If you’ve been following the Patreon and/or the forums really closely, you’ll know that this has been a dramatic half-week for Harem Collector artwork. Let me break it down for you. Please read until the end, as this story has some plot twists and turns and you’re not going to be able to fully appreciate the context for everything until you get to the bottom
Back in February, SacB0y said he was getting better job offers and had to move on from working on Harem Collector because he couldn’t fit it into his schedule. Fair enough, but at this point SacB0y had been paid for most of Larelle’s sex a la carte and dungeon scenes, eight images in total, and been paid for half of Shally’s sex scene which had been especially sponsored by a fan. SacB0y told me not to worry about it, Jingzy would finish the rest of the images and he’s do lineart for the Shally scene and have Jingzy finish it off with colour and background, at which point I’d pay Jingzy the remainder of the cost of the scene. I wasn’t super happy about this turn of events at the time, but this was acceptable. If it had to happen, I’d at least have my bases covered and be able to deliver to fans and patrons.
Over the next three months, things end up being tense and awkward. I find a new artist and start working with him, SacB0y and Jingzy occasionally send me roughs and lineart to approve, but both of them blow through multiple deadlines. I try to be patient, though, keeping in mind that playing nice is the best chance I have at getting my patrons their money’s worth and trying to be professional. To Jingzy’s credit, he did eventually produce some results- the three finished images that backers got to see a couple weeks back- and he was progressing fairly well on some other images and would occasionally update me.
Cue the start of June. I’m figuring out the art budget for the month, getting pricing from Hilent for the big Therese-and-nuns foursome scene, and also giving Sac and Jing their monthly prodding. SacB0y sends me the final linearts for the Shally scene, Jing says he’s out of the house but does have completed art to send me. Awesome!
When Jingzy gets home, though, he claims that his computer isn’t starting up. He even sends me a video of him trying and showing the computer plugged in and all. This is when I start losing my temper. This art has been four months in the making, and multiple times I had been promised “Oh just one more week”. Whether or not Jingzy’s computer was actually broken was totally immaterial to me- I wouldn’t be in this situation if the artwork had just been done months earlier, as promised. So, I told Jingzy to stop worrying about it, I’d get the art from elsewhere, and ended up in a fairly bitter conversation with SacB0y where I got to express my frustration. SacB0y promises to make it up to me someday, and I truthfully tell him that I can’t believe that at this point and just ask for all the completed work to date.
Now, image my surprise when I wake up the following morning and find that SacB0y pulled a pretty damn heroic all-nighter to get the Shally scene completed as a means of making it up to me.
So now, I’ve had a chance to calm down over the situation, do some math, and figure things out. SacB0y finished the Shally scene, without me having to hand over the other half of the payment, too, which did a lot towards mollifying me. I have four mostly completed Larelle images from Jingzy (an example heads this entire post) and I’ve spoken to an artist I trust about getting them finished. When you do the math on all the costs, the value of everything so far lands somewhere between the price SacB0y originally charged me and what it would cost to get replacement art from Hilent.
Considering how the cost of lewd art has risen between when SacB0y and I first struck our agreement almost two years ago, I am pretty satisfied with this outcome. I respect SacB0y a lot more now than I did a few weeks ago- he took responsibility for the situation and did what could to immediately resolve it. More importantly, the guy who sponsored the Shally scene was very happy with the outcome, and immediately offered to sponsor more art from Hilent.
As for Jingzy, in hindsight the impression that I got was that he had a lot of work dumped on him at a very inconvenient time, while he was realatively inexperienced at working for commission. He did apologize and give his blessing to have his work get finished elsewhere, and while I probably wouldn’t hire him again at this point, I don’t bear him any ill will.
So hopefully you read through all of this. It’s been a bit of a trip, with various up and downs. Again, I’d like to reiterate that I’m satisfied with how things wound up, so please don’t go making trouble for either Jingzy or SacB0y. The remaining Larelle art I’ll have to get done by someone else, in due time, but I’ll take that over the increasingly bitter situation we had before.
Anyway, if you have any questions on how things turned out, please feel free to ask away in the comments. Look forward to the backer stream this Saturday and the public release is on schedule for next week. I’ll see you then!