Posts made by Nightshade

Sorry to re-derail the thread yet again, but I thought of something that might be useful. Quoting Gany for brevity but it refers to what mietze and surreality said on the subject, as well.

@ganymede said in Looking for an Artist, actually willing to pay...:

I understand why it is upsetting or frustrating. I had to watch my partner sell herself short too often, and then watch her burn out, and then hold her as she cried and mumbled about how she was very close to offing herself.

But you said your piece, and hopefully your crafter friend will take it to heart.

This is why I've had to learn to separate my self-worth from the worth of my work. When I ask myself what I should charge, I don't think about whether I'm worth some amount of money. I don't think whether my work is good enough to charge for, whether someone else is so much better and they charge this amount so how dare I.

My foremost thought is: what can I get away with? What's the price that the client can pay, what's the going rate for the work, what's the availability of other workers and willingness to work for lower pay. I never, everrrrrr tie it into my self-worth or self-esteem because that way lies misery.

Also, the sky is the limit. If I think someone's ready to pay a sum that's way outside of my realm of thinking, I TAKE IT. I TAKE IT AND DON'T LOOK BACK. Because of my upbringing, I am extremely shy at taking money for my work. I've been raised to do stuff for free out of kindness, or some idea of future favors. This spells financial doom so I've had to reprogram myself in this regard. Of course I'll still do shit for friends for free, but never in a business setting.

I justify this by knowing there'll be times I'll be underpaid, and this way the balance evens out.

Art also has this unfortunate property which ties creativity with self-worth on a deeper level than other professions, at least that's what I've found. Criticism strikes much harder and can really mess with your head. That's why it's so important to divest it from the financial aspect.

@surreality said in Looking for an Artist, actually willing to pay...:

@nightshade said in Looking for an Artist, actually willing to pay...:

I also thought it would be useful to share my perspective, since it might be helpful and refreshing to someone trying to break into the art world. Don't need to repeat my mistakes if you can learn from them.

(First, thank you.) This I agree with. If someone is looking for a 'foot in the door' opportunity? Yeah, I even said -- coolness. Go for it.

Thank you for sharing your experience as well. Yeah, there were some points where we did agree.

There is some damage that can be done by this, still, though. Partly this is the whole 'customer inexperience' problem. "I paid $100 for this the last time when I got a similar thing from someone else, WTF you want $600?" If I heard one more time about how somebody's cousin would make it for less as an attempt to get me to drop a price -- and let's be real, they would never actually be asking the cousin to do it, it's almost always a request for the thing in hand right now at less than cost... it's one of those 'if I had a nickel every time' issues, I could retire now.

Yeah.... on one hand, I agree. On the other hand...

"I paid $100 for this the last time when I got a similar thing from someone else, WTF you want $600?"

"Sure, go to that other person. I've got 2 more projects I'm working on right now, and I'm being paid 600$ for them, so I can't afford to do anything cheaper, sorry."

Or you think hard and long whether you need that 100$ and you suck it up and do it, because it's drought for other projects and you have rent to pay. Sometimes necessity will dictate flexibility, sadly.

But I think my point is just, to have more perspective. We all know the "computer guy" who gets badgered by neighbors and acquaintances to fix their virus-laden machine for free. It's really not just arts. You have to learn to set limits, but also understand when it's better to be flexible. Whether you're 17 or older, with no prior work experience, you can benefit greatly from being the computer guy. You do it for free the first few times, then you start charging a little, then you learn enough to get hired by a company that does that stuff... It can be a lead up to a career.

One thing I wouldn't do though, is unpaid internships. That's complete bullshit. A company that does this is not a company I wanna work at. I'd rather work at a smaller place than be a cog in such a machine.

Mainly, I dislike this way of putting artists on a pedestal. I remember working on some underpaid jobs and half-assing them because of it, and it makes me so embarrassed with my past self. Now I realize I should've been more humble and grateful. There's a tendency to regard artists as these ineffable creatures of talent who are somehow special, and if an artist buys into this, it can be severely damaging to their success.

I've had people tell me, "Oh, how lucky you are. I wish someone would pay me to do art for a living." I had to laugh because luck and talent had nothing to do with it. Just hard work, eating shit, making compromises.

@surreality said in Looking for an Artist, actually willing to pay...:

Some things? Yep, went precisely as he describes: pick up something as a lark and within a year, holy shit, it's my job.

I have to correct this, since by no means did I pick up something "as a lark," I approached it with serious determination and that is the only reason I succeeded. It's actually nothing short of a miracle that I did, and required breathing sleeping dreaming eating and immersing in the profession without time to do anything else.

I have also done this in two different mediums (art and music performance) so I would know what I'm talking about. Of course, it's just my personal experience. Someone else might've gone a different route, had enough time to develop gradually and had the luxury of going to school for it. I didn't, I had to piss blood.

