarm bells for me, considering they obviously weren't slow when it came to drawing for themselves."

Drawing for yourself is very different from drawing for customers. Compare it to cooking; if you cook something for yourself and it didn't come out quite right, you shrug and eat it anyway. When someone pays you to cook for them it had better be good!

It's not at all unusual for an artist to need some time to "ramp up to" getting started on a commission and barely a month has passed since you paid and it's already an A_B post and a Paypal dispute? Yikes.

I don't know if I'd ever do business with the artist in question, if only because I'm leery of "3dgy" people who refer to themselves by slurs, but I'm definitely not doing business with you O_o

I'd be super stressed if someone jumped the gun like you did, and less-than-minimum-wage, which commissions often are, is just not worth such a demanding customer. And I say this even though I have turned around commissions to customer satisfaction within a single day O_o

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

I had a rough month, was feeling ignored, etc, which is why I was impatient, and I'll keep repeating it: I'm taking this as a learning experience and I will be more patient in the future.

They still ignored me, which is still wrong.

I'm no cook, but I am an artist myself, and I'm nitpicky with everything I make: doesn't matter if it's for myself or for someone else.

If we're going to go that route, that they were worried about being perfect, they didn't even put claws on his back feet. So I don't think that was the case.

[starcharmer.livejournal.com]

Drawing for yourself is very different from drawing for customers.

This so much. Everything I draw for myself lately is a 15-45 minute doodlebarf that I just sketch out to save the idea for later. I would never ever charge for the kind of stuff I do for myself.

[orangemonsterco.livejournal.com]

According to their DA they're 15. I would suggest that in the future that you only deal with persons 18 and older. This will save a huge headache and technically any purchase made to a minor is not legally binding.

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I will be doing this from now on. I realize now it was likely a bad idea from the beginning.

[zackfig.livejournal.com]

Was a deadline set when you first approached the artist? Cuz so far, the beware is on you as a commissioner, not on the artist.

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

Please read the comments. Also note that they have been ignoring me.

[naparum.livejournal.com]

My advice to you, for the future, would be to either take some time to observe an artist's turnover rate, or directly ask about it when commissioning them. Or even set a (reasonable) deadline.

Different artists get commissions done at different speeds, and while I know that Bewares can be posted regardless of price, getting impatient within a week on an $8 commission is REALLY, really overbearing.

Other than that, I don't have much to say that hasn't already been stated here.

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

I'll be doing background checks on anyone I look to commission in the future, seeing as I found a lot after actually looking into this person.

As sometimes happens with things such as this, it was a mess on both sides. I'm at least doing something about it, and learning from it!

[sbneko.livejournal.com]

I'm really put off by the impatience and continually saying in the post how long a time it's been. But at least you're realizing it isn't now, that's a huge plus.

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

It felt like a long time, despite that it wasn't. I haven't had trouble waiting for any other commissions, just watching all that personal stuff drawn through both weeks bugged me, especially after their response saying they'd have it done the second week, but they were just slow.

Maybe it felt slower since they said they were a slow worker? Either way, OOPS, but still waiting for any sort of response.

[kestral-kitsune.livejournal.com]

this beware and your defensive commenting so far has kinda of made me go eeehhh at both parts.

We established that the artist you commissioned is 15, and your passive/aggressive comment may have really put a damper on her wanting to reply so she did what any 15 year old might have done. Ignore. Also 15, She would have had school work and Finals that need more attention put onto than out of school issues

Its part of the reason you shouldn't commission younger people. I'll do a trade with one, I won't buy from one simply because they haven't gotten the business mind part of what commissions mean.

I've had a commission that took me about.. 2-3 MONTHS to complete and I would have still have done some personal work in between, for two reasons. 1. Warm-up drawings. 2. Lack of Inspiration on the commission, some times drawing something else helped me figure out what to do next on a paid work. HOWEVER: I would keep the buyer in the loop with what was going on with their commissioned piece. I also let people know I'm a bit of a slow artist so that really shouldn't amount to much.

but still its good to recognize you're being impatient and you are learning from this, which is a giant A+ there.

also as an after thought I have told a customer to stop asking about his commission. But it was only because he noted me on three different sites asking about it an hour after I accepted. I eventually canceled and refunded the commission in full because he was harassing me about it even after being told to stop.

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, lessons learned: Don't commission minors, background check the artist, be more patient.

If I had been kept in the loop things would have been better, but they never post any personal journals, never replied to a few of my notes, etc. They also never informed me or posted a journal that they had put their commissions on hold, which I found out LATER when looking for evidence and checking their Commissions journal.

I doubt they told any of their other commissioners that, either. They don't have a list posted or anything but I assume there are more we don't know about.

[nightspiritwing.livejournal.com]

I don't see in any note or discussion with the artist a deadline agreed between you two. it's honestly unfair to them to expect the artist to complete your art within a short deadline.

Most artists or at least most artists I know including myself take at LEAST a month to complete art. In fact I have it in my TOS that UNLESS a deadline is discussed art can take up to a few months to be completed but updates and wips are provided.

I would say if you want your art so fast next time...set a deadline, instead of being as passive aggressive and rudely demanding as you were.

also...it's incredibly normal for a artist to do personal stuff or etc in between or during other commissions. Most artist won't survive or will suffer major art block if all they did was poop out commissions like a mindless machine. And being able to draw personal art for themselves helps them grow and get better.

