Awareness of artist scams: my experience XD

[Yakamaru 3,075]

 

As someone who commissions art(perhaps a little too much ^^'') and have a good amount of experience on this front there's always something at the back of my head that gnaws ever so gently when an artist, or supposed artist approaches me for commission work. The initial interactions is rather vital for me to indicate whether or not this is a legitimate artist contacting me or if it's a bot/AI or someone trying to scam me. 

• First point to look out for is a gallery. Does this artist, or supposed artist, have a gallery? Granted, not all artists have one but it's a good way to show someone's portfolio and increases the chance of someone being a legit artist. This art gallery can be on FurAffinity, deviantArt or what have you. 
• Second point is speech patterns and general language use. Some scams are literal bots/AI, and as such are easy enough to distinguish through some clever wording and sentence structuring. In the case it's a real person trying to scam this can be detected through a bit of inquiring about their supposed.. "work", although I really don't recommend treating every potential artist as a scammer. That's rather backwards.
• Pattern recognition, although this one may be a bit more on the Autistic side of things. There is more often than not patterns in things, especially speech, so keep an eye out for various patterns that may indicate whether this artist is legit or not.
• Art consistency. Consistent art is important especially if the artist, or supposed artist, have a gallery. You should be able to verify this rather easily even for artists with a mid level of skills. Some artists however have several styles that they draw, one such prime example is feve who does different styles depending on what's been commissioned.

In the case of you having posted an advert (example below. The finished piece ended up as a Japanese Oni samurai which were a bit of a deviation from the original ad, but it came out pretty nicely regardless :>. It's in the spoiler just below for anyone curious) where you are looking for an artist to do a specific pose, scene or what have you, a scammer could use this as a potential venue of getting money from people. That chance is low however as you're the one putting out an ad and get to see various artists with their portfolios, which is where scammers tend to end up being discouraged as portfolios and even publically available galleries is a huge boon for genuine artists. 

Spoiler

 

 

I could write half a novel on interactions alone when it comes to trying to figure out whether this artist is legit or not, but I will refrain from doing so and save people from reading Autistic drivel.

In general just use your intuition and feeling on the front, and be aware of scammers, but don't let it stop you from normal interactions and making a potential genuine artist happeh with a commission.

[Rethajni 1,994]

I mean... I do ask to use the OCs of people that I found cute, but more as permission than an offer, I am perhaps the worst scammer because I never ask for money or such, just smiles, I make gif to bring smiles to people and for friends, money is never brought in conversation.  

I been also into some twisted sick moves, I was planning to make a short animations of talking cats but back on the days of Skype a group of people add copyright to my characters so I cannot use them, only to screw me up, thats why I trust my works to my inner circle. 

I never had experiences like that, people asking to draw my OCs out of the blue