Artist Beware: Dogbone - Iron Artists

[williamca.livejournal.com]

WHO: Dogbone, Dogboneartwork, Leachymonster, Rainbowjokerhound
WHERE: www.weasyl.com/profile/dogbone and www.inkbunny.net/dogboneartwork


WHAT: 20$ Iron Artist Commission back in February

WHEN:  February 12, 2014
Payment was sent same day
Trouble started recently, after she blocked me on twitter cutting off a line of communication. She had responded to me on Inkbunny before this. Along with when I questioned her about blocking me after this

PROOF:
Weasyl Journal (archived incase of deletion) https://archive.today/ROnfW showing I had obtained a slot. I was requested to send money to her email.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19358828/ss%2B%282014-09-01%2Bat%2B10.36.54%29.png PayPal transaction of 20$ on the same date.
Contact requesting update on the IA sketches http://puu.sh/bhPlI/adefcb24b2.png
Shortly after I noticed she had blocked me I contacted her again, and received a snappy response just wondering if the situation had changed since she was cutting off a line of communication suddenly. http://puu.sh/bhPvp/d26a58a8b5.png

EXPLAIN:
I had contacted her on Inkbunny in regards to this. Shortly after she blocked me on twitter which signaled to me she had no desire to finish my sketch. Mind you this was commissioned over half a year ago now. As of current none of the Inkbunny or Weasyl IA sketches have been posted. She has claimed a few times in streams they are being worked on.

I feel I have been more than lenient, but half a year is not acceptable. Not when she continues to take on more new work continuously.

9/7/2014 UPDATE Dogbone insists the Iron Artists are being worked on. Stating it was a lack of communication on Weasyl... Except it was on Inkbunny and I think she blocked me there after the second request of an update. http://puu.sh/boTlh/081aea240c.png

Comments

[devildove.livejournal.com]

Wow, it's a real shame that you're going through this. Unfortunately she has a history of unprofessional behaviour towards well-meaning commissioners, as evidenced by the previous posts under her tag. I hope that she finishes your work soon so that you can avoid receiving more messages like that. Beware well warranted.

[sacch.livejournal.com]

Wow, that response... then again, it's Dogbone, who has a history of this behavior. I shouldn't be surprised.

Hope this gets solved for you soon.

[ichi-black.livejournal.com]

Judging by her IB she has started on them..
From personal experience she seems to take a while/have a pretty hefty queue, I commissioned her for a fully rendered two character piece well before the Iron Art slots that she just completed maybe a month+ ago. I also got an iron art a slot from her. With Iron art slots I always assume that heavy commissions take precedent over them? Maybe I'm wrong in that thinking? I also remember something about her saying she wouldn't close/start them until all slots were filled? (Again could be wrong).

I'm not condoning her attitude or work times... Just offering my recent experience..

[williamca.livejournal.com]

No, Iron Artists are generally something along the lines of 1 image per day over the course of 3-4 months.

Those recent sketches she has posted are all from in stream commissions that she has taken on recently and are not the iron artist sketches AFAIK

[ichi-black.livejournal.com]

My bad! I didn't look too closely and just saw a few sketches/line work and then a journal about doing the IA work. (Looking at them they aren't listed one way or another so I'm gonna stick with no)

[williamca.livejournal.com]

I just saw that journal just now, but there's a difference between saying and doing. The person whom was in slot one on Weasyl has yet to see theres even. So that shows sign of them not being touched yet.

Not to mention I originally commissioned her on Weasyl which she has not updated in ages. So I cannot be expected to use IB every day. :x

[duster.livejournal.com]

Dogbone has absolutely no sense of professionalism. I still remember when she was posted last and she reacted immaturely and things have not changed it seems.

[latiro.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be too surprised to see her coming here on this post and starting arguments like she did in other posts about her. (Unless she's banned from A_B, of course)

[kjorteo]

I don't think she even has a sense of believable lines when she's scamming people, let alone actual professionalism.

She strung me along for something like one or two years on a $5 sketch that I didn't make too big a deal over because, I mean, it was $5. Just the principle of the thing was bugging me, though, so I would send her pokes every few months just because I wanted closure more than anything else. And one time her excuse was, "Oh, yeah, I actually posted that a while ago, it's in my gallery, maybe you missed it? :3" (spoiler: it wasn't, and I didn't, because it wasn't.) Did she not think that was a thing I would ... you know ... check? Was I supposed to say, "Oh, well, I don't remember ever seeing it but if she says it's in there, that's good enough for me! I don't need to look for the picture for me I bought and paid for or anything, just her word that it's in there somewhere is all I need. Putting her in the positive review post right now! :D" What was she expecting to happen, exactly? That isn't even rhetorical; I am genuinely curious.

