Got any more details on this? I know he's been accused by Tranny the Hedgehog and some others of under-appreciating and under-paying his artists.
I mean like numbers as well. I think the going rate for a TDS thumbnail is $50.
Tranny the Hedgehog here. It's been a while I'm anywhere near the "inner circle" of things.
The going rate was $50 around the time I left, but it wasn't implied by him - that's what he would pay to other "girl" artists that he already had more close ties with. He'd come to the special Artist server without any grandeur introduction or an @ callout whatsoever, he'd just go "ok is 50 fine hehesillycomics?" or something. Around that time I was able to catch him and also send him an invoice and that's how I would get my compensation. Otherwise it's very difficult to have him respond to your emails. Not that he rarely checks it, it's
Dick, he just conveniently skips those ones.
Before that, no price talk would ever be initiated, mostly because this is unwarranted territory for most of us to make custom 2-day artwork for a show. Should we ask for 50? Should we ask for 250, because such stuff usually scale up by the professionalism of the gig and not ALWAYS by the quality (I tried to bring my best at all times, obviously.) We don't know that, and we don't want Dick to be "no, that's too much, sorry, bye" so we kind of expect Dick to come in and kind of give pointers regarding compensation. Turns out he hates doing that. My "accusation" wasn't even that, I was just merely pointing out to him that such behavior has the chance of coming off weird, it has the chance of coming off like Dick hopes that nobody asks for any compensation and that's why he doesn't really like to kind of open the door about that. I don't disagree with the notion that, if you're selling something you have to remind people that you're selling something at ALL times, but that sentiment can also be used as an excuse by people who profit off of other people's complacency.
But so anyway all I did was to raise a little concern. I honestly have even offered Dick to stop compensating me for my work after the first one since I live in Turkey, and Turkish citizens can't get Paypal accounts without US bank accounts, which I have none. It was always a nightmare to find ways to compensate me so I told him not to even bother (All due respect to him, he chose to instead go for my second option which is to compensate a friend in need that I have in the US instead, whenever I'm due money). I didn't care much, I just wanted to be a part of things and I just didn't want others to get steamrolled due to what I had assumed Dick's usual lackadaisy behavior. I had started approaching newcomer artists about what they "could expect", which I would then say "I happen to see that $50 is the going rate, I'd suggest you talk to Dick about this as he will NEVER start the conversation himself". One such artist never ended up making a thumbnail for the show. What if he did and didn't know what to expect after Dick put him in the compensation limbo? I thought I was helping by clearing the confusion but then I did realize nobody even asked me to do this, and you get shit for trying to be helpful.
Anyway, so I told Dick about all that in that fateful day. He threw all the nuance right out of the window and called me a "money-grubbing-cunt" even then, you know, I haven't been really partaking in any money paid for 7 other thumbnails I did for the show (although, again, for fairness's sake, he had been giving those 50 bucks to my friend instead -but again he knows I'm not getting money out of him personally). And then everyone was misled into believing I was trying to get a raise by trying to raise a public stink or something. So that was super fun.
