What’s the worst commission experience you had

[makayladraws]

I don’t do commissions but if you do what was the worst customer you had

[Gebo]

I haven't done a lot of commissions, but usually people are really nice about it. Lots of communication and input. But there was this one time I was working with someone who was radio silent every time I reached out to them. Even after I gave them their commission, no thank you, can you change this, etc. I like to make sure the other party is happy with everything before we part ways. It wasn't too bad though since I got payment when I started, but it was bit unpleasant.

[Rhonder]

I've not done too many, and not had any too too bad experiences, but these two stand out as the "would-be" worsts.

1 was a novel cover for a friend. Overall great experience throughout with several check ins and the client giving input several times and all that. At the end I give them the final image and they say "Oh, I thought this was supposed to be a setting sun, not a rising sun" regarding the sky color being bright blue instead of orange-y or whatever. I had shown them progress pictures several times leading up to then with the same sky color each time and they never commented on it... and further I checked our earlier correspondence too and they never mentioned that fact. They said it was fine and didn't raise a stink about it, but man- I'm not a mind reader xD If you want a specific detail a specific way you have to speak up!

The other was just started in kind of a random and rude way- a buddy of mine from IRL wanted me to draw his new Youtube avatar... but the way that he started the commission process was just sending me a random amount of money through Facbeook messenger and then asking for a commission afterwards. Didn't ask to see if I was taking them (since i don't advertise commissions like... ever. They're usually on demand) or how much it would be or anything. I ended up taking the commission and it worked out fine but... if the circumstances hadn't lined up I may have had to send the money back lol.

[Kaydreamer]

I have a rule of not taking commissions from IRL friends anymore, because when things go wrong, it's so much harder to draw the line and say "No, this should have been mentioned at an earlier stage, it's in the T&C's, I'm not changing it now."

The most recent was a multi-character DnD commission. It was of the party in a cavern willed with bioluminescent mushrooms. The party was descending down a steep cliff toward those mushrooms. I sent several progress shots for throughout the colouring stage... only for my friend to tell me once it was finished that the lighting coming up from the mushrooms, which I established was how i was going to light the piece quite early on, was too strong, and he wanted to it be dark down there.

I told him quite plainly that this should have been mentioned way sooner, that it required a time-intensive repaint, and that I now had other projects lined up which took priority. I would get around to fixing his piece when I had the time.

That was in January, just as I was starting my comic. I have not had the time to draw much of anything else, let alone repaint a commission. He hasn't mentioned it since, and I do want to fix it for him eventually, but it could have been avoided so easily. It's just frustrating.

[sorible]

It was from a friend who would constantly ask me to change certain things after I finished the entire drawing. It's a lot harder to say no when it's someone you know. They would also send me images and references that they wanted me to use, and would criticize it if it looked slightly different. I asked them to send a color that they wanted for hair and clothes, but they would just describe it and when I sent it to them, they asked to change the color to "hazel". Dude, what kind of hazel? Just send me the color like I asked, smh.

[EncryptedWriting]

This is my nightmare as someone who has commissioned folks in the past. I always wonder if I'm being too picky, too detailed, or not detailed enough. Luckily my artists have said I'm doing just fine which reassures me a bit.

[Mallory]

Honestly most of my commission experience were lovely on the client side and a nightmare for me internally (depression is a helluva drug).

I did have ONE near-miss though, whoooo boy... So I was active in the competitive scene for this one video game. I didn't FLAUNT that I was a girl but you know, when you play with me, it's kinda obvious. I have a female voice. (I even have a female name - Mallory - but for some reason most guys who did not know me assumed it was male. I got a lot of "How are you, sir?" when I was a tournament admin, lol. Anyways). So for the most part, it is common knowledge that I'm a woman (or a "girl gamer" to anyone who made a big deal about it) and I don't try to hide it.

One day this guy adds me - and I've seen him around, I don't know him but I know he's also a competitive player. He says he saw my art and loved it and would like to commission me of a drawing of his character. Ok, cool. I've done a few of these. I like doing them. So I gladly tell him yes.

Then it gets a little weird. He starts talking about how loaded he is, how much money he has, how he's gonna pay me $300 for this commission (my asking price was $50 and even that gave me heart palpitations). So I'm a little O.o about it but whatever. Maybe he won't actually pay that much, or maybe this guy really knows how much artists get underpaid and has extra money lying around so he wants to correct the injustice. I've had a couple friends over the years who came from old money for whom spending a few hundred dollars on someone else was like, couch change, so I kinda shrug and start working on his request.

It gets weirder. I sent him some sketches to peruse and sign off on, and he starts messaging me with "I like it, but can you push yourself and make it darker? I know there's darkness within you!" Keep in mind that at this point in time, my art looks like this:

... Yeah. Ok.

