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Do artists just recycle artwork?


suegrau

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This seems to be my best guess as to the problem I keep running into.

I have tried several times to have a piece of artwork completed.  I have a very detailed description, I have a price limit that I'm up front about, and I just want the character done.

Each time, it seems that artists are just recycling old art - taking a picture of another character and trying to alter it to fit the specs I have, but they're done very poorly.  I want green skin, I get a green face with white-skinned hands.  I want a two handed hammer, I get decent art with what looks like a ten year old erased the weapon and added a hammer (making me wonder if the artist is even the original artist in the first place)

At one point, when I kept pointing out the issues, I got a *completely* different picture the next day which *still* didn't meet the specs (race, armor, injuries, cloak, weapon, demeanor).

On top of that, I had one person advertising their artwork for cost X, agreed to take my commission and immediately said that for that amount of detail the price would be tripled.

Is this a common issue or is it just me?

Edited by suegrau
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1 hour ago, suegrau said:

I have a price limit that I'm up front about

 

Might your price limit be so low that you simply can't afford to hire good sellers with your current budget? If you're aiming low, you'll hit low.

1 hour ago, suegrau said:

Is this a common issue or is it just me?

It's a common issue if you're working with bad sellers. This is why you should stick to Top Rated and Pro sellers and make sure to vet them before working with them.

I don't know what your budget is, but in my experience, you get what you pay for. 

Edited by smashradio
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17 hours ago, smashradio said:

It's a common issue if you're working with bad sellers. This is why you should stick to Top Rated and Pro sellers and make sure to vet them before working with them.

 

OR some (select) level two sellers... 😛Everyone time I see you post this (mostly true fact) I'm personally offended (not really...)
Jokes aside I do agree mostly - a couple of times I wanted something super cheap I got, well...

Yeah. Not great stuff.

However, it doesn't seem to be a price only thing. I don't really think artists are allowed to recycle their art, but... I don't think anyone's really stopping them from it (unless there's clear evidence/etc.) Isn't there like a rule that something is only plagarised if xyz % of it was stolen? Some people might just know the exact percenage and use that to their advantage...

Contacting sellers with a good amount of reviews, chatting with them prior (I even make sure that we can communicate OK, they don't have to have perfect English but I can be pretty... demanding) seems to help, though. 

I'd do a google reverse image search with the results to see if they really are recycled old work OR if there's just issues with communication, tho.

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3 hours ago, katakatica said:

OR some (select) level two sellers... 😛Everyone time I see you post this (mostly true fact) I'm personally offended (not really...)


Haha - yes, of course! Some (select) level two sellers could be just as good or even better than Top Rated Sellers. The main difference, and why I usually leave your level out, is the vetting process behind TRS. Whenever you work with a level two seller, you're most likely in the hands of someone who has done this for a while, with success. But that added security of the vetting done by Fiverr helps. I promise I'll try to be more sensitive to your offendedness in the future. 🤌

I often work with both new sellers, level one sellers, and level two sellers. It depends on the importance of the project and how much I'm willing to spend. For example, I would probably stick to a TRS or Pro for anything above 500 bucks, while a level two seller with an excellent track record could get my order for smaller projects. 

I sometimes opt for level one or even brand new sellers with 0 reviews for my pet projects and things that don't matter to me professionally. It can be fun, and the other day I ordered an article (to use on my blog as inspiration for what I was going to write) because I was too lazy to do the research myself. I might add that the seller (a Jordanian, brand new seller) sent me a word-perfect article, over-delivered, and clearly researched the subject. It even passed Copyscape - haha. 


So "gambling" on new sellers can be fun, too. If they have their head screwed on right, they will over-deliver like hell to get some nice reviews under their belt. I sent the dude a hefty tip since he only charged five bucks for 1000 words (which is ridiculous in the first place), and I told him to raise his price. 

3 hours ago, katakatica said:

Isn't there like a rule that something is only plagarised if xyz % of it was stolen? Some people might just know the exact percenage and use that to their advantage...

I'm not sure when it comes to art, but I know the current Star Trek producers had to make things "25%" different from the original Star Trek content due to rights issues. 

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13 hours ago, smashradio said:

Haha - yes, of course! Some (select) level two sellers could be just as good or even better than Top Rated Sellers. The main difference, and why I usually leave your level out, is the vetting process behind TRS

Nah, not (really) offended, just, you adding it in (but I do agree.) Especially as a new buyer it's not that easy to navigate all the 'exparts' and stuff, so going for higher levelled sellers is probably a good tip. Once someone has more experience  - or just doesn't mind spending some cash on potentially 'bleh' work, hoping to find the 'right fit' and all, I think they can go for anyone and just... see what happens. 

(I'm also crossing my fingers to get TRS every 15th so hopefully I will not be offended for much longer 😄 But it might take a while still.) 

I like to go for newer sellers but know the risk - and don't really have much weight to my projects right now, so even if they mess up it's ok. If I actually start focusing on my game (and other stuff), I'd likely go for TRS or a level 2 seller I know I can trust. 

$5 for 1000 words is (I think) what I started out with ages ago! At the time it sounded like a great deal (well, it is for people from countries where even $5 is a lot of money. I only thought about how it takes me about half an hour to write, didn't really consider the fact that 4-5 of those half hours renders me brainless for the rest of the day!) I do think most writers eventually push up their prices though (and hope that the seller you discovered will do so as well.) but $5 for that does seem to be the standard for newbies I guess. Glad it even passed copyscape though! 

I once wanted to have someone else write a birthday gift for a friend and they ended up basically copy-pasting the bio of a book into notepad. Was fun... Obviously, if it was a serious project I'd have been in a very bad situation. 

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  • 1 year later...
On 7/10/2022 at 4:32 PM, suegrau said:

This seems to be my best guess as to the problem I keep running into.

I have tried several times to have a piece of artwork completed.  I have a very detailed description, I have a price limit that I'm up front about, and I just want the character done.

Each time, it seems that artists are just recycling old art - taking a picture of another character and trying to alter it to fit the specs I have, but they're done very poorly.  I want green skin, I get a green face with white-skinned hands.  I want a two handed hammer, I get decent art with what looks like a ten year old erased the weapon and added a hammer (making me wonder if the artist is even the original artist in the first place)

At one point, when I kept pointing out the issues, I got a *completely* different picture the next day which *still* didn't meet the specs (race, armor, injuries, cloak, weapon, demeanor).

On top of that, I had one person advertising their artwork for cost X, agreed to take my commission and immediately said that for that amount of detail the price would be tripled.

Is this a common issue or is it just me?

Ever heard of the "Good, fast, cheap rule"? Full designs you're wanting made from scratch as 100% original art is expensive because it takes a long time from a skilled artist. Also a lot of times edits are not simple and can require rebuilding a lot of the initial design. 

This combined with the fact that most people want something built yesterday and for free or as close as you can get to it quality will almost always be what suffers. If you tend to lean towards cheaper or faster (or cheap and fast) advertisements then you should probably assume the quality will be lower than normal and rightly so. Like with any marketplace it takes a bit of shopping around to get someone you like so I'd say keep at it.

If you've been to multiple designers (I'm assuming they're rated high or else why did you go to them) and failed with all of them then the one constant and likely part of the problem is you. I don't say this to be a jerk mainly just to point out an angle you might not be seeing.

 

Capture.PNG

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