Friendly reminder to all working artists or (especially) aspiring artists.
If a client says they can’t afford to pay you but you’ll get good exposure, one of two things is happening:
1. They are lying. They can afford to pay you, but they are choosing not to. They will pay the printer to print the books, they will pay the mail service to deliver them, and you’d better believe they’re going to pay themselves for sending you an email explaining that they can’t afford to pay you. They think you are a sucker, and if you take the job you’ll be telling them they are right.
2. They are not lying. They have zero budget, no audience and no real distribution system. They’ll still be paying the printer and mail service because people who work in those professions don’t work for free just because someone promises them a recommendation. But they aren’t paying themselves, they’re running on an incredibly small margin, and there’s a good chance they won’t exist as a corporate entity in a few years. Publishing your work with them will give you less exposure than putting it on tumblr or Instagram for free would. It will never lead to a paying job.
If a client starts ranting about the “short-sightedness” of artists, or otherwise complains about artists in general in their opening offer to you, run. Run as fast as you would run if a blind date spent the whole of dinner ranting about how horrible your entire gender is. Yes, there are doubtlessly clients who’ve been screwed over by artists in the past, but the ones who complain about artists in general will not respect you, they will not treat you well.
Working for free does not prove that you are passionate about something. It proves that you do not need to be paid for your work. How many doctors went into medicine because they are passionate about saving lives? Do you think any of them are asked to perform heart surgery for free?
No one will ever pay $50 for something if they can get something similar for $5. When you charge next to nothing for art that you’ve worked for hours on, art that required years of training to create, you are telling your client that it is worth next to nothing. They will remember that the next time they want to hire an artist.
People who are looking to exploit artists know that artists are hard on themselves. They know that most artists don’t think their work is good enough to charge top dollar. They know that artists have been told from the first day they started taking their art seriously as a career that they’ll never make any money off it, that it’s not a real job, that it has no value to society. They know how to push artists’ insecurities about their profession in order to convince them that that demanding fair compensation is unrealistic and uncooperative.
If you’re just desperate for a job in the arts, any job in the arts, give yourself a job. Start a webcomic, or give yourself illustration assignments that you post on social media regularly, create work for a gallery show even if you don’t have one yet, or make a book. Give yourself a job. If you’re going to work for free, you may as well be working for yourself, setting your own hours and following your own interests. Having original art with original characters and ideas in your portfolio, and making sure your art is visible online will get the attention of publishers who are actually looking to hire people for good jobs. Drawing a shitty comic for a defunct publisher based on someone else’s shitty ideas will not.
Protect yourself, because no one else will. Protect yourself, because no one else will. There are people lining up around the block to exploit you. Protect yourself because no one else will.
(via cartoonnutter)
A few highlights from my completed rooms.
I will share new rooms as they happen.
I had to do an ice-based jumping puzzle because they’re almost obligatory in Minecraft adventure maps.
…of course, if the player melts or breaks the ice, the whole set-up is ruined… And monsters float.
Progress at last!
After one computer broke down, got replaced with another [Best. Easter present. EVAR!], had the data transferred, re-set up Minecraft, had that holiday in Thailand, and figured out how to install an old save… I’m back in business.
Hu-freakin’-zah.
I know, last time I posted about this, I swore I’d never talk about the sewer level again, but whilst I was making the area level, some mob tripped the circuitry off and fried my processors in the first place. Laborious process above later, I discovered that well over half of my crap dispensers didn’t contain any crap. So along with re-setting the circuitry, picking up the dispensed crap and topping up the dispensers, I had to go around and make sure every last dispenser was full of crap. Fun.
I have since done quite a bit since then, including finally surpassing the point at which I forced myself to re-make the goddamn math puzzle room set.
Why didn’t I just keep building upwards? Why?
Well, the beta rooms have neater circuitry now that I understand redstone a mite better. I included some lanterns as a “wrongness” indicator in the early rooms and got downright mean to my poor players in later levels.