I will go back on my words somewhat, to temper the discussion - I do actually feel grateful when people stand up for artists and say there should be fair wages. Because without that support, it would be much harder to find a standpoint from which to argue for decent pay.

However, I feel it's unfair to pile up on someone who offered paying work in this community. How many people will do that again, after they saw Insomnia's experience?

I also thought it would be useful to share my perspective, since it might be helpful and refreshing to someone trying to break into the art world. Don't need to repeat my mistakes if you can learn from them.

@surreality said in Looking for an Artist, actually willing to pay...:

@nightshade Yeah, this is really not even worth responding to. You can keep insulting me if you want -- y'know, outside the Pit where that shit actually belongs -- but you keep missing the point and clearly refuse to engage in anything even resembling self-examination. That you keep compounding one erroneous assumption on top of the next suggests it's not remotely productive to take time away from show prep to further attempt to engage with you.

Please read more carefully. I have not insulted you once, I've only stated my general views.

So you're incapable of continuing the discussion constructively. Yep, I think I'm done here.

@surreality said in Looking for an Artist, actually willing to pay...:

You speak for your own experience here and are extrapolating it to everyone else as though it's universal.

It's not.

Sure it's not. It's only universal for anyone's experience in the workforce, in any profession.

You tried to jump into things, apparently, as a clueless beginner, which is not the way everyone does things. The fairy land I live in is one in which some of us actually bothered to get really fucking good at what we do before ever dreaming of asking for a single dime to cover materials, let alone the rates we should be getting -- or possibly ever even showing it to anyone in the first place.

Now who's making assumptions?

Yes, I tried to jump into a highly competitive professional field. Within one year, I managed to teach myself a profession people study at a university for 4-5 years. I managed to build up a portfolio-in-progress and get enough clients for it to be the main source of income. Within one year.

And I still greatly regret feeling above some paygrades and scoffing at underpaid work. Because I could've done much more, much better, and gotten a lot more experience.

While you were out there, trying to work up your craft while spending 8 hours a day doing something else and wasting your energy, I was being paid for doing art full-time and advancing in the profession.

So I suppose my experience isn't universal necessarily, it just depends on how serious and desperate you are to make it your life.

So, again, stop universalizing your experience and slapping everybody else in the face with it like we're all ignorant of reality, because that's as ignorant as the blind adherence to 'you must charge or you're a horror'.

If you haven't gotten slapped in the face by the reality of the working world, then I suppose reading an opposing viewpoint must feel like one.

@surreality said in Looking for an Artist, actually willing to pay...:

A lot of this does actually have a detrimental impact on professionals, but there is a level of 'it isn't on us to control what other people do because they want to be doing it' either to suck up about it.

You will never get professional work for not-professional prices. So it does not have a detrimental impact on actual professionals. I know that I was not capable of delivering professional quality when I was starting, and there's still tons of people who do it much better than me. I'm not upset about the clueless beginner who cuts down prices because I don't compete with his quality of work.

Of course you'll always have people trying to undercut you, but newsflash: artists aren't a special unicorn in this regard. Everyone gets that experience in the working world.

Otherwise, don't assume that somebody voicing an opinion is a babe in the woods just because this discussion isn't happening on a professional art forum of some kind.

Sorry for your ego, but I will speak out when I see damaging attitudes. If you don't understand this perspective, then I have to wonder what fairy land you live in, and when I can move in.

I also dislike the oh-so-common ganging up on someone on MSB just because they deigned to post something. Jeez, be glad someone's offering money for art for once.

I have to wonder if people have actual experience breaking into art as their day job. Undervalued work like this is sometimes the foot in the door that you desperately need.

I've made the mistake before of scoffing at underpaid work, and have lived to regret it.

In a perfect world we'd all be getting paid bunches for whatever, but in the real world if you're a beginner you need to suck it up at first. When you're established, you have the luxury of turning down work. I think this is how it goes for many other professions, not just art. With art it's even more acute because there are too many talented people out there, who are all much better than you. So suck it up and do any work you can find. And put in your absolute best regardless of the pennies you're being paid, because you never know what it may lead to.

I'm speaking out because I've seen these attitudes time and again, I ate it up like an idiot, and regretted it. Only when I accepted shitty, "for exposure" gigs, I got asked for more and started getting established. That's when you get a phone call out of nowhere asking you to do shit you're honestly excited about.

So, Insomnia, thank you for the ad and I hope you manage to get this made. I wouldn't expect professional quality for non-professional prices, but it doesn't seem you expect it either. So that's all good in my book.

Posters could also take a hint and not garbage up every thread with images.

I found them obnoxious ever since the trend started. Then the gifs started slowing my browser down to a crawl, and I said fuck it, and blocked them entirely.

If you have to post images, consider that it will have more effect if it's sparsely used. These trends become annoying when they start suffocating everything else.

