How to hire an artist by Christopher Gregorio

This one has been passed around dA (and elsewhere on the internet) since yesterday, I believe. Despite the title it's pretty much a guide of "How to exploit young inexperienced artists from dA" and to say the least people are pissed.

I personally won't join in writing angry comments in that guy's blog - others have already done that excessively and rightly so (ok, maybe excluding the death treats and other ugly things O_o). Apparently the guy is also a high-school kid that got lucky with a few projects and now thinks he's playing in the big league and needs to act like a capitalistic douche or something. I wouldn't be surprise if he axed his own career with this behaviour. The internet is actually quite small and the business he's working in is even smaller. Stories like this get passed around quickly and when you're not playing fair you won't find any lucrative business partners. Congratulations, this is how you successfully shoot yourself in the foot!


How NOT to hire an artist by Jon Jones

In response to Christopher Gregorio's article Jon Jones wrote a great rebuttal examining the single "How to" points and instead of pressurizing the artists and barely motivating them with little money he suggests to build a business relationship that is based on trust and purpose motive (<- fantastic video, WATCH IT!). This is a very well written article and certainly might restore whatever faith in humanity the other one earlier might have destroyed. :3


I'm glad that this thing is passed around here at dA. It brings up a point that has been an issue on dA for some time now. Namely all the artists that want to earn some money from their work but are hopelessly underpricing their commissions and thus not only devaluing their own artistic skills but also everyone else's. I know the market is highly competitive and to keep up with that lots of artists try to adjust their prices. But when you are investing hours and hours for $10 something is certainly going wrong. Either you're not that good at your job when the final result is not worth more than $10 (in which case you should strive to improve your skills) or you are horribly selling yourself under value.

For this is of course not just the artists' fault. The clients also need to learn that this is work. Work that needs to be paid properly. Yes, a lot of this work also makes fun and so some people think "Man, be grateful that I give you something to do!". But how would you react if your employer refuses to pay you properly because you like your job and thus this must be rewarding enough? Yeah, I suppose you wouldn't like that.

In any case, to break this vicious circle of underpricing we nee artists that start to value their own work and clients that respect this work with an adequate payment. I'm glad that this discussion is getting some momentum here at the moment. I hope it will have at lest some impact.