Unfortunately that's where the "weird client" territory ended and bat**** began. He begins to message me daily about this "darkness". Then he begins to message me daily about random topics of conversation. Then he begins to insist that I should invite him to hang out with my friends/teammates, and that I should invite him to "sit in" on my team's practices because "he's also a competitive player so he can teach us stuff" (at this point in time, I play at a higher level than he ever did. There's nothing he can teach me). Then he proceeds to stalk me from game to game and I even see him attempting to join a password-protected game I'm in.

Then he finds out I have a fiance and goes off the rails and starts sending me massive daily screeds about how all women are hoes and gold-diggers and "he would know" because he's a "big-shot lawyer." I'm like ok buddy, I'm p sure you're a paralegal pushing photocopies at some small firm. Then I block him, and show all of my friends/teammates the insanity. A couple of them apparently know him and are amazed that "he would do something like that" and I'm just like, gents, this is him. This is your friend doing "something like that." Keep that in mind for the future.

[Puck]

I have one customer who orders art for music regularly, cover design for singles. His ideas are really bad and I have
to convince him of better ideas, then he usually orders animals and he knows that I prefer drawing humans,
his ideas sound like art for small kids and his music is not for kids so it doesn´t fit at all. I always try to save the
art with limited classic color like the jazz records from the 1940s and 1950s and then he usually tells me that the
drawing is good but the colors are really bad and he wants all available bright colors in the picture (puke)

I have another customer who has a lot of changes, a lot in the meaning of everything.

One client didn´t use my colors and drew the colors himself without telling me and he used all colors
of the rainbow + some other disgusting looking colors

At some point I will have to stop with the commissions

[nixxusnibelheim]

I think it was my first one actually.
The client was speaking semantics in order to pay less and have more.
It was for a full scenery type of illustration of somebody riding a motorbike with his daughter on the back.
And the client was like "hey look, since that part of the body is hidden by the bike, I should pay the rate for the half-body." then later be "actually don't refund me, use the money to add this in the illustration and that, oh and this".

He would find anything "hidden" to make a statement as if he was paying more than he asked for, therefore I needed to add more in the illustration. It was getting ridiculous.
Thank god I only did the sketch and put a stop real quick, and bounced

I only had great experiences since then. My radar is good enough to stay away from those kinds of clients. The moment they feel reluctant about the money or trying to negotiate, I prefer to miss out on the money/work and move on.

[indagold]

I get a lot of customers who use commissions to make friends and vent and it's really uncomfortable. Usually spamming my DMs about their life sucks and hating themselves and i'll be there for them! I'll support them no matter what uwu

Dude you commissioned me a fursona, calm down.

[darthmongoose]

Ohhhh boy, I got a commission one time from somebody who was working with a family member who had heard that I draw comics and that I would draw things like portraits for a modest fee.

So he asks for a portrait of his friend who loves comics with Wolverine from the X-men. Okay! No problem at all! I asked him for a picture of his friend and he sent a picture of a guy with a head of thick dreadlocked hair wearing a distinctive shirt.

So I drew that guy posing with Wolverine and sent it off.

Guy comes back to me. "Oh no, he doesn't have long hair any more, that was an old photo, now his hair is shaved short." And he doesn't usually dress like that, he normally wears much plainer clothes." So I asked for a picture that actually showed that this guy looks like, and finally got one, mostly redrew the illo to be of a guy in a simple dark jumper with a shaved head.

Okay, phew. Sent it off.

Guy comes back to me. He didn't like that the artstyle was manga esque (yes. He said this NOW, not when he came with the changes about the hair and stuff earlier). ...At this point I was just like NOPE because seriously. SERIOUSLY, if you're going to commission an artist whose portfolio is entirely manga portraits, you cannot expect them to read your mind and guess you want an American comics look without being told (or preferably asked if they feel confident working in that kind of style or have examples). I told him it would cost extra because I'd have to redraw the whole illustration. This thankfully made him just take what I'd done, pay the money and go.

[Caro]

I honestly hate doing commissions so nowadays only do them if they accept the very high hourly rate I offer AND if its something I want to draw so overall not very many terrible experiences with commissions.

I did have a strange one really early on where someone saw a bad poop joke I put into a comic and they uhhhhh clearly had a very specific fetish. But they were willing to pay me $200 or $250 for the piece which at the time was high for me. I didn’t want to draw what they wanted me to draw specifically so we went back and forth and settled on a pair of gals eating chocolate ice cream on cones. VERY VERY far away from their original request and ended up being just a very subtle nod to his scatological interests. It honestly ended up very cute and he paid me and all was well. So not necessarily a bad experience at all but a bizarre one!