For Firefox, there's an addon called Gif Block. It sits as a button by the bookmarks and I turn it on for this website. I'm sure there are similar add-ons for other browsers.

@Rook Thank you for sharing this, it's really insightful for many aspects of online gaming.

I don't mind bar RP.
It's good to get to know people.
It's good downtime for characters.
It sucks if it's the only RP in the game.

@Ominous said in Hiring a Storyteller:

@Nightshade I know, but there are a few people in the thread talking about how hard it is to find a coder. It's like someone saying "Hey, I need to buy fresh apples. Anyone selling some?" and someone else responding "It's so hard to buy fresh oranges this time of year."

Yeah, it's annoying. I thought the OP was clear on what they were looking for.

@Ominous said in Hiring a Storyteller:

I got a feeling the OP meant they want someone to build and desc the grid then run plots once it is open, not a coder.

It does say "Hiring a Storyteller" right in the title. The OP said they were already doing all the coding.

@Streetwich is looking for someone to basically, tell stories for some monthly pocket money. And it's even in a system lots of people are familiar with, Mage the Ascension, and might actually love to do even for free. I don't think it's the same as asking for a coder.

True, this would mean they're working within someone else's vision, and a good question is, how much limitation will this impose? Still, it feels like there's far more space for creativity here, than when coding a game.

This feels especially nice if everything is already coded. @Streetwitch isn't even asking for a busywork staffer, but a storyteller. That's the meat of the hobby, the fun stuff. And they're paying for it. Pretty nice.

I'm not a good candidate because I don't know Mage and wouldn't have time for this, but someone who's already into Mage and just looking for a chance to write stories in it, why not. At least it's not some obscure setting that has a limited market.

Build settings with conflict inherent in them. If you just build a city, it will be another bland-by-night. If you build a city ravaged by war, supernatural catastrophe, large-scale historical events, natural catastrophe, people will have built-in reasons to RP around.

Don't build a city. Build a setting that you could drop a character in and they could RP immediately without someone handing them a plot.

@Catsmeow Well, I've done my research so I believe I've got a solution now, it's just gonna be slow and hard, none of that quick dieting success. However, I think that general life balance and happiness affects diet a lot. If you're enthusiastic and engaged in projects and life, it'll be easy to lose weight because food won't be needed to fill emotional needs.

@Catsmeow Just the fact that you didn't tell me to eat less, move more, is help enough. Yes, I also find it frustrating to lose weight slowly, when I know how quickly dieting works in the short run. I'm a stubborn, iron-willed person and the feeling of control when diet is working is so empowering. But then the crash comes, and it's psychologically devastating.

Regarding weight loss, I found a few things useful.

Well, the first thing is that dieting doesn't work for me. Oh, it does work initially. I lose all the weight and I get a psychological boost from it, and then carefully start reintroducing normal food into my diet... And the weight gets back, plus more. My body gets into starvation mode, my metabolism slows the fuck down to conserve energy, and everything gets stored into fat, because the body goes "who knows when we're gonna have food next!"

So I did several rounds of yo-yo dieting and then stopped in horror because I ended up with more weight than I started with.

There were three articles that changed my approach: that stuff about the reality show "The Biggest Loser" - they followed up with contestants after 6 years, all but one have regained all the weight lost, and their metabolism was significantly slower even after all those years. So they have to eat less than a normal person would, just to keep at a current weight. They doomed themselves to a lifetime of not being able to have a balanced relationship with food.

Secondly, there was an article that detailed how it takes a year for the body to get used to a new lower weight. For a whole year, the body has an imperative to gain the weight back, through hormones and metabolic changes.

And thirdly, this one: https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/meet-staci-your-new-powerlifting-super-hero/. The gist is, focus on gaining strength, not losing weight. Focus on building up dense muscle by low-repetition but strenuous weight lifting, and not cardio as is usually advised. This raises the basal metabolic rate and melts the fat, as such muscles spend more energy just by existing.

So I get angry when people say it's easy to lose weight, just eat less and move more. If only our bodies weren't intricate complex biochemical systems with various evolutionary purposes, maybe that simplistic maxim would work. Everyone looks at you like an idiot with self-control problems if you try to dispute this "simple solution."

Basically the solution is, eat decently so you can move lift more. Then eat even more, so you can lift even more. Of course, this still means you gotta eat healthy stuff and not stuff yourself with sodas and snacks. I just wish I knew all this ten years ago, long before I tried low-carb dieting the first time. I also have some good experiences with intermittent fasting, as long as it doesn't go into deprivation/starvation mode.

@Thenomain said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

My bike is old and hard to pedal. A lot of people have questioned me for purposefully riding a heavy bike. I tell them that this is the point.

Now I just need to use it.

A better bike might make it more of a joy to use, thus making you more motivated to use it. I know it gives me a burst of enthusiasm for an activity when I get a new toy or tool for it.