"You, Sir, Are A Terrible Client"

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 17 Comments

I can maek art nao.

Jon Jones (whom I used to work with/heckle) takes apart a clueless article on how to hire exploit new artists, point by point.

This is HYSTERICAL to me. Have you considered that you have problems with artist turnover because 1) You hire only inexperienced, naive people you disrespect and underpay, and 2) You’re a really crappy manager that they want to escape from as quickly as they can?

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  • http://Website Hank

    Heyyyy.. That format looks familiar… (www.savagexmedia.com)
    For Once, I beat Lum to a layout.

  • Scott Jennings

    At this point I’m just trying to find one that WORKS.

    I really liked the one I had (Thesis) but it apparently had a vulnerability that people were using to post links to Turkish porn sites. I wish I was joking.

  • http://www.poesies.com Cedia

    The fact that the original author can’t be bothered to figure out how to spell “paid” says it all to me.

  • http://Website Khat

    Cedia, the author lost me at the first [sic]“payed” as well.

  • http://Website Vetarnias

    The “payed” thing bothered me, but I also tend to be quite forgiving, as the person might not be a native speaker of English (though I doubt it). And I’ve seen the most outlandish things written by people with impeccable grammar.

    Overall, it’s really that “predatory” tone which annoyed me in the original article. I can understand if he’s on a shoestring budget and won’t dare to approach a well-known artist (just as I suspect a fledgling director won’t submit his screenplay to a famous actor, no matter how good the part, because even if the actor was interested, everybody from his agent down would try to persuade him to turn it down or stall for more money). But he seemed to be following the line of taking cheap, inexperienced people right off DeviantArt, without being concerned with their artistic vision; the only criterion, the yardstick by which everything else ought to be measured, is, if we listen to him, how much bang for the buck they can provide.

    What’s particularly ironic is that while he’s ostensibly pitching his approach for the indie developer, he’s advocating methods that are more suited for assembly-line behemoths. Interchangeable artists? Check. Not particularly concerned over artistic vision? Check. Miserly dealings with staff? Check. Overriding desire to assert who’s the boss? Check. He might as well work as producer for Bobby Kotick.

    P.S.: Regarding the Broken Toys new design: it’s actually pretty good, except for the text font. It’s too soft and blurry, like what I can find in an Adobe Reader file, or a text screenshot.

  • http://www.whysohostile.com Cymbaline

    If you read the comments, you’ll find that the author is a high school kid, which completely changes the nature of the article.  Coming from a working professional with a corporation and a budget, yes, it’s awful.  Coming from a high school kid with no budget, it’s not such a big deal.

  • http://Website Ashendarei

    Heh that last paragraph makes a lot more sense now:

    ” Try to only hire people ages 18+ (I may sound a little hypocritical here), kids are generally less reliable and have more IRL things come up that they can’t control. I’ve had several bad experiences with this.”

    All in all, I completely disagree with his article, and while his updated comments are interesting, in the end he reminds me of a fresh-out-of-management-college kid who is trying to emulate big-business policies.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    The bigger point is probably this: there are managers whose eye to hire talent is the same as this high school kid.  They keep good people out of work while delivering to gamers unsatisfying bargain bin filler.
    Of course, there’s something to be said for keeping your game under budget.

  • http://www.antipwn.com/blog/ IainC

    He’s a 16 year old who churns out Flash games at a fairly rapid rate. According to his other pages, he spends anything from a few hours to a week or two on each project then moves on to the next.
    In that context, his advice is bang on. For an art director at a major studio not so much.

  • http://Website Tinman_au

    /ponder/ I wonder if Bobby K started out like this kid?

  • LabRat001

    /ponder/ I wonder if this is Bobby K’s kid?

    Honestly though having read the article and waded through the comments (22 pages of em when I read it) I thought the foaming at the mouth “artists” who were cursing him and wishing he’d die were worse than he was.

    It strikes me that a lot of people seem to have a problem with the idea that art is just a commodity. When you create it from love and a need to express something then it’s high art, when you try to make a living off the back of it it’s a commodity like any other. Or at least it is to the person paying for it.

    That said I disagreed with at least 2/3 of what he had to say.

  • http://Website Peter S.

    The difference lies in whether you consider art to be a fungible good.  An answer of “yes” would be a direct insult to most artists (and, like any other insult, result in a predictable amount of internet poo-flinging).

    Note that I happen to agree with most artists in this respect.

  • http://tremayneslaw.wordpress.com/ Tremayne

    Maybe we need to draw a distinction between “art” and “illustration”.
    If you’re drawing what you want, to get your message across to other people – that’s art.
    If you’re producing illustrations to order for someone else – that’s a job, for a paycheck, and really should be treated as such. Art may not be a fungible good, but most illustrations for hire are not art – I’m not asking you for something that provokes a unique insight into the human condition, I just want six pictures of elf swordmaidens in chainmail biikinis by next Wednesday.

     The original poster’s problem is that his approach to treating people working for him frankly sucks with any employee above the burger-flipping automaton level. Art has nothing to do with it – you could substitute “coder” for “artist” throughout and he’d be exactly as much of a twat.

  • http://idempot.net/blog/ Matthew Weigel

    Tremayne: I can’t agree. As you allude, treating “illustration” this way can easily be applied to the software, design, etc. that goes into making a commercial game: does that categorically rule out commercial games as art? If so, what does that mean about Raphael’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel, all commissioned by the Catholic Church?

  • http://tremayneslaw.wordpress.com/ Tremayne

    It means Raphael gave his employer very good value for money :)
    I’m also not sure it’s a fair comparison – Church commissions like that are SUPPOSED to be art, The whole point of the paintings is to inspire contemplation of the divine. Artwork for commercial games is rarely expected to inspire anything deeper than “Wow that elf chick is hot!” :)
    I’m not saying that commercial games CANNOT be art – but that’s not the aim of making them, it’s just a nice bonus if they turn out that way.

  • http://twitter.com/D_0ne D-0ne

    Artists?  “Last in. Never paid.”

  • http://Website Viz

    It’s more like… there’s a sliding scale between visuals which are fungible goods and visuals which are “art.”