‘Con-Artist’ seems an appropriate title for today’s impromptu blog post. You’d think it would be about my terrible experience with the ‘screwy artist’ who we’ll call Davy Screwball from this day forth. However, I have another story to share about the perils of working with freelance artists. I just learned that in April of this year I came close to losing $660 dollars with one of the first artists that I seriously considered for my first comic book project. — edit: my gripe is not with true professional artists, it’s with those that offer themselves as such but do not conduct their business that way —

Last Friday, Rich Johnston posted news on his site that he had exposed the previously infamous Josh Hoopes, a comic book con-artist who was running a scam where he tried to pass off other people’s sequential and pinup work as his own in order to get hired. Once he received his 50% he would run off, never to be heard from again. Rich’s article is vital reading for any aspiring comic book creator and any fan surfing the net looking for artists to draw them commissions… because this could happen to you!

Josh Hoopes Scam Artist Returns, This Time Using Stephen Colbert

Josh Hoopes recently resurfaced with the new pseudonym, Ron Runstrom. He was responding to writers posting their advertisements in the ‘help wanted’ section of Digital Webbing. He provided the potential client with a photobucket website which hosted a small collection of pinups and sequential pages. In case you have already guessed, I was one of those potential clients.

When I saw Rich Johnston’s article about Josh Hoopes / Ron Runstrom last Friday, my jaw dropped.

Although I didn’t go ahead and use Ron Runstrom as my sequential artist back in April, I came close and even spoke to him on the phone three times over the course of a week. I had no idea that the work he was passing off as his own was, in fact, the work of other vastly superior artists. I wouldn’t just have been ripped off… my money would have been stolen!

Here’s how I avoided falling into his trap.

Ron’s “Stephen Colbert / Tek Jansen” comic sequential pages were stunning. The fact they were really the work of artist Robbi Rodriguez was something I had no idea about. I never did the research to learn this truth myself because I had no reason to doubt him at the time, so instead I took him at his word. The style in the Tek Jansen pages was perfect for the tone of my comic project (specifically with the characters) yet theses pages did not have enough in the way of backgrounds for me to be fully confident. My script needed an artist who could tackle the much more visually demanding contemporary urban locales. I asked Ron if he had more sequentials with backgrounds.

Ron could obviously tell I was getting itchy feet and we talked over the phone. I wanted to get a feel for him as a person because I wanted to gauge my potential artist’s interest in my project, and also know that we would be able to communicate clearly which would benefit his interpretation of script. I called Ron and we introduced ourselves. I explained my accent with the story of how I met Leanne and immigrated to America to marry her. Ron told me he too had undergone a long distance relationship that resulted in his Peruvian (or was it Chilean) wife immigrating by way of marriage. Perhaps this was true? We had a shared experience to bond over. He told me how badly he and his family needed the money that this project would give them. He told me he had six kids…

At this point you are probably laughing at me thinking it was obvious he was making it up and playing to my humanity (yes I have humanity tucked away somewhere)… And yes, at the time, I knew he was playing for sympathy, but I took it more as a struggling artist desperate for a dime.

I felt that I liked the guy, but told him he just did not have enough samples on his site to give me the confidence that he could handle the more complicated background scenes. He claimed he had a broken scanner but would get it fixed tomorrow and get me some more samples. This unsettled me a bit. An artist with a broken scanner? He was starting to sound flaky and unreliable.

I was torn… Ron’s page rate was around $60 dollars per page for both pencils and inks. This is an extremely competitive rate. Being a kind-hearted idiot, I felt I could offer to pay him more as the quality of his work truly deserved it. I figured it would help this ‘struggling artist’ out, and hopefully it would inspire him to do some really good work for me. My problem is that when I meet deserving people, I really want to see them make it.

A couple of days passed before I received more sequential samples. They were more Tek Jansen pages and very sporadically chosen. However, it did remind me of how much I liked the art and how I seemed to have found a superb artist who was just looking for another break. I told him over the phone that if he could blow me away with some rough character sketches from my script in his Tek Jansen style then I might be willing to take that chance on him despite his lack of backgrounds. He made several excuses, but I was honest with him that I had several other people in mind who were decent on characters and very strong on urban environments. He agreed to sketch me some samples.

A day or two later he sent me three sketches. All three sketches were in a completely different art style from one another, and none were anywhere remotely similar to the style from Tek Jansen. It was like looking at two different artists…

I emailed him back asking what was going on? He called me that evening and he explained that just over a year ago he was on the sharp end of some really harsh portfolio reviews based on his Tek Jansen style . As a result he took a break and almost gave up as a comics illustrator. However, now that he was getting back into it, he was just a bit rusty. If I didn’t hire him then he told me he might have to give up forever.

I can be quite business like when it comes to my hard earned money, so I told him in all honesty that his current style was not something I wanted for the book. He was unhappy, but gracious. I actually felt a little bad, but c’est la vie. I work hard to earn my money, and I don’t make a living from writing either. Anyway, that was the last I heard about Ron Runstrom until last Friday, June 12th.

Between Josh Hoopes and ‘Davy Screwball’ (see my previous entry) I’ve been given a major wake up call.