Honestly, I think the other big reason I didn't raise too much of a stink over it at the time is because it was almost worth the $5 just to experience that and have that story to tell. Now I can say that she actually tried to use that one on me. Just, wow.

[sableantelope.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised you haven't received more replies to this.

Trying to tell you it was uploaded when she knew it wasn't is just so wrong. I mean she couldn't have just dropped you a link to it if it was uploaded?

What a bald-face lie!

[moondoge.livejournal.com]

Her art is good, but attitude towards customers not so much :/

[wuvvumsoc.livejournal.com]

Yikes! It's usually not a good idea to block communication with your clients (extreme circumstances, withstanding).

[williamca.livejournal.com]

I do not really know what happened, aside from I noticed I was no longer following her on twitter right after questioning her about my commission status.

[starcharmer.livejournal.com]

Yeah but in extreme circumstances, a refund should also be issued. If I was having enough problems with a commissioner that I felt the need to block them from communicating with me, I wouldn't want to continue working with them, and I definitely wouldn't want to keep their money.

[Not saying Dogbone has a reason to block you, Will, just commenting on the extreme circumstances bit.]

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

It depends if the Twitter is her personal space. We're not clear on it, but if she hasn't cut the client out of her official venue of business, then it should be her right to set up her personal spaces as she sees fit.

Not really replying to you you directly, but just adding to the comment chain.

I'd be annoyed too if a client poked me on avenues that I didn't have set up for official communication. Then again, no one would be waiting ages for a comm in the first place, heh.

edit: Disregard this. Found her only listed Twitter and it's a work twitter.

[starcharmer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, continuing the hypothetical [despite the fact that it doesn't apply in this case], if it was a personal Twitter, I wouldn't find too much fault with it I guess. I don't even add people who aren't friends to my personal extremely private Twitter, though, so I avoid that altogether.

[williamca.livejournal.com]

Wanted to poke you here and see if I need do anything else, since she has resolved the issue and completed my commission satisfactory to my standard and what I wanted.

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

Oh fantastic. I'll go ahead and mark this as resolved for you!

[mazz.livejournal.com]

"Leave me alone" so not an appropriate response to someone asking if they're getting a sketch that should have been done rather quick since IT'S A SKETCH.

[cathzcathz.livejournal.com]

Guess it's too inconvenient to ask a friend to use their wifi or go to a place that has free wifi. No, completely understandable.

Does Paint Tool Sai need internet to work?

Just flat out rudeness from her.

[ryunwoofie.livejournal.com]

Paint Tool Sai does not need internet to work.

[kayla-na.livejournal.com]

As an artist that uses SAI religiously, I can vouch that it does not need internet to work.

[cathzcathz.livejournal.com]

Thank you both! So it's just a case of the laziness and a not so caring attitude.

[williamca.livejournal.com]

You have to realize, she may not have planned for internet outage and I doubt anyone wants to save about 100+ refs to their computer at a time. So it's likely justifiable.

[kayla-na.livejournal.com]

Everyone should invest in an external HD..Or Two.

[cathzcathz.livejournal.com]

If you're a big time artist and take a lot of slots, you'd really invent in a external HD correct? Her YCH aren't cheap, even her slots aren't below 30 dollars at times. With amount of money she gets. It's very easy to get one. Or even a few Junk Drives. It's the fact that she isn't giving the effort and if she is with proof of over due commissions than good on her. She's trying. Is she trying now? No.

It wouldn't be 100+ refs if she'd pace herself and take what she can manage. She has walked the block more than once and by the looks of it, she hasn't really changed. Seeing with the loads of shouts on her weasyl.

Yes, I get things happen but you don't sit there and do nothing. I could be wrong though, who knows. My point is, it doesn't seem like there's any effort given to get in touch with her customers and she cut communications with you.

I don't mean to offend you Williamca. You've been waiting for a sketch(If I recall) for half a year. It's inexcusable. Sorry if it sounds blunt. Don't mean to be, just speaking the truth of what I see with the situation.

[kayla-na.livejournal.com]

Ever since my external HD died a few years back, I've been backing my shit up like no tomorrow. Got two servers at home, an external HD, OneDrive Cloud, and Dropbox to back all of my files up. Yeah, it may seem overboard, but losing ALL of your art really f*cking sucks.

[vauvakolibri.livejournal.com]

Yeah I can really vouch on Dropbox (I think if you connect your Dropbox with your phone you get a ridiculous amount of free extra space), and even a cheap USB stick is generally enough for storing refs or such.

[deejthistle.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be 100+ refs if she'd pace herself and take what she can manage.

Exactly. And, regardless, most of the images people link as refs are relatively small, especially if they're uploaded to FA. So create a folder, download pics to it, and discard when commission is finished if you don't want them cluttering your hard drive(s).

