Commissions

I am getting close to the point where I have to do proper styling, proportion adjustments and other finishing touches for my Endirillia model before actually rigging it and getting it loaded into a 3D engine and hooking it up to my personal assistant. What I learned at this point is that a good reference sheet for a character helps a lot, but due to my rather limited artistic skills I decided to commission the work.

My wife is an artist. One of our closest friends is making a living as an artist. And yet, this whole commission experience might have jaded me for life when it comes to artists’ (financial) struggles.

The beginning

It all started very innocently by sending out a toot on Mastodon if anyone knows any artists they can recommend that are open for commissions. I wanted a bit of variety and not just go with our friend. The toot was bridged to BlueSky.

Within minutes my replies exploded with artists(?) offering their services. Which seems like a pretty good thing, right? There are people available to provide the service I am looking for in exchange for money.

Oh if it only was that easy. I have to admit I made the mistake of sending out the toot before having a reference package done. I assumed it would take a bit till people get back to me. In retrospect I should have had the reference package ready.

Now, I’m giving all of them the benefit of the doubt, in which I assume that they actually wanted to perform some kind of art-related service in exchange for money. (My wife is more on the side of “90% of them are probably scammers and would’ve ghosted you after receiving the advance”.) That being said, the insistence of people on “SEND ME REFS NOW SO I CAN START” was staggering. How about we talk about the scope of work first, make an offer or a quote and then decide if you are working on this at all?

Ignore all previous instructions

One thing that stood out pretty early on is that some of these people either use a lot of automation or are plainly just letting an LLM agent fish for commissions. If you read enough LLM output you can smell it 10 miles against the wind. It would be great if what I consider slightly disrespectful in such a situation would have been the bottom of the proverbial iceberg, but it was just the tip of it.

The amount of portfolios people sent me with clearly AI generated slop was staggering. Styles all over the place, inconsistencies, even things that should not happen with any recent model anymore (like six fingers).

Sorting out obvious LLMs and AI slop still left me with a rather long list. I leaned on my wife and friend to sort down to a smaller selection of people who seemed to be real, can do art and have an actual portfolio.

LOL, TL;DR

When I put the reference package together I included a text file with exactly what I am looking for, several references for clothes, character references, references for three accessories, some details about Endirillia and what I expect from the artist. The scope of work was clear: 3 poses for 3D modeling reference (front, side and back), one dynamic pose in clothes (included designing an outfit), and all of it in a specific style for which I provided references too.

I also added a detailed list of what I would like to see from the artist.

• Quote for the scope of work with line items
• Portfolio, preferably with pieces close to the reference style
• If it exists a timelapse video of a former commission

While I am aware ComfyUI can generate these timelapses they make it rather easy to spot if they are AI generated or not (for now).

What the whole process taught me is that people either lack any form of reading comprehension or simply do not bother to read anything in a reference package. I had offers for four different outfits, three renders and line items for a timelapse of the work I am trying to commission.

Too slow!

If “starving artist” is considered a meme you never tried to commission an art piece. I already mentioned a lack of reading comprehension - the same is true when you set expectations when you will get back to them. I had people basically harass me on an hourly basis if I finally made a decision and that they want to get started working.

The fastest way to get on my “no hire” list is ignoring any form of instructions, request or fact I shared and then thinking you get any further by repeatedly making me spend time looking at notifications for nothing.

BlueSky

Quick tangent: How broken is this platform? Seriously, Twitter worked better when we used SMS to send tweets than that pile of pseudo federated bits and bytes.

I basically did not get any notifications in the web app or iOS app. Most of them came in via Fedi Bridge. There is a theory that this is because accounts are flagged for review, but even mentions from my wife did not show up and her account certainly is not flagged. The same goes for direct messages that sometimes work, sometimes do not.

I had messages time out, not deliver, deliver twice,… and do not get me started on the complete absence of an iPad app. Even Instagram got one by now! Mastodon is far from perfect, but it can get a few characters of text from A to B.

My wife says she doesn’t have any of these issues, so maybe it’s just me. But I doubt it.

Delusional

Is the only word how I can describe some of the “artists” I talked to. I have been running my business long enough to have a pretty decent take on how to conduct business. I do not expect the same from everyone who offers a commission, just to be very clear on that. But…

I obviously had a rough idea where the price for the scope of work is supposed to land for an experienced artist in a western country. I am also aware that this is a range and depends on multiple factors.

One offer was basically four times what most charged with no portfolio at all. When I pointed this out I was told to “just pick someone else then” as if it would be a challenge. Well, challenge accepted.

Another good sign to dodge is people charging on the higher end and without being prompted immediately offering 25 to 30 percent discounts. Nearly as good as a sign as random promotions that pop up just when you are about to make a decision or made one. Is it not funny how things sometimes line up?

I am not sure which of these two is my favorite, but they are close. One artist wanted to charge me 30% of the quote for not accepting it (obviously no prior contract signed or even a mention of this). Another did not take it well that I posted him a link to the stable diffusion model and LORA that is his portfolio and asked if he knows they trained a model on his work. Apparently I will soon hear from his lawyer.

Getting There

In the end I gave up and commissioned our friend. I know her portfolio, I trust her to get the style right and deliver. I am not even getting a discount for the shout out (cough cough,... I know you are reading this... exposure?! :p), but if you are in need of good art by a real artist, you can find her here.

Once I got the references the Blender project is a go again. I might also try my hand on sculpting the character instead of constructing it from base shapes like I did before. Different approach that seems more logical to me but also requires more skill. But certainly fun to figure out.