Recently I was dealing with some interesting commission hell. You know the kind, waiting one year for someone to contact me, having to hunt them down, dealing with them raising their prices after the contract had already been set a year ago, that sort of thing. What was the bottom line for me though, was being told that their art style was way too realistic for my Egyptian bodyguard Pyis. Remember him? Yeah it's been awhile since I last commissioned him. I was hoping this artist would give some of their charms to the character last year. Instead, I was told his hair was would never look good in their realistic style and presented with a sketch that looked nothing like any of the previous images of the character. He was given a shaved head with corn rows!!!! Mind you it was only a bust, but I was informed changes would have to made on those costumes the artists and I worked on in the past. I should have seen all this coming. I had commissioned this person to draw Dimata long ago and he insisted of giving me a whole new character. He considers himself a character designer. While that is all well and good, there is a time and a place for such a skill. Unfortunately while doing a commission on someones established character is not one of them, unless asked of course. I got the impression this person felt they could do a better job designing the character from the ground up, then the fact that they were dealing with barriers due to design.
Hair style is really important to any character. I do enjoy letting others play around with them from time to time. You can see that with Lil' Deep, Dimata and many others. (Jacy's Long haired Deep and Rauls wild hair on Vann instantly comes to mind.) In all those cases you can still tell who the character is. To me this refusal to draw hair style was insulting the characters design. I felt the length they went to change Pyis was going a bit too far.
Well I sent the e-mails to a few of the artists that had worked on Pyis to see how people felt about the statement and if anyone could recognize the sketch sent. (Maybe I was being a bit harsh.) Of course the reactions I got were way more abrupt then the correspondence I wound up sending the artist. (Though he did find me to be rude, not saying hello and have a nice day in the opening and ending of my e-mails. Oh fiddle-dee-dee! Good thing I didn't listen to the person that told me to offer him a fresh cup of fuck right off! That would have killed the poor guy.) The main message I got was, it's not him and this person needs to stop doing commissions NOW. That was universal in each reply along with some shock as to why someone would jeopardize their reputation this way. So I was convinced to just end this torture. Adonix took it one step further, bless this guy, seriously. He sent me an e-mail not just stating, but showing how realistic Pyis's hairdo would look in real life using his own talents. I present the beautiful bust today with great pride and a message.
Look guys, I don't mind when people get creative with my boys. I welcome it (depending of course), but if you are an aspiring artist wanting to do commissions, don't make up a ton of bullshit about how things can't work, just because you would rather draw something for yourself then your customer. Especially don't try this with someone that has already commissioned the character to artist that have shown that their concept does work.
Hey, it's been awhile since I had some drama to talk about around here. :P
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