It mean, it's hecka against the forum rules, because this isn't art you created. But asking for critique on a piece you commissioned seems incredibly shady!
Marie AugustLos Angeles, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
I think it's a good cover for a pen & paper roleplaying game. If it was for a novel, I'd say that it would be better if there were some sort of focus on the characters. But for a tabletop RPG, it makes sense to focus on the world.
Are we doing your job and telling you what needs to be fixed? Are you checking to see if your opinion on the piece is going to be validated by an art forum on a webcomic site? Are you crowd-sourcing attention-to-detail to a bunch of amateur consultants you won't be paying?
I'm sorry but this is actually getting more reprehensible the more I think about it.
If this is an arrangement between you and the artist, you need to have him come in here and present the piece for open critique. It's not your place as a client to do something like this.
[Edit] Alright, I read your original thread, so I'm going to assume you're just inexperienced and not being outright sleazy. But this is entirely inappropriate, and I hope to god you arranged this with the artist before hand. If I found out a client was doing this behind my back, I would be pissed, to say the least.
NakedZerglingA more apocalyptic post apocalypse Portland OregonRegistered Userregular
rules violation? i like it but...the artist should really be repping it, otherwise you might want to move this to the questions and answers thread or even general chat.
I just wanted a simple opinion, not a critique ("I like it" / "I don't like it"), which I thought was within the rules.
I'll remove the post in any case.
[Edit] Alright, I read your original thread, so I'm going to assume you're just inexperienced and not being outright sleazy. But this is entirely inappropriate, and I hope to god you arranged this with the artist before hand. If I found out a client was doing this behind my back, I would be pissed, to say the least.
It's not 'sleazy' to get second opinions on the work you've paid someone else to do for you.
Did you get his permission? Was this arranged in the contract? Who are the consultants? Are they individuals whose opinions and artistic eye you trust? Or is it a public forum where anyone, of any background, can wander in and tell you "wow this is amazing/you got ripped off, tell him to start from scratch".
A second opinion is fine, but what's the next step? What happens if a bunch of people here say "it's not quite there yet"? Are you going to take those crits back to the artist and tell him to fix them? What if the artist has questions about those crits? What if he fixes the problem, but it wasn't a problem you even saw to begin with, so you have no idea if it was successfully addressed? Are you just going to keep coming back here as the official liason of a guy who could easily be here himself, presenting his own work for open critique in this completely open art forum. This entire situation is just completely baffling to me. There's no reason for this thread to exist. Regardless of "yay" or "nay", there's nothing that can realistically be done about it with the way you're presenting it.
There's also a fallacy in believing that paying for something, even if it's $300 (which is a lot of money in many cases, but not for an illustration like this) gives you special privileges beyond what was explicitly stated in the contract. A lot of artists, for example, dictate the number of revisions a client can request, because clients have a habit of falling into that false belief of "I paid for it, I should be allowed to decide when it's done".
There's a reason you hire an artist. It's because you see their portfolio, and you believe them qualified to produce the work you want them to produce. Now if the work they produced for you isn't doing what you need it to do, you can request a revision, or you can sleep on it and come back to it the next morning and see if you still feel the same way, or you can consult someone else for their opinion to see if you're just being fussy. But that's still a private discussion between you and the artist. But subjecting a penultimate image to open-forum critique is an entirely different beast. And you certainly can't do it without the artist being there to interact with the community.
If he wants to subject himself to a dozen different voices and opinions giving him 2 dozen different tweaks and suggestions or pointing out all of the underlying flaws that would require a complete reworking to correct, well, he's insane for doing that many free revisions, but that's his call. Regardless of what you paid him, that is always his call.
I'm not having a debate about this. If that's not the way you want to interact with clients, cool, write up a disclaimer and present that to the customer, or whatever. If you think I've done something shady, call the police. If you think I've broken the forum rules, contact a mod.
I've been rendered a service that I'm not sure of the quality of, but I'm not in the best mental state to make good judgement calls, so I'm doing what I always do in such a case: getting a second opinion. I don't have friends or family members in real life that I can ask, so I asked friends on the Internet instead.
Posts
Read my fairy tale webcomic, The Fox & The Firebird, at: http://www.fairytaletwisted.com
It mean, it's hecka against the forum rules, because this isn't art you created. But asking for critique on a piece you commissioned seems incredibly shady!
9/10
Text could make a big difference though.
Read my fairy tale webcomic, The Fox & The Firebird, at: http://www.fairytaletwisted.com
Are we doing your job and telling you what needs to be fixed? Are you checking to see if your opinion on the piece is going to be validated by an art forum on a webcomic site? Are you crowd-sourcing attention-to-detail to a bunch of amateur consultants you won't be paying?
I'm sorry but this is actually getting more reprehensible the more I think about it.
If this is an arrangement between you and the artist, you need to have him come in here and present the piece for open critique. It's not your place as a client to do something like this.
[Edit] Alright, I read your original thread, so I'm going to assume you're just inexperienced and not being outright sleazy. But this is entirely inappropriate, and I hope to god you arranged this with the artist before hand. If I found out a client was doing this behind my back, I would be pissed, to say the least.
I'll remove the post in any case.
It's not 'sleazy' to get second opinions on the work you've paid someone else to do for you.
A second opinion is fine, but what's the next step? What happens if a bunch of people here say "it's not quite there yet"? Are you going to take those crits back to the artist and tell him to fix them? What if the artist has questions about those crits? What if he fixes the problem, but it wasn't a problem you even saw to begin with, so you have no idea if it was successfully addressed? Are you just going to keep coming back here as the official liason of a guy who could easily be here himself, presenting his own work for open critique in this completely open art forum. This entire situation is just completely baffling to me. There's no reason for this thread to exist. Regardless of "yay" or "nay", there's nothing that can realistically be done about it with the way you're presenting it.
There's also a fallacy in believing that paying for something, even if it's $300 (which is a lot of money in many cases, but not for an illustration like this) gives you special privileges beyond what was explicitly stated in the contract. A lot of artists, for example, dictate the number of revisions a client can request, because clients have a habit of falling into that false belief of "I paid for it, I should be allowed to decide when it's done".
There's a reason you hire an artist. It's because you see their portfolio, and you believe them qualified to produce the work you want them to produce. Now if the work they produced for you isn't doing what you need it to do, you can request a revision, or you can sleep on it and come back to it the next morning and see if you still feel the same way, or you can consult someone else for their opinion to see if you're just being fussy. But that's still a private discussion between you and the artist. But subjecting a penultimate image to open-forum critique is an entirely different beast. And you certainly can't do it without the artist being there to interact with the community.
If he wants to subject himself to a dozen different voices and opinions giving him 2 dozen different tweaks and suggestions or pointing out all of the underlying flaws that would require a complete reworking to correct, well, he's insane for doing that many free revisions, but that's his call. Regardless of what you paid him, that is always his call.
I'm not having a debate about this. If that's not the way you want to interact with clients, cool, write up a disclaimer and present that to the customer, or whatever. If you think I've done something shady, call the police. If you think I've broken the forum rules, contact a mod.
I've been rendered a service that I'm not sure of the quality of, but I'm not in the best mental state to make good judgement calls, so I'm doing what I always do in such a case: getting a second opinion. I don't have friends or family members in real life that I can ask, so I asked friends on the Internet instead.