Arists Beware: Dog-Bone

[ki3v.livejournal.com]

Text: WHO: Dog-Bone, DogBoneArtwork, Leachymonster

WHERE: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dog-bone
https://twitter.com/leachymonster

WHAT: Reference sheet

WHEN: April 20th 2017: Commissioned and paid. April 28th: Received first version which was inaccurate. April 30th: Received second version which now had a filter over it. May 1st: Opened a claim with Paypal and got refunded

EXPLAIN: Long story short: commissioned a reference of my character. Got a reference with some really random colors. Asked her to fix it. If she changed the color of the eyes, nose/lips, and tongue, I’d be content. Got two more versions of the same picture with filters over them. Got told she didn’t have the sai file anymore. Asked for a refund. Eventually got a refund. She then modified the pic a bit and sold the character after tweeting about it.

Long story long: I commissioned dog-bone during one of her weekly openings. Provided two references (one: http://i.imgur.com/1PhwRpx.png two: http://i.imgur.com/AIlxaLC.png.png ). A week later, received a reference ( http://i.imgur.com/uyUt3Gb.png ) which had the wrong colors (comparison: http://i.imgur.com/QXUTmvn.png ). Asked her to fix it and sent the comparison ( http://i.imgur.com/2At59jd.png ). Got sent the same picture, but this time with a filter over it ( http://i.imgur.com/fH4FnuD.png ). Then another ( http://i.imgur.com/6hbBwbi.png )
Noted her mentioning the mistakes again and asked if there was an issue: ( http://i.imgur.com/ScyPXDc.png ). Was told she doesn’t have the SAI file anymore. Asked for a refund ( http://i.imgur.com/H492aIE.png )

Told she doesn’t do refunds and that she delivered as close as possible ( http://i.imgur.com/15NiNm3.png ). I disagreed ( http://i.imgur.com/6VUtz1Y.png ) and replied to this note telling her I would be filing a claim with paypal which she replied to then blocked me ( http://i.imgur.com/AbNMt9b.png )
I got a refund.

She tweeted about it with some cherry picking: http://i.imgur.com/oJaRDBR.png and then a warning http://i.imgur.com/bCG7CRL.png (warning is fair enough though)
The design she then sold for $85: http://i.imgur.com/jRNaxPI.png

PROOF: Linked a ton, but for here’s a comparison of the three versions and a picture of my character to see how wrong the colors are: http://i.imgur.com/sCA5vuV.png
And some coloring detail: http://i.imgur.com/yLQ4cKd.png

Comments

[spartanwerewolf.livejournal.com]

Even without the sai file, what is so hard about doing those simple fixes? Its mostly the eye colour that's glaringly wrong. That's not hard, even if its on one layer. Blow it up and colour it carefully.

Did you mention that you'd have been happy with the changes you listed here? It's possible they thought tou wanted everything changed?

[skulldog.livejournal.com]

Between the two images you sent as a base, and the reference image you ended up with, the only major color issue I can see is the eye and nose color.

You didn't screen cap your contact request for edits on these points, so it's hard to judge if you asked for more direct colors edits in a way that the artist could edit. If you weren't clear the color filter version MIGHT have been how they translated your request, I can't judge without email caps..

If you got a finished character sheet you did not want, or could use, then a full refund, I see no issue with the artist reselling the work done.

Edit: That said, tweaking eye and nose colors should be easier than a full refund. I'm kind of off kilter as my own ref sheet commissions include multiple steps of approval, so colors get approved early on.

[ki3v.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing out I missed a message. Saved it but forgot to link it. I compared all the colors to show they were wrong. Added it.

I just wanted to provide the facts without any opinions, but I don't mind that she resold the work or posted a warning about me using it. It's fair enough.

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

Can't fix it? It's such an easy fix I'm appalled. All she had to do is open the large file, create a new layer over it, trace the lineart and then apply the fixed color. It should take no more than a few minutes. That's ridiculous.

[whoop-zi.livejournal.com]

It's really baffling to me that she wouldn't just color pick the reference you provided in the first place. It might only be a slight difference to most people, but it's details like that that are really important in a reference commission, and the fact that she dismissed those details as "petty" really rubs me the wrong way. In the time she spent making edits to resell her work she could have easily corrected the colors regardless of the fact that the layers were merged. The misplacing/deletion of files is not your responsibility, but hers as the artist. Glad to see you got your money back- beware well warranted imo.

