Tuesday, June 12, 2012

This Actually Just Happened

I made a little slice-of-life comic! I liked making it!
grrr, blogger won't let me post these at a legible size...
full-size image pages are here:




It's a business, let's all treat it like one!

Names and emails have been altered slightly for brevity and effect.
But you'd be surprised how much is verbatim.

-n


18 comments:

Erin said...

Hahahaha nooooo. That sucks. Some people just really, REALLY don't understand the business aspect of things.

Sorry that happened to you, but thanks for the awesome comic and the chuckle. Hopefully that guy learns a valuable lesson here.

Anna said...

Oh my, oh my - that wasn't right ANYWHERE, was it? It's like there was a big list dubbed Things To Do Wrong When Commissioning Someone, and this guy/gal ticked every single box.

Ryan B said...

As Gaiman says, make good art! You do!

ninjabird said...

Wooooo lol, that totally happened to me a month ago, too. Brilliant comic. Specifically every single expression that one makes when reading emails like that.

Thanks for posting this; it makes this crazy gig seem way less lonely!

In the check-out-this-suave-technique-for-getting-free-work-from-artists, there's also the classic: "Well, all the other artists I've worked with were happy to do 4 months of work for free! So you should, too. Amirite?"

Josh Chodorow said...

This is pretty great. Nice job!

Ana said...

i laughed. out. loud. good luck to you!!! -one of risd undergrad fans of your work-

bzyglowi said...

I have totally had this happen to me. Random person e-mailed and wanted to "collaborate" on a comic. When I asked for more details on the project it turned out they hadn't even looked at my work, and wanted me to do very realistic, mature comic art (I draw brightly colored cartoony illustrations!) for, of course, no pay.

Fail. Fail fail fail. I told them I didn't think I was right for the project and they went away. Which was still much better than the dicks who said they were considering me for the project, liked my style, and then tried to get me to do multiple free character sketches for them before even letting me know if I was hired. As soon as I quietly but firmly told them I couldn't do any work without at least knowing if I had the job, they mysteriously stopped emailing me!

Gabeebees said...

They're like spam....or chain mails. Or useless internet ads with rainbows and a gif image of their kitty at the corner.

Unknown said...

As someone who doodles for fun to blow off steam I really enjoy when I get feed back from folks who do this stuff for a living. However, there really ought to be an app for taking ones foot out of one's mouth.

Perhaps this should be a cautionary tale. Reread what you post. If you think it's going to come out wrong. Don't send it.

A victim of foot in mouth disease,
Richard

Nevena Nikolcheva NEN said...

Have happened to me too , but I always though that I was just not ass good an artist as I should be not to get emails like this ... seems it's happening to everyone :)

baby sister said...

funny and sad.

Michelle Barnett said...

I read this and laughed out loud (in my office. Oops). The facepalm at the end -YES, we have all been there. Maybe not for comics but being a dumbass is universal after all :)

Unknown said...

Ouch. That's a textbook example of how NOT to do it. Especially the part about "oh, I really wanted to get these other people, but I'm asking you because I think you're a sucker..."

I also love the people who post in forums asking for artists to work on their game for free, with the incentive that they'll get a share in the profits "if the game sells." Ha, right.

Zeitwolf said...

Had a little difficulty opeining the images to readable size, so if you want those to show up in full size, is it not possible to write them into img-tags?

like: a href img src= " imagelink" width="500px" img a

(I don't know if the comment form shows this, but afaik it is possible to alter the html of imgages in posts)

other than that: this kind of email is wasted time. But I too keep on falling for them...

Unknown said...

Hah! That's hilarious! -Joe M from ex38 Enviro

Cecilia said...

This is fantastic.

Annathalia Nalapraya said...

Haha! Oh god, thanks so much for linking to this post from your new update, I've had a similar experience like this but sadly with friends (and their acquaintances).

I've made artwork for friends before as gifts, but I've also had some ask me to create full-fledged artworks for free. I once gave my friends' band the benefit of the doubt when I drew for their album cover and t-shirt. Only for them to not get back to me once I handed them the files. The album cover became a back cover, and they never used the t-shirt design even though I spent a lot of time on it. There was no compensation even though they sold their CDs at every show, and they never told me whether they liked/disliked my work. (I would do preliminary thumbnails and sketches just to make sure it suited their vision).

Anna Castro said...

Yeah....so sad...cause its SO true...:( Apparently artists eat colors and live in sketchbooks. :( But this comic made my day, so something good came of it!
:P