Now as far as them ignoring you...as a business they shouldn't do that, it is sort of bad service, HOWEVER you did pretty much insult and threaten them...so on the non business side I can understand why they did that.

You SHOULD pay back the money they deserve for the art they DID finish however. Keeping all the money when they did do some of the work commissioned is just wrong. They don't need to apologize to you, you just need to do that right thing. In all honesty...you should probably apologize to them.

edit for spelling errors

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

I am going to do that. Pay them back for what they did, that is. The comment saying so was hidden in lump with a bunch of others.
(As was my comments realizing my wrongs and noting that I won't be doing that again.)

[spiritlobo.livejournal.com]

When I first started reading this, I was going to call it a beware on BOTH the artist and the commissioner, but after reading through the comments, it looks like you understand what we're saying more now, zielomizu.

I'm so sorry, I know you've had a bad month - so have I.
But there's something you've really got to remember, especially for the future - this is business. You cannot let your personal feelings get involved in business and having a bad month isn't an excuse. The person you're commissioning from is just as infallible as you and I; I'm not too positive if you had a set deadline for the artist? Set deadlines always help keep everyone organized, so yes, totally suggesting that!

You say you're learning from this, and that's awesome! Take the experiences and what we're saying here and use them for any future commissions, it'll help you a lot.

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

I fully intend to.

At the same time, I'm human and they're human, and business transactions happen between human beings, and human beings have feelings which effect the way they act. If it's no excuse for me, it's no excuse for them, either. We're messy creatures sometimes and we can't really help that - all we can really do is accept it, resolve to do better next time, and move on.

[timelapsedecay.livejournal.com]

I really don't think this is all valid reasons to be upset with the artist
A week is an incredibly tiny amount of time to wait and the artist has EVERY RIGHT to do their own work at that time
Unless you asked for a deadline of one week, you're coming off as alarmingly impatient and needlessly passive-aggressive
And I'm sorry but your having a "bad month" has no relevance to a business transaction.
I'm actually less inclined to do business with you than with this artist because of this posting.


Edited because I wasn't questioning the validity of the beware and my wording made it sound like I was

[timelapsedecay.livejournal.com]

I'd also like to note that it's almost neeeeever a good idea to do business with anyone younger than 18 because they don't have any legal right to the transaction and it's much harder to hold them responsible for business transactions

[magicporpoise.livejournal.com]

For me, this is not a beware on the artist, this is a beware on the buyer. Your actions and decisions are completely not ok, you raise a lot of red flags in my book. You need to be more patient, and you need to be less aggressive.

I really hope you learn from this experience, which I think you probably have.

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

EDIT: Posted as a reply and it wasn't suppose to be. Oops!

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

I'm doing as someone suggested and posting a comment here to cover everything I have to keep repeating to people.

I realize I was impatient, and I won't be the next time around. I shouldn't have been commissioning a minor in the first place, and if I had done a background check on them, I wouldn't have commissioned them. I will no longer work with minors and I will no longer commission artists without doing background checks.

My impatience is still no excuse for the artist to have ignored me for all this time. That's the reason I posted this beware - they have ignored me for a little over two weeks now, and had ignored the claim I had sent in.

I was told by the moderators when I previously posted versions of this beware to wait for a while before I resubmitted it to see if they would respond, because in the beware, I was impatient. And I did wait for a response, and I never got one, which was why I resubmitted it. I didn't change the story because that would be dishonest, but again, there is no excuse for an artist to ignore a customer.

Today they sent me a note asking if I would like a refund, to which I responded yes, I would, and that I would be paying them back for the work that they had done at the price they previously quoted it.

I do hope they respond to the claim and give a refund, so that I can give them compensation for what they finished, and this can all be over.

It was a messy situation but both parties were at fault. If you can let the artist be excused for not wanting to work with a difficult customer, you can excuse me for being impatient with an artist I believed to be ignoring me.

[magicporpoise.livejournal.com]

Sorry if my comment seemed really harsh, after reading this, it makes me glad to see you definitely know what you did wrong. I get that we all can lose our temper at times, and I read you said you were having a rough time at the time, earlier in the comments. I take back what i said earlier. :P

[zielomizu.livejournal.com]

They have refunded me and I have given them back the cost of the one finished commission, so the issue has been resolved.

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Tagged.

[kayla-la.livejournal.com]

Glad this was resolved!

And kudos on you for keeping your cool in this post. We knew that a lot of people would scold you for being impatient, and that it can be incredibly annoying to have to repeat yourself. Unfortunately, many people don't read the comments before commenting themselves, so even if things have already been explained, repeating happens.

I personally recommend from now on to either ask for a deadline upfront (and be prepared to possibly pay a fee for that) or keep your inquiries to roughly once a month, depending on the type of commission. That's what I do myself.

[chronidu.livejournal.com]

Im glad it was resolved and while they were incredibly unprofessional themselves even as a minor artist, I can't help but be really put off by your quickness to take all money back including the money for completed work, and even after changing your mind to thankfully do the right thing and pay the artist, to state they didn't earn that money.

Hopefully all this was a good learning experience and hopefully things won't go this way in the future. But if you want a short deadline in the beginning, I would def state the date you expect/want it to be completed by in the beginning in the future.