[kattotang.livejournal.com]

This. There's really no reason, if someone gives you refs with spot-on colors, to not just color-pick for a reference sheet. The whole point of a reference sheet is to represent a character as accurately as possible, after all.

And OP didn't even bring it up, but the artist also messed up on the markings a bit; on both refs provided by OP, the lighter color on the feet ends just before or at the ankle, not halfway up the shin/calf... I mean it's probably just me, but that's another glaringly obvious mistake to me.

[prettykittyaz.livejournal.com]

I am most confused by is the "you didn't ask for exact colors"
What? By doing a ref sheet for someone you would think you would color drop instead of eye-ball it. It wasn't like you didn't provide the image to color pick from.
Beware well warranted.

[synviver.livejournal.com]

Speaking for myself, I cannot fathom why an artist taking commissions would delete their SAI (or similar) files upon finishing a commission. I can understand if you're someone that takes on a large workload and need to reserve space, but even then, I would think one would hold onto a file for a set amount of time (say, a month) before sending the primary file to the recycle bin, for precisely this reason. Kind of like one should hold onto receipts and such for tax reasons for X number of years, in case a discrepancy comes up. It just strikes me as being a way to cover one's backside in case of problems coming up after the image is delivered to the client.

And... it's against her TOS to file a chargeback with Paypal? Is that even possible to be upheld legally? I'm no lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, but that seems about as legally sound as refusing refunds outright. Not to mention turning around and claiming that she's now got full ownership of the character and is reselling it.

Yikes. :x

[amocin.livejournal.com]

This is my big red flag too. I have a folder listed as "Commissions" where everything is named by the name of the customer, with the image file AND the SAI/PSD file. Until something is marked as completed and approved by the customer, there is no reason to get rid of those files.


Honestly, all these fixes could have been done with only a minor amount of effort put in. She could have re-drawn the image by tracing over her own work and fixing the colors.. Even if she didnt want to do that, she could have made an extra layer and done a multi layer over the nose and adjusted until it matched. The eye color could have similarly been corrected.

Heck, I dont have the SAI file and I am pretty sure I could fix all the issues within a minor time frame.. so why couldnt she deliver a product to you?


In the end, I feel like this is a major Customer Service fail. I try to please my customers, they are paying me for a product, and when I mess up on that product, I try to make it up to them. I dont want them to leave with a bad taste in their mouth, I want them to continue to enjoy the commission long after our business transaction is over with. (I have commissions I purchased for myself that I cant even look at because of the poor experiences they bring to mind.) To me it doesnt seem like this customer is difficult to deal with.. its color fixes.


The fact that she was somehow able to add all the things she did onto the re-sell but not fix the issues you had just bugs me.. like.. okay so you could add extra work so you didnt loose money, but couldnt for your already paying customer?

[baronyiffington.livejournal.com]

I... what? They didn't know they had to use "exact colors"? It's a reference sheet. What's the point of a reference sheet if you aren't going to use those colors? That's literally the entire objective of having a reference sheet; everything is exact so that other artists can duplicate the character. Such a bizarre excuse. I shouldn't have to direct the artist to use "exact colors" on a ref.

Beware well warranted. There was no excuse for not fixing the issue. It would have taken a few minutes at most, and the idea that an artist would delete the file before getting final approval (or at all) is absurd.

[poizenkat.livejournal.com]

How are you not supposed to use exact colors for a reference sheet omg.. thats absolutely ridiculous.

and she even SOLD your character to another person?? Am I understanding this correctly? I cannot even comprehend how someone would think that reselling someone elses character is okay to do.

It's interesting that she was able to make these edits to the reference to resell a character that never even belonged to her but she couldnt modify the colors.

[sno-pomf.livejournal.com]

I agree with whoever said that the only color that I can pick out which is glaringly wrong is the eye color. However here's my big issue with the way she reacted:

How does "you're not happy with the colors and asking for a refund which is against my TOS" equal "you are now surrendering this character to me to use as I please"? Absolutly appalling behavior on the artist's part. You were being completely reasonable the whole time and there was absolutly no reason for her to act the way she did towards you and with DB's history I can't say I'm surprised. Beware well warranted.

[vashaaart.livejournal.com]

Hmm, well, I did see a lot of things being off on the first glance. Eyes, nose, chaps, inside ears, eye'brows', overall colours... But hearing the 'if you'd wanted exact colours...' and the response the commissioner got really did it to me as well. This is really unprofessional.

