In Response to Tompreston's 'Duped' journal.

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EDIT: As an early disclaimer I am blocked from TomPreston's page. Been blocked for years now. Believe me I would of said all of this straight to his face if I had the chance.

So, as most of us who are fans of big comic artists on DA know, :icontompreston: recently posted a journal titled "Duped" upon finding out that one of his commission clients wrote a review about how they felt the process went. Mostly it was negative seeing as how Dobson took 4 months to finish a single character picture of Samus and Ridley fighting each other (which is questionable because Ridely appears more of a backdrop than anything.) to view the journal in question here is the link to the review: baconmoose.tumblr.com/post/896…

However, I'm not here to talk about the review. I'm here to talk about Preston's response journal to finding out about this. Which is completely one sided, disingenious, filled with lies, and doesn't even properly reflect what actually happened.

Let's start from the top shall we?

Fake Commission
Recently I found out that one of the commissions I undertook a while back was, in fact, a setup.


No more of a setup than secret shoppers ensuring the store in question is of quality or a game reviewer, buying a game simply to tell the audience if the game is worth paying $60.00 for.

It was hired by forum members of Encyclopedia Dramatica, one of whom I actually use to talk to and have good discussions with.

A forum member whom you recently blocked when you had a disagreement over feminism and your blatant strawman comics. Seems that you weren't so interested in having a discussion- which involves agreements and disagreements- so much as a hugbox. But we already knew that for years now- moving on

The journal in question talks at great length about my seemingly lack of transparency. IE: that I don’t communicate every little facet of what I’m doing to them, such as the number of commissions I have, what my “job” is, what my home schedule is like, etc. And honestly? This is WHY I’m not transparent. Things like this are why I don’t talk about my personal life, especially not to my clients. Because, frankly, I can’t trust anyone. Nor is it really anyone’s business what I’m doing in my private life. I’ve been trying very hard to keep my professional and private lives separated, and it’s kinda hilarious that these uses are angry because I won’t freely divulge information anymore about my situations.

Bullshit. This is standard stuff when it comes to getting commissioned. Tompreston- you took four months to get a single commission done. Four. The client never asked for every facet of your life. However when the client sees that your quick to make whine comics about the latest events in feminism in a span of 2 days, and go on and on in journals about sexism in video games, and all that other shit, than the client has every fucking right to ask you what the actual fuck you are doing with your spare time. It's one thing if they were heckling you after maybe a week of commissioning you, but after a month of ZERO response on your end, I would start to wonder about where my money is going? Nobody gives a shit about your private life. But everyone DOES give a shit about the money they spent, and if a simple "sorry I have a backlog of things to work on" is too much for you to even say, then honestly you shouldn't be taking up commissions in the first place.

The user also goes into length about how my commission methods are “flawed,” but curiously the fact that I was getting happy responses with what I was producing gets ignored.

That's because you never actually did what they asked. The most you did was add Samus and Ridley in the same picture. That was in the first response. They were happy about that. They then asked you to revise the foreshortening of the arm. And you did it completely wrong. As the communication went on, they had to continuously ask you to give them an update (when it's supposed to be the other way around.) and the revisions you did- they never asked for. At all. So why should they praise you for doing things that they never wanted?
Your commission methods are flawed? The moment me- as the client has to ask you to keep me up to date on my own picture I would ask for a fucking refund and take my business elsewhere.

Most of the time when you commission an artist to draw something, you give them a bit of free reign to draw however they want.

Key word here "a bit". That's it. Everything else has to go by the specifications of what the client wants. If you are offered a commission you can not handle than you refuse. But don't try to put the "artistic expression" bullshit on this one.
That's like me commissioning (for pure example here) Slugbox, and demanding that he draws the most realistic figure drawing model of my character ever. You would have a point there because that's not what he does in his commissions. However that is not what the clientele is doing here. They asked you to adjust the pose of a basic Samus Vs. Ridely picture and you refused to do it, or didn't do it correctly at all. I am giving you money to do a picture for me. That means in a lot of respects I have every right to tell you how to do it. I'm the one giving you the money. You are obligated to make it to the best of my liking.