[Lady_T_Musings]

I don't really do commissions anymore unless its something I really feel attached to or a mutual request, and a lot of the reason is I literally don't have time anymore since I started working on my comic and focusing on art that makes me happy, but also bc people act funny when it comes time to pay up or your prices are actually worth your time.

I remember working with this writer and she wanted me to do the character art for the 4 reoccurring characters in her novels. I was pumped at first until I realized she didn't even have a solid base for what she wanted them to look like and her descriptions were polarizing a-f so I just kept cycling through character designs. The only one I got spot-on was the one her co-writer created (he had a clear idea for his character and even a cool extra visual part in his cat that he always had on his shoulders.) but the gal, Oh lort it was frustrating.

Anyways I worked on their characters for about 2 months like a chump before asking about payment as I had already sunk a ton of time and effort into these characters for free and she wouldn't pay until she got the designs she wanted and I was like aight, find someone else and left her on read (didn't know how to block back then haha).

This was almost 15 years ago and my prices were mad low already, even with those cheap prices I wouldn't be getting anything for who knows how long as that gal couldn't communicate what she wanted properly and didn't want to pay me to figure it out for her was the straw that broke my back. I admit I was young and inexperienced and didn't think about how revisions should have been included in the deal, but I learned.

After that I still did commissions regularly and dealt with folks not wanting to pay or always commenting on my prices when I started to charge more for my work until I said F it, I ain't got time to bring y'all ideas to life when I have so many of my own. Now on the occasion, I do a commission, it's only with a mutual or friend who has a clear idea of what they want or someone's commission that I find interesting and they will take whatever I create for them as they know my style and want something uniquely me for them.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Sounds like a Deviant art commission request XD. I used to get some doozys on there.

[Caro]

Surprisingly enough it wasn’t. I haven’t even used DA in more than a decade!

That dude did have some BIG deviantart vibes though.

[sushy00]

Most of my commissions have been great! Worst things were when I still did commissions without prepayment. For some reason people just don't feel like they have to pay then. Now I always require payment upfront.

[Iris-Grimoire]

I never had bad bad experiences thankfully, but two meh ones. There was this time I made a very cheap commission to an acquaintance of mine, he felt the need to repay with art of his own, and he sent this at-the-time 15 year old a really sexualized drawing of my OC. Not straight up nsfw thank god, but ew.

Other than that, just people that really don't get that I'm not in their head. Don't just give me 'make this part bigger/wider/thinner' vaguely, it's art for YOU, redline my drawing or give me a stick figure version, it's okay and it helps me, just please stop trying to make me guess through text. One time it wasted an entire day that was supposed to be for comic work since they refused to be clear about it, ugh.

[MeltingCORE]

The worst one I had was a commission I gave a big, fat NO. Some guy found my art vs. artist meme and asked to pay for uh... let's just say a certain kind of "selfie" to fulfill a certain kind of "desire". That made me never want to share my face ever again and also kinda made me not want to wear the shirt I had on. (It wasn't even anything super sexy. Just a typical b/w checkerboard shirt.)

But the best commission experiences I have had (to help balance the thread) was doing the logo for a local fruit venture (was a cute birb with oranges) and doing an album cover!

[pilot-obvious]

About 5 or 6 years ago, I had a commission sheet with a variety of styles to accommodate different price points. I didn't have any problems with it until I posted it on the deviantART forums and had a random account request a commission.

They wanted the simplest style which was basically a chibi with dots for eyes. Just a cute, simple little style. They wanted this anthropomorphic cat character from some obscure 80s cartoon. I sent over a sketch and they didn't like the style and they wanted it to emulate the original cartoon style more. I said that would fall under a more expensive price point, but I'd be willing to do it for more $$$. They tried to haggle me but eventually said okay, so I sent them a sketch in the new style after receiving payment.

Then, they did a full 180 and said they wanted an erotic, 18+ fetish drawing of that character. I was desperate for money so I said sure, that's even more $$$. They seemed hesitant but decided they wanted to move forward with the commission.

I sent over that sketch and they kept pushing for even more pornographic subject matter. And I finally was like, dude just take your money back and leave me alone, this back and forth isn't worth the cost... not to mention I was becoming increasingly more uncomfortable.

I think I stopped doing commissions on deviantART after that.

I also had a person on Tumblr want me to do animated pixel sprites for a pornographic RPG game. I made quite a bit of money doing that but the person went AWOL and never heard from them after doing 4-5 animations. They were great to work with, but I think they ran out of money and just decided to ghost me LOL

Now I only do commissions for a select few IRL people that I trust (like my sister in law or brother haha)