The Customer Is Always Right

The Customer Is Always Right....

 Friday,18th May 2012

Wrong. This time, I have dealt with a client who has made such a mind-blowingly bad decision that I had to write a rant about it. But it has happened before.

So..let me ask you guys. When it comes to freelance art, should the customer really be always right? The thing is, there's a reason why I'm a freelance artist, and they're the client. It's generally because they DON'T DO ANYTHING ARTISTIC. Meaning I should have the knowledge of what looks great, not them, right?

Not according to some clients. They want what they want and that's final. Too bad they're condemning themselves to a terrible-looking logo because they think it looks fantastic. But do I have the right to tell them it's terrible? I don't know, it's debatable. Right now, I'm struggling to regularly get jobs, so I don't really want to lose a client by telling them they MUST be colorblind if they want those colors.

For example. This week I sketched an awesome concept for a book cover. It consisted of what I had planned to be an amazing painting, simple and clean but just GREAT looking. I'll avoid posting the specifics so I don't piss anyone off. I sent it in and he completely trashes the concept and asks me to make a cover with a shitty logo on it...with a bright yellow background. (The book background color is royal blue, so you can imagine what that will look like). This is basically exactly what the book cover looked like before...and he wanted it improved.

So do I tell him "Dude...that's not improved. What you just did...it's like telling Frank Frazetta to draw you a shitty stick figure instead of that badass painting with naked ladies and unicorns he just did for you." ? I didn't say anything. At the moment, I won't complain, because I'm getting paid a lot of money to make a really ugly, 15 minute piece of artwork. But where do you draw the line? Where do you turn down a job because the client is just an utter moron? I don't even want to put this piece in my portfolio because I think it's too ugly.

On a similar tangent, where do you draw the line for clients who want "changes" made? At the moment, I try to flesh it out in the contract. Why? You would think it wouldn't be a big deal. "I think that hand should be bigger." "That tie should have stripes instead." That would be fine. A standard commission piece of artwork is assumed to need changes, especially in the concept sketch stage. BUT, I have had a client, and this is no joke, pull something like the following example:

Client: "I need you to draw me an elephant. I want it to look like this. It should be blue."

Me: "Sounds great!" (spends 30 minutes on a sketch) "What do you think?"

Client: "I love it! Lets go ahead and ink and color it!"

Me: "No problem, coming right up!" (spends an hour inking and coloring) "What do you think?"

Client: "Can we try a green background instead and give him bigger feet?"

Me: "Sure!" (somewhat irritated now because it's annoying to CHANGE THE FEET after the sketch phase is over. (spends 30 minutes editing)

So I have now spent approximately 2 hours on this elephant. (Example)

Client: "You know what...now that I've seen this..I don't think I want an elephant. Let's do a fox instead. Can I have a picture of a fox?"

Now, this particular client ACTUALLY DID THIS. Now, I think, after that much time and effort, I deserve to be paid twice. Once for the elephant that he isn't going to use but I spent two hours on...and once for the new fox. Of course he disagreed with this, but come on. Let's think for a second. This is MY TIME that he's buying.

I don't think people realize how much work goes into artwork. It is depressing how many people want it for free..or for mere pennies. I'm trying to make a living here! If I wanted minimum wage, I would work somewhere else that also gives me medical insurace. PAY US FOR WHAT WE'RE WORTH, goddamnit!!

Brief Movie Reviews

The first movie I watched this week was Cowboys and Aliens. I was excited to see it. Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, it can't be bad, can it? Well...yes, it kind of can. The movie was surprisingly bland and predictable. While this may be intentional on their part to have it be JUST LIKE an old, crappy western, they had WAY more potential, especially with their cast. Harrison's lines were crap. Olivia Wilde's were pretty crap, too. Daniel Craig was pretty good. The creepy flashbacks were also good. The rest of the movie bored me. The aliens, who could have been far more interesting, basically ran around like crazy gorillas and ripped people up or ate bits of them. The final confrontation between aliens and humans was terrible...cut scene....horses running..cut scene..aliens running...cut scene...one guy manages to kill and alien..cut...close up on Harrison's face...alien kills 4 guys...bla...bla..bla.

Next...Conan the Barbarian. This was not bad. As expected, lots of action and boobs. As my brother-in-law said, though, the movie looked a lot like something you'd see on a TV channel, sort of like the old Hercules series. Kind of cheaply made, and with about 5467 scene cuts all the time. In a scene at the beginning, there are in fact so many scene cuts that you can barely identify which person is Conan. Ugh. I'd say the movie has a definite fun factor, though. It was fun to watch, but I wouldn't buy a copy. And ladies, get ready for a fantastic naked butt-cheek flex. And lastly...I'm getting kind of tired of Ron Perlman. Can we cast him in something good again one of these days?

Lastly, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I went into this expecting a slightly campy, moderately entertaining movie like the rest of the series. I was very pleasantly surprised. The animation is fucking PHENOMENAL. Andy Serkis is the genius behind the main chimpanzee character, Caesar. He is insanely good. Making all of the monkeys in the movie with the motion capture technique was genius. It was extremely believable in terms of features and movement. And the good things actually don't stop with how cool it looks. The human acting is great...the storyline is great...and never a boring moment. I don't really have complaints about it, to be honest. Action fans will like it, but so will non-action fans, because it actually has substance. Yay!