[ukthewhitewolf.livejournal.com]

I cannot fathom not saving your sai/psd file.
Admittedly I will save every single file I ever used, which is possibly a little bit over the top, but it means I never have to worry about not having an available file. I even switched to saving everything to dropbox as well as my usb drives thanks to losing some files once during an hdd failure, which is honestly worth the 7.99 a month for 1TB of storage space.

Even without the sai file though, it's not the end of the world to provide the changes you asked for. You could even switch the SAI selection source to "colour difference" and flood-fill most of it with the correct colours then clean it up after, then just trace your own lines to make them clean again.
I echo the other comments in that it makes little to no sense to not colour-drop the colours from the images you gave them for the reference, being that it's ... a reference sheet.... and thus needs correct colours...?

Definitely a well warranted beware.

[sno-pomf.livejournal.com]

I mean honestly....isn't that just COMMON SENSE to save it at -least- until the commissioner verbally approves it, if not longer? It's almost like she finished it and then completely deleted the file with the separated layers, made a do-or-die move, and sent out the flattened image. I also find it impossible to fathom why ANY artist who lives off of their commissioned work would do that. Well put.

[teekchan.livejournal.com]

That reaction... No thanks.

I cant see how people cant tell the difference between them? The one where you link the ref and the feral on top its super obvious theyre darker and that the feet are lighter. The eyes arent even the right color either. And the nose...

[roxyfur.livejournal.com]

I feel like the biggest issues are the eye and nose color. And if those were spot on, then maybe the rest of it wouldn't be so obviously off. THEN it would have been an easy fix by adjusting the color levels a bit. It's clear that in your provided references that the nose and paw pads and such are darker than the main fur color, but she chose to make them WAY lighter.

That being said, why you would delete the working file in the first place just blows my mind. I save them for about 6 months, they don't take up much room at all. And I do a LOT of work each month.

It would have been such an easy fix to color over it. She seems bound on being difficult and making enemies through her unprofessional business practices. This isn't new behavior for her at all. And going and tweeting about it with cherry picked info too? She missed out a lot of correspondence to make it seem like you didn't give her every chance in the world to fix it, and the color comparison she provided wasn't even the one you made, that shows a bigger difference in the colors than hers.

Beware well warranted. She has such potential as an artist, but she keeps disappointing.

[rendrassa.livejournal.com]

It's a ref sheet. Of course you'd use the exact colors of the provided images unless they contradicted each other and you'd have to ask which colors to use. Or if the client said, "This is the old ref, but I want the eyes to be this color instead."

Why the hell would you get rid of the file before the commissioner has given their final approval? For that matter, how can you not give multiple WIPs when it comes to ref sheets? People are super picky about their character's ref sheets because it's the image they will be basing all of their future art from. (At least for a certain amount of time.)

I'm just... I can't believe this. Jeez. Why are all the really high profile artists like this?

And the most glaring difference I can see is the lip color. Then nose, then eye.

[sillygosling.livejournal.com]

I can clearly see the difference between the client ref's browns and DB's. The medium brown on the clients is more red hued and less saturated while the brown DB used is more saturated and yellow tinted; a small detail perhaps to those who don't own the character but kind of glaring for something that needs to be accurate like a ref sheet. The filter fix is incredibly lazy. She didn't specify it to be only on the browns and as a result it made the eye whites pink/brown hued in the altered versions. All it would have taken is to erase on the filter around the eyes for them to be the right color.

[norsepaw.livejournal.com]

So she cant fix the color errors but somehow is able edit it to sell it?
Did I miss something?

[squish-kitten.livejournal.com]

Looks like they edited mostly on top of the 'finished' art, but there's a few places (inner ears, tail, nose) that they absolutely had to have taken time to redraw lines.

[corghi.livejournal.com]

I'm really disgusted that she sold a version of your character with horns and spots. She didn't bother adding more bold markings or getting rid of some (which would be easy if she just... colored over it.) Yikes.

So now she sold a character that she altered that didn't belong to her to begin with. I think that's the thing that stings and sticks out most to me, aside from her adding filters to change the colors. Like another commenter said, if the eyes and nose/paws were the correct color I don't think the body colors would look as off. It's not like you didn't give her stuff to work off of.

This is very distasteful and poor business practice. I just really, truly have no words to express how really disappointing this is.

It's not her place to ever re-invent someone's character. She could trace over the lines and recolor it. That's not her place at all. I'm angry.