[ljmydayaway.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. it's really a good idea to save them to your computer, though, just in case something like this happens. I have a whole folder full of old character references from customers. :P

[sableantelope.livejournal.com]

Well, it's actually not justified.
Like it or lump it even if your tablet or laptop breaks, or you loose internet access, you are still on the hook for what you were contracted to do.
[I looked up the reasonable wait time for similar custom work like digital artwork (I had to use a custom logo/mascot design as the approximation), one time and precedent had set it at approx. 6 months here in my country. It's longer for custom costume work]

You're always expected to be actively mitigating your chance of loss. For a digital artist that means things like having a plan for a backup way to get online to contact clients(library, or friend, or cell phone, etc.) and also saving refs to an offline available source- as well as backup separate from your main machine.

Loosing internet is not an excuse to not get work done.

Very few things do allow you to have leeway on fulfilling a contract in a timely manner.
Really injury of your eyes, hands, etc, or brain injury are some of the few. Death of immediate family gives you a few days.
Say you're a fursuit builder who has a house fire and loose all your fur stock and workshop space. It may seem harsh, but legally you are still on the hook to delivery the product you were contracted to make. Even if you have to eat the loss of buying fur again and renting workshop space.
(since it's assumed you'll be insured to be able to recoup most of that loss, but that's another story)

I think most people are sympathetic enough to give more leeway than the law- especially if someone is sick or hurt, or looses a loved one(for example most people are pretty horrified by the only three days leeway you get if one of your children dies!), or has a major traumatic experience like a house fire.
Legally though there's very little wiggle room.
And, I admit, that personally not having the foresight to say the refs of at least the ten oldest and most pressing commissions you owe is not something I'd be very sympathetic over. It's not like they lost internet and the queue built up during that time, the queue was plenty long before the losst of internet.

I also think many people waiting on commissions don't realise that there is a time limit even if no deadline is set. It's worth checking out specifics for your are on what reasonable wait time is. I know with digital art being legally new, some places haven't nailed down a reasonable wait time yet in court action, but I have a feeling most will end up setting it in the 4 months to 8 months range. Basically what the court does to decide on reasonable wait length is, when a case comes up, to call experts in the field in question. So, registered businesses in the field who have been successfully in business for several years; and they look at the time it takes the expert business delivery similar work.

[sableantelope.livejournal.com]

*SAVE not say the work.
Whoops.

[moondoge.livejournal.com]

Indeed, but usually all the info is online for the commission, and having wifi problems would make you want to save all the data to work offline, happened to me, did that method, no problem.

[kayla-na.livejournal.com]

From what I noticed, she also does a lot of YCH's as well on Inkbunny, and I was watching her stream one day very recently. She was talking about how she needed to make a lot of money to pay rent, and..I think attend RF? (I don't know what RF is, someone help me out here). There was someone in her stream getting belligerent about a commission she supposedly never did, not sure what became of that

[williamca.livejournal.com]

RF - Rainfurrest, furry convention.

[kayla-na.livejournal.com]

Ah ok!

[jackrow.livejournal.com]

One of my friend won a YCH auction sketch from her along with his and my character, and I can count on my one bear hand which major changes were made on said picture. I however smiled and liked the present because it was meant to be personal and a nice gift, however for treating people and her reputation leaves doubts as this confirms them at the same time.

[naoma-hiru.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling. My husband bought a commission auction from her on FA. But everything on FA was deleted so I cant get any screen shots. But she disappeared and refused to email my husband back after he tried to contact her multiple times. Eventually she responded. Never finished the commission order.

Currently its been 2 years and i'm still waiting for my commission order to be finished. =/

[thrakosbangaa.livejournal.com]

I'd like to mention that I entered the same Iron Artist queue back when it opened on Weasyl. After grabbing a slot, I researched her and found the many Artist Bewares posted about her work practices. I didn't feel comfortable staying in the queue after that, and requested being taken off of it. I'd just sent payment as well. I emailed her and tried to cancel the commission. Unfortunately what I received in response was rude. She said I had to find someone to take my slot, which I don't even understand. Then she said she would only refund half of the payment. I disagreed with this since she was keeping half of my money for absolutely zero work done. I then proceeded to do a Paypal chargeback and now I'm banned from commissioning her in the future. That's fine with me though, considering how she treats her commissioners.

[jhusky.livejournal.com]

There are still a ton of people including myself who have been ignored numerous times by her, not getting any update after over a year.

I'd like to just ad that while some of them have been completed the majority have not and these Iron Artists are still an open issue.

[williamca.livejournal.com]

Remember my artist beware is for my personal issues with the artist which they resolved with me.