I don’t recall there being an original perimeter room, but now there is one. Hooray.
And, since my kind, loving relatives threw out the one piece of paper I needed to finish the dang adventure map, I now have a good excuse to completely destroy the alpha draft rooms.
Theraputalicious.
I leave the ceiling for last, since it’s the floor of the next level. All the better to prevent dynamite-style cheating, my dear.
Almost there!
Okay, so I’ve almost transferred all my files and folders from the dying laptop to my new lunchbox Mac. Yay.
I’ve installed Minecraft - essential!
And now I’m trying to find where the save games are so I can get on with the MathMagician Adventure Map.
Alas, things have changed and I can’t find the bugger.
I know it’s in ~/Library/Application Support… but I can’t remember where I go after that.
I can has help from the Minecraft Boffins?
Last of the sewer level pix, I swear.
The finishing touch on the third floor is an array of randomly flickering lights in the ceiling.
Three concentric redstone repeater circles make a random signal generator. The rest of it is to take the signal to the lights.
When I finally moved on to build the next chamber, an asshat mob went and stepped on the triggering pressure plate, and damn near killed my computer. I’ve stopped all the circuitry, but I have to fix the dang doors in the startup area on the bottom floor.
I’ve got the fog set to “Tiny”, the graphics to “Fast” and everything that could make my poor computer wheeze turned down or completely off. And I *STILL* have framerate issues.
Not helped by my computer spontaneously turning itself off at random moments. Ugh.
I’m taking my time with the sewer level.
It’s almost a month later, and I’m still working on this thing. As I write this [24 Mar] I am STILL stuffing dispensers with brownish objects and occasional representative junk.
And by “representative junk”, I mean: leather for dead animals, raw fish for fish, empty bottles, string, lilly pads, grass, iron fences, gravel, slime balls and pieces of paper. Because it’s not just poo and wee that winds up in our drains, ya know.
Oh, and the odd stack of silverfish eggs ‘cause I want this sewer to be overrun with “rats”.
In the process of building this thing, I up and decided to add some interesting titbits about sewers and sanitation into the entire labyrinth. I now know more about such things than a mere mortal really should.
Except for one thing. As an Aussie, I felt I had to add a bit of trivia concerning sanitation in our fair country. As an internet dweller, I could not find one crumb of such info. I asked MeMum [Hi!] who is old enough to remember life before television(ghasp), and also recalls a few things about when sewers actually came in.
I picked on Sydney because it’s the one city in Australia everyone knows about. That also doesn’t possess an identically-named city somewhere else in the world. I know from movies that “night soil carts” [look it up] were employed in Sydney and other Australian cities as late as the 1960’s, and my fellow Brisbanites were joking about sewering certain suburbs in the '70’s.
The closest she could guess [in between repeated enquiries as to whether I’d looked EVERYWHERE - and Yes, I have.] was the 1970’s.
Does anyone similarly fecaly fascinated have a firmer date[Full credit is all I can offer, alas]?
More progress pix on my adventure map.
Slowly making my way back to the part where I was starting to desperately need math from Mayhem’s teacher. I haven’t taken any of these pix recently, ‘cause I’m still working on the sewer level a week later 9_9
It’s really complicated to make a sewer level! I’m still working out where to put all the dispensers and whether I should make another random signal generator or where to put it. Gah.
The lengths I go to for scatological humour.
More on the sewer, next post.
I call this one the “mining chamber” and tried to create a labyrinthine cavern of twists, turns, nooks, crannies and, of course, mine-ables.
And lava.
Can’t forget the lava.
Reasons why I want user-controlled spawner blocks, even if it’s just in creative mode:
1) Squids de-spawn when you’re not looking at them
2) I want a room full of squids
3) Even if I add a cubic metric butt-ton of them before the last save, I’m scared they’ll go away before my adventurers get there
4) There are other creatures I want in my chambers that de-spawn at the slightest provocation.
Last of the alpha-draft adventure map pix.
Comments? Opinions?