Evening, everyone!
Majority, if not all of my closer friends already know about this, but I thought it was about time I shared it here on my SaltedDriftwood accounts. I no longer upload my works here. I won’t be sharing links about where to find me either, apologies for that. I’ve mostly been focusing on job working in the area I live.
I’ve more or less had to face a low-tier smear campaign against my brand after I mistakenly messaged, and pissed off, the wrong person. I was accused of theft after issuing a refund for a $25 character design from this artist who had behaved fairly poorly towards me. This design was something I’ve never ordered any art of, no pixels of, the only thing I had saved was the singular character concept that said artist had originally uploaded. Keep in mind that this image file could also be easily download saved by literally any other gallery viewer, the “”ownership”” is loose at best and primarily socially enforced. Characters such as these that I’m talking about come with no background history, no solid identity, it’s more or less a blank slate to be picked up and molded. I don’t exactly have the spare money to go out spending on character commissions in the first place. To me, twenty five dollars in food money for two entire weeks. That’s something I kind of need, you could argue.
I’d decided I wanted nothing more to do with this artist and his friends group after our exchange, I asked for the refund at first and my message had not been ignored. I want to make something clear: I, personally, buy character designs from artists that I feel I’d like to support monetarily. Often times this is also how these artists will advertise, in some variety of, “Please come support me and my work!” It isn’t purely because I like a design enough to spend money on it. I imagine this applies to many other people out there in terms of purchasing. Because of the major social risks that come along with buying from the wrong person, I don’t think that’s an unfair way of shopping for characters. Often times the reputation of that creator will go hand-in-hand with the design, it’s pretty common in online communities these days.
I’ll be very honest right now: if you are selling designs like that you need to be prepared to actually handle your art sales like a business. Because that’s exactly what you’re running in that scenario. If you’re not prepared to do that, I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t be selling character designs to begin with. A painted commission someone orders cannot be returned, a character design put up for auction can be. And said character which caused this whole debacle for me was quickly guilt tactic sold within mere hours afterward. My point is, professionalism isn’t something you can opt to turn on and off when it most suits your wants. You don’t get to throw paragraphs of self written contracts in the face of refund asking clients but not remotely acknowledge those while selling your merchandise. That needs to be disclosed up front from the beginning with every buyer you have, I don’t feel that’s an unreasonable expectation either.
If I find out that someone I’ve been monetarily supporting has behaved either very poorly towards my close friends, myself, or has a hidden reputation of being someone I ideologically refuse to tolerate than I believe people have every right to ask for refunds and to return that purchase. Obviously, this isn’t something you can implement with every single purchase in your life. Still, owning someone’s character design usually entails being expected or even obligated to interact with that person afterward, this is also something I frequently see in online communities these days. I don’t want to loosely own something if I’m tied to someone I no longer want to associate with. Don’t mix your personal life and business up too much.
Your sales clients aren’t all your friends, nor should they be treated like it. They also shouldn’t be expected to give you the same amount of leniency that your friends may. They’re your clients. You don’t get to treat them like trash in private Discord chats and then hand wave excuse it with a public pity story about the non-disclosed mental illnesses you’re dealing with. That either should be discussed up front as a possible obstacle or you should not be adding random potential clients to private social media platforms where there will be clashing. It’s highly irresponsible and apparently the person I pissed off really did not like my telling him this. I also told him that his behavior was “alien to me” and he then spun that into another pity story about how I was calling him an alien being? I’m honestly at a huge loss for words still when I look back on it.
Moral of the story! Please be very careful who you are purchasing from. Review the information this person has documented on their websites, if they have a contract of some sort then ask for it before purchasing any character designs, read those carefully because it could save you a lot of hassle in the long run. Not everyone who’s selling will have fairness in mind and often times people will do everything they can to not loose out on money they perceive as belonging to them now. Refund procedures exist for a reason.
Thanks for reading. See you around.
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