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Sabtastic
Direct any business inquiries to sab0d@hotmail.com, send a PM here, or hit me up on Twitter!

Sabrina @Sabtastic

Female

Artist

University of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Joined on 7/3/09

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Comments

Same thing goes with music. The "we make a movie/presentation/website/whatever/spaceship, but we don't have any money for music" is one of the most popular.

Man, music has got to be abused just as much IF NOT MORE than the graphic arts industry does!

I feel for ya man.

I hear exposure is surprisingly low in nutritional value, and my electric company keeps telling me that it's not legal tender.

I do amateur work for amateurs, all for free. They'll see less than a dime in pathetic ad revenue, and a lot of these people have offered to split that whole ten cents with me. But seriously, when someone rolls up in an e-mail that has a signature, a logo, a link to a website, and continuously refers to themselves as "us" or "we", but they're still not paying a dime, my eyebrow raises an extra inch beyond its normal skepticism.

Seriously, "professional" just means you get paid for it. So what kind of "professional" isn't paying? You wanna be the businessman? Fine, that's fine, but real businessmen buy their fucking assets, you clown. Take your cheap suit somewhere else and come back to me when you can afford a real one, and come back when you want to run a real business.

Haha oh my god, I hate the big "we, us" mysterious business/studio thing... It's seriously one of my biggest pet peeves. Half the time, it's some 14 year old kid trying to sound impressive and trick artists into making concept art of his SUPER TOP SECRET COPYRIGHTED ONE OF A KIND original character.

They treat it as if they're the CEO of some big famous trademarked production studio and it's always so obvious they're not what they say they are.

Sorry if that's a bit of a random tangent -- it just happens a lot. lol

Thanks for taking the time to write all this out for us new artists. It's nice to have the warning and what to look for all right here.

No problem!

I mean, it's not all 100% written in stone, so please take my experience with a grain of salt.
All in all, you've just gotta do what you feel is best for you. At the end of the day, if you feel like you got ripped off, you probably did, and you'll learn from it as you get more experienced.

I won a contest on 99designs about 5 years back. I remember being super stoked winning a big amount of cash for putting in such little effort, but it was all too good to be true. After winning I never heard from the contest holder and was never paid. Needless to say it was a lesson learnt and I never participate in anything that requires you to make something before paying anymore :P

No way...! It's been around that long?
Ugh, that's so infuriating... Sorry you had such a shitty experience man.

Funny story, (on a related note) but years ago, I did something similar on DeviantART where I held an art contest because I wanted some fan art for my birthday. It was all legit and I gave the winners that the judges chose whatever prizes they were promised, but now that I look back on it, I feel horrible that the same kind of concept applies to what I hosted. I didn't end up profiting off of anything in the end, n'or did I intend to, but I got all this extra free fan art from the people who didn't win 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place.

They actually tell you this in the modeling industry you know. They call it "prestige" work. You don't get paid, but you get exposure. It's a pretty different world out there than it is with art, but the concept is still bitter tasting, no matter how you slice it.

No doubt...!

I hadn't heard of prestige work before you told me...! Thanks for the info!

I only worry that this might deter collaboration between fellow independent artists, who may now all start glancing at each other suspicious of who's ripping off whom.
I don't really make money off 90% of the animations I create. It's why I have to take breaks from animating when life gets busy. It's a hobby for me.
When I ask a musician to throw music toward a project that I'm likely only going to make $15sh on from YouTube ads, I'm not scamming him. I used to animate scenes for other artists on this site because I liked their work, and we'd collaborated quite a bit. I'm fairly certain they also wasn't making much more than a few ad dollars.

"That's not fair to you, even if you enjoy that particular project, or it's for a 'friend'."

I didn't feel it's unfair to me. We're a community of mostly casual hobbyists helping each other out. There's not a huge market out there just demanding we quit our dayjobs and pick up our tablet pens or recording mics or musical instruments of choice.
While this might be great advice for someone trying to make it professionally, it'd be too bad if someone walked away from this post never willing to collaborate or help another artist out, afraid they're being cheated out of something.

I'd be a huge hypocrite if I said I didn't collaborate and work with other artists for free. In fact, Newgrounds is great for its' plethora of awesome collabs and artists to work with! I actually do those all the time... but when I choose to, it's entirely for my own benefit. I'm aware that I'm not going to be making money, and I usually consider these artists friends, so it's not just random work I'm tossing out to anyone.

You totally raise a great point, btw, and I realize that the whole 'collaboration' paragraph could be wildly misinterpreted, so I'm glad you brought that up.

Cheers! c:

You should have seen me the first time I actually researched who was behind "we" when it first came across my plate. I'm pretty sure I stopped responding to e-mails entirely and then a few weeks later I sent them an e-mail like "Nah, but good luck I guess." Not very professional, but neither is my complete lack of sobriety for seventy percent of my recordings.

