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Oh hay, drama with artists in the fandom. That's new right?!

Earlier this week I commissioned a quick piece of art from an artist for $10. That was the price she was giving for her commissions.

She then gives me this. Notice the gray thing on the side? That's his "wings".



Supposedly there's two wings, but they both seem to be pointed the same way.

I asked her to fix the wings by drawing another one on the other side, or erasing both of them (if that was easier), and she asked me for $5 extra, NOT the amount we agreed on for the picture.

Sure, $5 is only a little bit, but it's the principle of the matter. She's charging me extra to fix the fact she screwed up the angle of the other wing. I don't think I deserve to be charged extra for her anatomy ******** people are agreeing with me, saying that doesn't even look like a wing, but rather a tattered cape or something. Others say I'm being cheap, whiny, and a child, and one guy said he should spread my name all over the community so artists can avoid me for being such a whiny baby. That got my gander up and I'm about to get myself banned telling that ******** off. :c

Sigh. Drama as usual. scream

Yea, but as my little sketch shows, it does seem like it's pointing in the same direction as the other one. I just feel she did a total anatomy fail and is expecting me to pay more to fix it, irregardless of price.

I even said she could just erase the wing which, as someone who's done graphic art and photo editing before, would take less than 5 minutes. Even quicker if she did the wing on a separate layer, although I guess some artists don't layer their art.

Well, drawing another wing on the other side, or drawing both wings over again, would require quite a lot of extra work in shading, line drawing and stuff. I wouldn't expect her to redraw the wings without me paying extra, since it takes extra work.

Erasing them both and not doing anything else with it, however, should really take only a minute or two, and barely any amount of effort on her part. Like I said, I personally could do it in a few minutes in Photoshop, but I question the ethics of me altering a piece of art someone else did, and then posting it on FA (even if I didn't claim it as my own), and enough people know of this gaffe they'd probably call me out on it and try to get ME suspended from FA.

I can live with it not having wings.

True... hence why I think everything should be on separate layers. But that's just me.

Using an eraser carefully along the edge, or maybe a path tool, or even the magic wand or erase background tool could work but may take a bit longer...
Ooo... I tried the magic wand in photoshop and dear, I had to turn the tolerance almost to 1 to get it to just select the wing... thank god she used solid colors for it. Background eraser seems to be doing a MUCH better job of removing the wing... eh, but I don't know ALL tricks in PS and I'd probably do the path->selection trick as it does cleaner lines.


You do agree that the second wing is pointed in the same direction, though, right? I seem to keep getting into arguments on whether that wing anatomy is s**t or not, and whether I have a valid claim or not.

You could just remove the wings yourself, if it comes down to that; there's a pretty stark contrast between the color of the clothing and the color of the wings. It'd probably take you a good 15-20 minutes with MSpaint, but it's not all that difficult; I've done it a few times.

If nothing else, this just serves as a lesson on why it's NEVER - EVER - a good idea to pay for anything before you get it.

Yeah, good luck with that. Most artists accept payment upfront or after some progress has been made (I take payments after approval sketches for bigger image, but up front or upon completion for sketches). You can thank people who took advantage of payment upon completion and scammed artists out of time and money.

And this isn't even a good reason to never pay up front, a good reason to never pay up front is if an artist scammed you out of money. This is A VERY small situation to be upset over.

As an artist who doesn't do commissions because I just really don't feel like doing them ever, here's my opinion on the matter. razz

1. Removing the wonky wing should be free.
2. Removing both wings should be free.
3. Redrawing one wing should be $0.50 for time and effort compared to the rest of the work based on the original pricing model.
4. Redrawing both wings, for whatever reason needed, should be about $1-2.
5. For $5, I'd say save your money and get a better artist to draw you a portrait for $15. That's outrageous pricing and doesn't match up with the original value per hour model he/she gave.

As an aside, artists ,designers, and buyers need to really evaluate the cost of the work. For a professionally done website, for example, that's gonna run you near $2000. Now think for amateur work you're probably in the $100s. Free work is exactly what you get, slow, maybe good, maybe not, but don't be demanding.

If this artist is evaluating his or her work at $10 for flat colors + flat shading, then they're evaluating their dollars per hour fairly low. But then again, and no offense to the artist, their style is a dime a dozen anime so honestly their pricing seems about right. I'm just going to guess their time spent on this was somewhere around 5 hours, which is about $2 an hour. I have no clue how fast they are, but yeah, that's not much. It's about right, but not much.

As for ownership of the work, it's a sticky situation of copyright and "work for hire". However, if the artist never explicitly states what you can and cannot do with their work, they've left themselves in a legal grey area. If you want to maybe win points with them, ask about altering it yourself and point out that if they do not include any statements on what can be altered in their images after sale then they are making it very legally grey for themselves and others. Just say "do whatever you want" or "you can resize, crop, etc, but that's it" sort of statements to make it clear for everyone.

It depends on the country, and on the internet it could be anywhere.

While I admit I don't know much about copyright law, alteration of a work of art is something that is going to be legally grey. Fair use and all that good stuff that allows people to draw Micky Mouse without Disney breaking down their door and demanding thousands in compensation. You also have issues of a copyrighted character being drawn by someone else through commission. Lee owns the rights to his character. So now you have an even more grey area in which rights of the work is shared.
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-ownership/c-commissioned.htm
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-ownership/c-jointauthors.htm
Lee could be argued to be a joint author.

Besides, if you want to get really picky, Lee violated copyright by displaying the art elsewhere without permission from the creator.

In the end, it really shouldn't matter. No furry artist worth their skill is going to seriously pursue legal action against a commissioner for altering their work. It's expensive and a mess and a half to deal with it. If anything, the only thing to result out of it is hurt feelings.