Had I known that this was going to be judged on a stricter level I would have worked with them a lot more.

This has got to be the highlight of his fucking post. He's basically said that unless your some high end client he will half ass even his paid work because he's that fucking lazy. To the four other commissioners out there still waiting on Tom to finish your picture? I feel bad for you. That's a total waste of your money, and it's a shame that you spent it on someone like this.

So I can’t help but feel like the whole point of this was to set me up to fail, and that they deliberately went out of their way to achieve the desired results they set out to get.

Nobody set your ass up to fail bro. Nobody. You did this to yourself. Of all the tricks and games Encyclopedia Dramatica does to it's targets, this has got to be the easiest fucking one to over come. This is like the tutorial stage of trickery. All you had to do was keep up communication on their commission and do what they asked to the best of your abilities. That's fucking it. Had you of done that you would of beaten them at their own game.

The End Result
I could go further into detail explaining or arguing with the user and debating their journal but... I really don’t want to. It’s done.


Of course you don't want to. You know you do shitty business when it comes to commissions. God forbid that you actually show your drone fans the other side of the story so that they can actually form an accurate opinion on the entire thing. You never want to confront conflict that doesn't directly benefit you. The amount of blocks you have speaks volumes about that.

I finished the job to what I thought was a mutually satisfactory conclusion.

You only thought it was a satisfactory conclusion because you went out of your way to make as minimal communication with the client as possible. That's not even getting in to the fact that you did absolutely NO consulting to the client about the coloring before handing it in and saying "done".

The only reason I’m even bringing this up now is because there’s likely to be an influx of hateful comments coming from Encyclopedia Dramatica forum users

Influx of hate where? It sure as hell isn't your DeviantArt page. You've blocked all of them. Unless of course your talking about the EDF forums. Which if that is the case it's been going on since...it started like 4 years ago. Of course this also proves that you do indeed browse the thread despite your constant denial of the fact.

and I feel the need to, at the very least, address the fact that this happened so that my fans don’t run blindly into those threads.

But they will blindly defend you without so much as having an accurate side of the other story. Hypocrite much?

So yeah... I was duped. I don’t like being tricked

You were never "duped". Yet alone "tricked" into doing anything. You were paid to do a commission and your process and end result came to dissatisfaction by the end user. Tell me- would you of claimed this if the review was written by a fan who paid you for work and you did a shoddy job for the money they paid? In fact, now that I look at it, you claimed to have at least 4 other people who's commission is in queue. I have yet to see a single one of your clients in the sea of hugboxing and whiteknight defending any one of those clients coming in to back you up. Nor have I seen any of your past clients back you up as well. Their opinions are the ultimate ones when it comes to reviewing your commission process. Their silence speaks volumes about how much truth there is in the reviewers journal about your commission process.

I have about 4 commissions left to finish, and now with this latest incident I don’t know if I really even want to take commissions ever again.

Good. The way you go about commissions is trash and worthy of an "Artists Beware" post. I'm glad to know that nobody, not your fans or "trolls" will ever have to waste $45.00 and wait 4+ months just to get a shoddy product in return.

I am not linking to the DA journal in question because, frankly, I don’t think the users who tricked me deserve the notoriety. I’m also going to respectfully ask that if you are familiar with the journal that you don’t link to it here on my page. By all means do so on your own pages, or discuss it with them on their journal... but please do not bring that stuff here.

Basically "Don't you dare link to the other person to get a balanced view of the events that happened, otherwise it will make me look bad and I'll block you."
Good ol' Dobbles.</i>
© 2014 - 2024 procon-8
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Cheese-is-tasty's avatar
Yeah, that part where it's like "I would've done better if I knew I was gonna be critiqued," seriously? That'd be like if someone would only do good deeds if they had someone watching over their shoulder. You shouldn't HAVE to have someone there to pressure you to do the best you can, especially for a client! Holy crap Dobbo, I've held onto some kind of hope that maybe you'd change for the better, but your actions always say otherwise.