Wednesday 14 April 2010

Time Wasters and Ranting

I get a little upset when I make a complaint, a quite justified complaint, to be told that I am ranting. To be told one is ranting somehow reduces the severity of the complaint to the extent that one becomes classed as the one at fault rather than the injured party. The particularly annoying and dangerous aspect is that the party that caused the complaint in the first place can dismiss one's reaction as a rant and basically get away with all kinds of bad behaviour.

That is not really the subject of this post, just prepare yourself for a complaint... or, if you like, a rant. In an earlier post I bemoaned the fact that I do a fair amount of work that will never sees the light of day. This post is a follow on. About 3 weeks ago I was asked by my agent to do yet another sample. At the time I was short of work so I agreed even though it is not at all in any style I have done before. Of course the deadline was to be 24hrs, or some such short amount of time. I duly stayed up late to complete it, then later still when I realised I'd somehow overwritten the finished file with a much earlier one. (A problem I keep having.. even today I overwrote an entire day's work.) So I send off the image and get a cursory, "lovely, thanks" email from the agent. Then nothing. Even my agent does not reply for 3 weeks (probably off on some luxury holiday that I could never afford).

Bear in mind that I have exactly reproduced the characters and background styles from animation character drawings they supplied, so they have no reason to reject it as it fulfils the brief perfectly. I would accept any explanation. Perhaps they wanted the sample for some business deal that didn't work out, or they changed their mind on the characters, or even a straight "no thanks". What makes me rant with fury is the totally contemptible way they they cannot be bothered to communicate anything with me. It's the most basic common courtesy that is missing. It also reveals the fact that they do not value, at all, the contribution of the creatives without which their business would not exist at all. Bizarre behaviour yet sadly common.

There you go, now was that a rant or a complaint?

8 comments:

Peter Richardson said...

I'm ranting along with you Leo. I think it's a perfect example of the way in which commissioners treat creatives with condescension verging on contempt.

There are scores of these work for nothing briefs going out every day and in a previous era agents would have rejected such approaches - now they're only too eager to dump them on their artists in the hope that they'll be able to make a little money on the back off the deal. The fact that it's an outside chance makes no difference to them as they don't have to produce the work.

I think I'd rather stack shelve in Lidl where the pay is actually way better than the kind of crap remuneration that these jobs entail - should they actually ever go live.

Arrrrgggghhhhhhh!!!! Froth, Foam Arrrrgggghhhhhhhh!!!

Rant,

Rant.

... time for a cuppa tea.

Leo Hartas said...

Thanks for ranting with me!

The only answer is to escape their evil clutches and DIY. I'm doing just that after being inspired by your post on Cloud 109 about John Higham's brilliant Elly the Reindeer. In the next post on here I'm announcing a Lulu book and by the end of the week I should have the iPad and iPhone version of it iTunes.

You should definitely get your comic cracking on iPhone asap. It's the future!

Wipe away that foam! No more ranting! Rejoicing instead!

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