[whoop-zi.livejournal.com]

I won't lie, that part really bothers me too. If you yourself say the difference between those colors is "petty", why would you make no attempt to alter them before selling? Maybe there's nothing legally stopping her from slapping some horns on the character and selling it but she could have taken two seconds in sai to adjust the hue slider at the very least. Yuck.

[ninjakato.livejournal.com]

Wow... First of all, I can't and won't do a commission with a character without colour picking the colours as closely as I can ON/FROM the reference sheet(s) someone has given to me of their characters -- More so with it being a referral sheet commission. It's kind of detrimental to the character's look if the colours are off.

Secondly, it annoys the crud out of me when I hear/see people calling a customer's request for a change 'petty' or 'ridiculous'. They paid you to to make something for them up to specs on what you ask for. If a customer asks for changes (more so for such simple ones like you asked for) then there's no reason to call it petty. That is just rude, not to mention bad business ethic.

Thirdly, I don't delete any commission files because on the off chance something happens and I have to prove I'd done the work somehow I can't be like 'oops' and not have it on hand. Not to mention I don't delete anything until I get a commissioner's approval they're satisfied with the product they received. That's just me, although I am pretty sure a lot of working artists are on the same page with this aspect of professionalism and conduct.

My best guess on this is the refund was asked for after the request for actual legit changes was deemed 'petty', am I right? If so, I don't blame you. I'd be a bit tiffed myself if that had happened to me. All the same, I'm glad you got a refund and I hope Dog-Bone has or will learn a lesson on conduct. Even if you don't agree to the importance of someone's request, it's still important to them and when they pay you to make them something specific, be prepared to alter things a bit.
Understandably there's customers who are never satisfied but your case is nothing like that. You had a character with specific colours and markings and one would expect that the referral sheet asked for would contain those colours. It's pretty basic really.

Again, I'm glad you got your refund though!

[canidaesku1i.livejournal.com]

I use SAI and Photoshop for further editing and there is no way that I couldn't edit the incorrect colors within maybe a few hours tops even if I had to redraw some parts. It was foolish to merge everything particularly on a reference, especially since she didn't color pick? Maybe on a normal commission the colors would be passable, but OP is right, a ref sheet is meant to be the best representation of a character. What a shame what they did after the fact too.

[takesu.livejournal.com]

Just whyyyyyyy would you get rid of the raw file before getting the final "OK" on a ref sheet. It isn't that hard to open the original ref into a program and eye drop the colors over. That filtering thing makes the artist seem lazy imo. This mess could have been easy avoided.

A full refund may be a bit much but okay, the artist has the right to resell the new ref if they wanted to.

[wyla.livejournal.com]

Everyone has already said what I'm thinking about why on earth would you not keep the sai/psd file of a REF SHEET COMMISSION until it's been okayed by the client what the christ. I wanted to try something just for kicks and wouldn't normally touch someone else's art but for demonstrative purposes:

http://i.imgur.com/ro5usgU.png

It's not perfect but this took literally 5 minutes 30 seconds to do just by using the magic wand on the background, inverting the selection then using overlay layers until the colours match. Missed the eyes and it would need further cleanup but you get the jist of it. It's really not a hard fix so her attitude blows my mind. Then to resell it is just Beware so well warranted.

[weisk.livejournal.com]

Yikes @ those tweets, so unnecessary. Looking at the rest of their Twitter is already enough for me to steer clear of them... Overall strikes me as unprofessional when dealing with disagreements with others. ):

[kell0x.livejournal.com]

The op's story is bad enough but the hole insulting tweets afterwards is really insulting and downright unprofessional

[hunty belmnt (from livejournal.com)]

Holy SHIT, this situation altogether, not just the OP.

Echoing everyone else WHY WOULD YOU DELETE THE SAI FILE?! To be so petty over what seems to be small fixes, and then to have the audacity to add ugly horns and spots to sell it.. This is why some artists just should not be in business.

[ljmydayaway.livejournal.com]

I doubt they did (delete the sai), considering how easily they edited the image.

[xilacs.livejournal.com]

Y I K E S. I know who to avoid now. Sorry that happened OP, I'm glad you got a refund.

[sno-pomf.livejournal.com]

I agree, at least she got a refund. It's sad that she had to file a chargeback to get it though :\

[rayesesshyfan.livejournal.com]

Beware very well warranted, huge yikes with her attitude.