I agree with the collaboration point. Again, from the amateur VA perspective at least, not doing my shit for free wouldn't really make sense for most of the projects I sign up for. But yeah, a proper business can pony up. Buy your assets, motherfucker. That's what the budget graph is for.

Amen brother. :p

What a great advice, exposure will helpful doesn't really grants you much besides just that.

It's totally helpful...! It's honestly one of the nicest things you could do for an artist if you appreciate their work, if you don't have money to show you support them.

It's just wrong from a business perspective, though. It's not legal tender.

This is the most intelligent discussion I've ever seen on Newgrounds & I love it.

hahaha thanks man

By "exposure", you don't mean things like internships, right? As an artist just starting out, I'm hoping to get connections and experience by interning at a relatively known production company over the summer, and am nervous that my time will be wasted because of it. I should also mention that this internship is sponsored by my university, so I'm positive it's legit, but I still want to make sure I'm not being used here.

Oh - good point. Internships actually look good on a resume, though. They're totally beneficial if it's related to something you actually want to do.

Normally that's something that -you- go out and apply for, though. People don't come randomly out of the blue offering you unpaid internship work, if I understand it all correctly. (...right?)

I guess the important part is, if you do something for said internship that's worth money, and that company makes a profit off of your singular or collaborative efforts, they need to compensate you somehow---whether that be a physical payment or a letter of reference that you can use to get a job.

Some people like that

or you could just get some causal job while you do the work on the side

Yes, but a casual job on the side still deserves to be paid work, am I right?
You wouldn't sign up for a part-time job that only paid you if you were employee of the month-- it's unfair to everyone else.

AMEN. PREACH BROTHER, PREACH.

Ah, this brings to back to many of the great discussions we've had in the art forum. This topic in particular has made the rounds a few times, including that video from Stephen Silver.

lol I just ended up finding this little jem, too:

"19 Ways to make an Illustrator Grind their Teeth to Bloody Stumps"
http://usvsth3m.com/post/61672228017/19-ways-to-make-an-illustrator-grind-their-teeth-to

Is Carly Rae Jepsen really attending? Sounds exciting.

Yah I saw this before.

Since artists are so desperate for any kind of exposure or pay they sell themselves out.

Man...I'm glad I'm not an artist lol

This is good advice, though I also think it should go as a case by case basis.
What if you're trying to help out a friend with something else by using your artwork?

For instance, I am starting up an indie game company and obviously need a little bit of catchy art stuffs to look at, and I have plenty of friends who can draw really well!
But this means I kinda have, ya know, no money.

What if they were mostly doing this to help me out? In this case exposure is really the only thing I could offer.

Whatever you do, just don't -ever- promise them money if you can't deliver.
One example is "I'll split the ad revenue with you when it's done" or "when I start making profits--" etc, etc.

Make sure they know you can't pay them and make it 100% clear, so they have the chance to decide on the financial risk, or whether or not to help you out as a friend.

I don't mean to bash indie game developers or anything -- I realize that the financial risk is pretty significant and you don't get a pay-out until someone sponsors you or you make it big.

You made another post like this a while ago, didn't you? Still, it's good to keep saying it, and putting things in perspective. Oddly enough, I've got the opposite problem... paid for a commission up front, and no words, sketches, or any contact at all! Pretty expensive one too :(

I've dealt with this a lot as a freelance voice actor, too. "It's good exposure and I'll be sure to put your name in the credits!" - as if being credited is a privilege in and of itself, when it's something the producer is -always supposed to do- anyway.

This lady knows her stuff, folks. Pay close attention to this article, and follow this advice!

Gosh, voice actors must get it twice as bad as artists do...! People seem to have the mindset that you're making something out of nothing, so since it doesn't cost money to create, it should be free too. :I Nobody ever realizes how expensive the friggin' eqipment and software is, n'or do they appreciate the skill of the voice behind the microphone.

@Ockeroid was saying he always gets comments like that himself, as if it's only the lack of equipment preventing any average joe from becoming a famous voice actor lol

Sorry you gotta put up with this crap too, Apa. :V

Thank you so much for posting this! I believe I was caught up in this. I did some freelance work for this group of people who couldn't pay me but i looked at it that i would be getting publicity so to speak. i told them i'd like money to do more art for them and they said they could try and pay me but im a little hesitant to do it now. im super busy right now anyways so i had to back out of the project for now. i really appreciate this post however! :)

You said it. I'm a graphic designer and copywriter who is relatively new at freelancing, and I wish I had seen your post six months ago. Thanks for spreading the word and cautioning others who are looking to get into this (often highly underappreciated) field.

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