Messages sent to artists wanting them to work for free

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Yup. Worked web design straight out of high school. Learned HTML, CSS and JavaScript in class, built several websites free for the school.

Then I worked up a contract with a guy who runs a chain of gyro shops in Seattle. We agreed that I’d work $20/hr, I’d take care of my billing and everything. We worked up a look for the site, got it pretty much completely coded. We took lots photos of the food, and added those in. I wrote the whole thing by hand in N++. Then when I started sending him my bills, he’d suddenly be unreachable. Eventually I came into one of the places asking for my money, and he insisted that he’d feed me now, pay me later. That happened three times, three weeks in a row.

I eventually said fuck that noise, that’s not what we’d agreed to. I unregistered his expensive domains, deleted all the files on the web server, and switched phone numbers. Two can play the game. I’m just glad he was dumb enough to leave the passwords as-is.

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Could be. Hiring faculty is still a huge ordeal for all involved though. A public University would also have to be sure to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest or favoritism in the selection process.

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Since I am a fairly advanced EE hobbyist I occasionally get requests from people to do some design work or assistance for free or cheap.

I usually quote them my fuck-off rate and terms and they get pissed; right now it’s $850 an hour, 10 hours/week minimum, 20 maximum, 50% upfront per week and billed weekly.

I have lower tiers for if I find reasonable clients, but I still don’t want to throw away my time away from my day job :slight_smile:

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Yeah. Where I work we get paid less than industry standard, but the workplace rules suit us well, and we work with people we like. So it’s maybe worth the relentless piling on of work not in our job descriptions and the dwindling team roster. It’s weird.

In anycase when someone tries to rope me into doing free tech support I typically just quote something like $80 an hour and tell them to email me a full scope of work and maybe I’ll get back to them if it looks like it’s worth it.

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But students and faculty often do such jobs for free, for a variety of reasons of their own that rarely involve compulsion.

[quote=“Brainspore, post:122, topic:84477”]
Hiring faculty is still a huge ordeal for all involved though. [/quote]
Meh. Hiring temporary faculty to fill a class for a semester is something any department in a big public university is doing all the time. Not a big deal at all.

A public University would also have to be sure to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest or favoritism in the selection process.

Not a big deal if they are just keeping it in-house. Like most departments, we give prizes to students and allocate jobs to faculty regularly, nobody outside of campus cares how we do this and inside campus we are mainly trusted to do a fair job. If it turned out that (for example) a department consistently gave prizes to male students or gave the worst service jobs to female faculty that might (and should!) draw notice and investigation, but generally most people don’t really care about any but the most egregious cases, and the people who obsess most about our doing a good job is us.

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It’s pretty normal for either signed or unsigned work to be used in commercial applications. The distinction it seems like you are missing is that unless the artist signs them away in a contract, the legal default is that that artist can assert their moral rights at any time. So, the default is actually a signature if the artist wants it.

It’s very common to have contracts with artists that waive moral rights, however, and that usually costs more money. Which is probably why you keep talking about never having seen a signature on a piece of art used by a large company. Signatures do exist, it’s just that in most cases large companies cough up the cash to get the moral rights waived.

The original jerk probably had not signed a contract to get the moral rights of the artist waived. I’m guessing he doesn’t even know what moral rights are. So, in that case, yes, he would be completely in the wrong for removing attribution if that is what the artist gave to him.

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It seems ONE GUY had an issue with signatures on a commissioned piece. The reason it was on the site is because his attitude is fucking weird.

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The only thing I might have done differently is re-registered the domains under my name (unless he had paid me up front to register them, otherwise they’re mine, mine, mine!) and stored all the coding and artwork in a standalone drive or flash drive before removing it from the server. If he wanted my work, he could pay me and I’d release it to his custody, otherwise, hell NO.
To quote Bender J. Bender, “Work for free? Bite my shiny metal ass!”

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So is furry the only group that actually will pay artists?

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Adjacent to (and intertwined with) furry is a seething mass of paying customers for all Rule34. I’ve paid commission a time or two for seeing my favorite characters getting down. And I know of quite a few people who’ve been literal patrons of the filthy arts. People who, if we’re going by standard pricing, spend thousands of dollars a year on that kind of thing. Usually because the fetish they’re into has a rather small community, doesn’t have much art, and they want more available.

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See, I usually offer to do the work for free and I rarely have any problems with it-

"Sure- I can do it. Here’s my priority schedule:

  1. Paying gigs that have paid extra for a rush job
  2. Regular paying work
  3. Entrepreneurial speculative work, eg. Making product intended for consignment / vending / galleries. (Building up inventory)
  4. Nonprofit work where I’ll be claiming a tax write off
  5. Stuff for barter with friends and family
  6. Other “on spec” gigs, based on likelyhood of actual payoff
  7. “Fun” stuff and personal projects
  8. Everything else

So, yeah- Happy to do it. I should be able to have it to you in 14-18 months, if no other paying work comes up between now and then."

“But I really need it for next week.”

“No problem- Rush job rates are on my website.”

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I also have an “exposure contract”, which I’ve sent to people who ask me to perform for free.

Essentially, it says that I’ll do the show at no charge on the assumption that it will directly lead to $X worth of merchandise sales and/or $Y in other paying gigs. If those dollar amounts don’t fully materialize within Z weeks/months, then they are responsible for paying the difference-

Plus interest. And penalties.

…to a degree that pimps and payday loan companies would consider downright abusive.

Finally, I have a third “canned response” that I give, which is that I’m always willing to play just for the fun of it, but I can’t work for free.

If you want me to hop up on stage and jam on a few tunes, I’m absolutely thrilled to do that. No thanks necessary- I just enjoy playing. I’ll try to remember to bring a guitar if I show up that day.

If you want me to commit to a schedule, deal with contract and promotional issues, and be on your advertising; compose a set list, rehearse, pack-haul-setup-run-and-breakdown equipment, and put on a good show whether or not I feel like playing that day, that’s work, and I get paid for that.

The upshot of both of these approaches, and the one in my other post, is that I can still be the good guy willing to “help them out”- But at the same time, make it very, very clear just what it is that you’re paying for.

And not for nothing, but doing it this way has turned a freebie request into a paying gig on a couple occasions.

And I will do charity work, but I still give them the spiel, because I want them to know the value of what they’re getting: I’m not playing for free, I’m donating a performance valued at $X. Once they understand the difference, I find they’re much more grateful. Of course, that’s reserved for actual charities- Where it’s a cause I care about and a tax writeoff I can take advantage of.

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How come more people don’t know about etsy? If you can’t afford gallery prices, there’s loads of good affordable amateur work on Etsy.

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I think you said it yourself - “the dickish attitude”. One can say “no” politely.

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One of the big reasons that I was a professional musician when I was younger, and now I’m an engineer.

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This is brilliant. Why have I never thought of that? Concept adopted :slight_smile:

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I came up with a great litmus test, guys.

Before you ask for free work, ask if it would work if dealing with a prostitute or a stripper?

“Come on, baby. Just give me a free lap dance. Everyone will see how hot you are, and you will get a ton of business!”

“How about just a handy J in the parking lot? Look, I am a well known businesses man and if you do a good job, I will tell all my friends about you.”

“Think of the… exposure…”:grin:

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Low prices are never low enough.

Got some quick work doing a logo from Etsy that started reasonable. Asked me to do a few more things which turned into ever increasing work per flat rate piece then I bailed when the person tried to haggle my fees even lower.

I know my negotiating was bad at the time but that’s how you learn.

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