Lack of a real contract with Davy Screwball was one of the key reasons things became as bad as they did in the space of a couple of emails. However, thus far, I usually send a formal contract which both myself and the artist sign. This is what I have done with John Amor (Sovena Red’s sequential artist), Luis Lasahido (Sovena Red #1 original cover illustrator) and Osmarco Valladao (Sovena Red logo designer). All received and signed contracts, and all have been very professional to work with.

In the case of Davy Screwball I waived a formal contract because he insinuated it was more than was necessary and an email agreement was binding enough. In addition to this, he was somewhat known, and had worked with people I knew, so I felt that perhaps I was being too anal about contracts and should lighten up a bit. However, had I actually spoken to my peers about their experiences with him I would have learned that it was far from desirable.

In the case of Josh Hoopes / Ron Runstrom a formal contract would have done what? The contract would have done nothing to get my money back once he received it and dropped off the face of the Earth. So what can an honest guy with very little money do to protect himself?

People are people… and unless you live with a smiling purple dinosaur and sing happy songs all day about sharing and kindness, you’ll know that most people are self interested, and some far more so than others. In my experience there are few genuine Saints and Samaritans. The comics industry might even have a larger share of them given the number of starving artists out there desperate to make a buck with their careers going nowhere. Taking lazy shortcuts, and being overly sensitive and egotistical are traits that might not be uncommon among ‘professional‘ artists willing to exploit clients over their perceived naivety.

My advice from this experience is to simply TALK to everyone you can about the potential artist you are considering… not just to their fans, but to people who have actually worked with them before. This may be hard to do, but do whatever you can to be confident they aren’t a fly-by-night con artist, or an egotistical bully out to get your money without breaking the sweat that your hard earned cash deserves.

If you are a writer funding your own project then you need someone who is going to be reliable. You need someone who will work with you when elements of the art need revision, as well as having at least some modicum of talent. It’s now clearer and clearer to me why the overall quality of art in the majority of books on www.IndyPlanet.com is so low. It’s a rare thing indeed to find an artist who can draw well and is also prepared to work at giving you what you want for your budget and deadline. So even if the art may be a bit unrefined, if the artist can at least deliver a finished product then that is one small miracle in itself!

Fool’s rush in where Angel’s fear to tread is one of those proverbs that we’ve all heard a billion times. So if you don’t know if you should fear to tread the waters of hiring a lesser known freelance artist for your project, DON’T RUSH IN!

Comics is a field filled with flaky writers and artists. It probably goes without saying that people who draw super heroes, hot babes, fantasy worlds, space ships, aliens, zombies, ninjas, robots, you name it, spend a fair amount of their time in a fantasy world. There’s nothing wrong with being laid back and loving to create artwork and stories. But there’s a business end too. And it doesn’t seem that there is a wealth of artists in the comics industry who have both talent and professionalism in any balanced measure.

I recently contacted an artist about the cover for Sovena Red. I wanted a back up in case my first choice fell through. Well, the guy seemed great, but went nuts this morning after I had apparently asked him to make too many changes and he was unprepared to put more time into the cover roughs to satisfy me. My requests were (repeated three times) for him to change Sovena’s hair from wavy to straight (as it made her look a lot older than 11 years old) and try her face a little rounder. Zooming out a bit on the picture I was prepared to compromise on, but I just wasn’t happy with the look of Sovena from the two rough layout options he gave me.

Well, I soon learned that he was only prepared to give me two options with minor tweaks for the sum I was paying him. I complained this was not explained from the beginning. I have never (until now) had the experience of working with an artist who wanted to charge me more money (outside the agreed upon fee) to try additional layouts… $50 bucks a pop. No way! That’s not what we agreed to. But then he simply flipped and went nuts. After several back and forth emails with me trying to be as professional as possible, he is not prepared to let me withhold full payment. I paid him 50% upfront, fairly standard for a lot of artists. But as I’m unhappy with the services thus far, I do not want to proceed any further. Therefore, it’s over. My right as a unsatisfied client.

He doesn’t want to let it go. Stupid, right? In such a small industry, being a jerk over small money like this just damages your reputation as a professional. He is going to walk away with a stack of my dollars without delivering anything to me, and yet he feels he has legal grounds to get it all. Wrong! Unfortunately he seems to be a bit green when it comes to informal email contracts. While they can stand up in a court of law, they hold much less weight than a true legal document which has been signed by both parties. In addition, the ‘contract’ is so vague that the terms are not presented in one single email. For example, deadline, fee, 50% upfront, terms of delivery, method of delivery… none are stated in a single email. For it to really be binding, it needs to be contained in a single email, with my acknowledgment down the bottom.

Again, an email contract lacks the weight of a signature. So, I sit here, as I type, going through the back and forth with an artist who is making wild accusations and assumptions, like a crazed animal who can’t be content with just one bite out of me. This is the height of unprofessionalism. From what I hear from friends in the industry with whom I have spoken, this sort of unprofessionalism is not quite as isolated as it should be. This experience has really put a damper on my mood and my spirit. And yet, a tiny little light inside me tells me that I’m fortunate that this happened to me so early in my writing career. It means that I’ve just learned the very hard way that I HAVE to watch my dealings with fellow creators very carefully, and keep business as formal as possible. Never trust in an artist’s credibility just because he is popular. Do your research and always write up a clear contract that defines your expectations of each other which you both agree to and sign.

Here’s looking forward to Heroes Con and getting my mind off such crappy affairs.