Idea: The 'Dealing with Artists' thread?

[Erl00]

Hello everybody.

I want to create a thread which would be a resource for the whole Magic community who is interested into dealing with artists.

I know many of you have at least tried to contact some artists and that the return of experience is a wide spread from 'no answer' to 'wonderful person to deal with' and also 'this guy screwed me'.

I do not want this thread to be a discussion thread about this or that artist but just a repository / a track-record of all experiences of our members with each MtG artists.

Here is how I see things:
- The thread would provide a few links to artist-related resources and would describe in detail the way the thread works
- In the main topic (i.e. the first one or second one), a consolidation of all experiences with any artist will be immediately visible to the readers
- Each member could post his experiences with any artist and rank him on a number of selected criteria
- I would edit the many topic in order to take into account each experience posted and I would consolidate the results for each artist mentioned several time
- A color code (red) would be used to highlight potential issues with this or that artist or, on the contrary, to highlight the best artists



All what I am asking you at the moment is to answer the following questions:
1- Do you think such a thread would be useful? Why? Why not?
2- On which criteria should we rank our experiences with each artist? (preliminary thoughts include: responsiveness to contact, kindness, ease of setting-up a deal, speed to ship, conformity of products, overall appreciation + a free comment category)
3- What kind of other info should be tracked? (preliminary thoughts: deal size, nature of items, foreign shipping)
4- Do you have any other suggestion for this potential thread?

Thank you all for taking time to give a thought about this idea. I am absolutely not against strong criticism if well argumented :)

Best regards,
Eric.

[mahdishain]

eric

i think that this is an excellent idea. in addition to the rating system it could serve as an artist contact database (based on wizards' but expanded) and record of original art ownership for those who care to reveal that information.

i am prepared to add my limited experiences whenever you are set up and ready to go.  you may want to differentiate between in person experiences and other (mail. phone. email, etc.)

i hope this project goes well as magic artwork is my new main focus of mtg collecting.

practice peace

tom

[Celebrindor]

I agree that this seems like a very useful thing.  Perhaps we should include a few other things:  prices of APs, prices of sketches, original art still available.

Those categories (responsiveness, kindness, etc, etc) sound good.

[l0qii]

record of original art ownership for those who care to reveal that information.

I was having a conversation about this idea just the other day, and also keep a history of original art sales that are made.

I think this is really useful information for rarities collectors, especially those that are into original art. I'd be wiling to put significant effort into compiling this.

[notsofasteddie]

As someone whose dealings with artists is predominately focused on getting cards signed and secondarily on purchasing signed artist proofs or an occasional print, I think that the idea has merit.

Having just spent an hour yesterday trying to locate a contact for Janet Aulisio, I would especially like it if the artist related resource component led to more artist websites and addresses becoming available.  

As for the rating of the experience with each artist, I believe a five point rating scale, based on well defined definitions, which reported the number of submission and average rating by artist by category would be the most useful. I do not favor the freeform response format as I believe it to be too cumbersome. I also have some concern related to the collection of responses and the commitment of the members to submit them. How many of us are going to take the time to provide feedback when a deal goes smoothly?

I am making an assumption that the provider of the feedback and the feedback on the artist itself would not be linked as I believe that some privacy in the nature of our dealings with artists is warranted.

I would argue that commercial and non-commercial experiences should be differentiated given that the nature of the relationship is different. In the first case, there is a business relationship; in the second, the artist is doing someone a favor so the expectations should be different.

I would also argue strongly that condition of product and quality of packaging be among the rating categories.

Good Luck In This Endeavor,

Ed

[mintcollector]

While I am in favor of tracking artist experiences, I am opposed to assigning numbers, colors, or anything of the like to the experience.  I'd rather read some tangible writeup than see a number.  Doesn't have to be much, but something that highlights good or bad experiences with the artist.  

For example, my dealings with Matthew Wilson have been great, especially since he is very busy as a founder of his own miniatures line game (IK Warmachine).  He has been very responsive to answering my emails very quickly and answered all my questions I have had.  

[Erl00]

Thanks for the first reactions guys, keep-up posting, I'll make a wrap-up of all ideas / comments in a few days.

[silver.paladin]

I think this is an interesting idea, HOWEVER, with the oft tendancy of members to roam off topic or write things that do not directly contribute strictly to the topic, I think that though the idea is good, it is easily able to become messy.
I would suggest, however, perhaps use the thread as you say here, and maybe somebody could create a spreadsheet (or similar program) that will contain all the appropriate details, and have it linked maybe to their signature, so then others can see the details of this in a very clear and concise manner.
Just my 2 pennies.

[mintcollector]

Or.....as an added list of things for Ralph to do, an artist section gets developed here for the site.  Submissions for posting go to a moderator for review (so Ralph is not bogged down with this dull task).  Updates are then made and posted here.  This solves the thread problem of random postings, but provides great consumer feedback on artists that members can use as a reference tool.

Thoughts?

[Mr.C]

Im all for it. I'd also invite artists to join our forum, too. That could be interesting.

[fvzappa]

Absolutely. Go for it, and as you all may know I've had a few dealings with some of the artists as of late, so I can easily contribute.

[rg]

That's a great idea Eric.  [smiley=ok.gif]

I agree with mintcollector. I also prefer a short story about experiances one has made for a numbering system.  

So because there already had been a lot of great ideas posted i like to add some things to take into consideration:

One posting is limited by the number of characters so i doubt 2 "main" postings at the beginning of the thread could hold all the consolidated information.
There are a lot of artists and all the information would soon burst those limits. And so the thread would get too complex.
If you don't intend to make a own site (like your great booster table) for this you should at least use two threads, one for the consolidated information as you wrote and where only you post and a second open to everyone where all the experiences and informations are collected.

It would be difficult to get artists to contribute because some of them willing to post already do so at the wizards forum or with articles, interviews etc. at other places.
And i think a numbering system would put more artists of than attract them.

It is really hard to get into personal contact with some artists especially those working on a lot of other projects, sometimes you could only contact there assistents or helpers so you should also cover this. Some artists even have more helpers or assistents and they may change because customers complain. So it is important to distinguish between the artist and their helpers, employees or agencies.

There is already a lot of information at wizards forum and mtgsalvation and some others so you have a lot of work to make something new  ;)
As the others i would contribute as much as i can.

[mintcollector]

Maybe I need to point out some obvious things I was assuming everyone would get.  The artist link woul open a page listing all M:TG artists (or maybe alphabet letters if there are too many making the page cluttered).  Each artist would then have any 'feedback' listed under their own heading.  

This keeps everything organized.  This way as a member I can come on and see what everyone has to say about John Avon by simply accessing John's page to his writeups.

The data content amount stays the same, but it stays very organized and easily accessible.

[bertrand]

I have had experience mailing cards for signing with Mark Tedin and Christopher Rush.

Mark Tedin's card came back nicely, but it took 6 months. (Note: I'm sending from Canada)

Christopher Rush's stuff came back quite quickly, and even came with an artist's print of a French card with a dblack marker drawing on the back. It's really cool.

[Erl00]

OK, thank you guys for the input.

I'll try to sum-up what's being said so far.

1) Everyone seems to agree that such a thread or whatever other forms it takes is not a bad idea.
-> Good, let's move forward.

2) Some interest into adding a track-record of Original Art ownership.
-> I'm a bit puzzled about this one. First, I doubt that we have here more than a handful of people owning original arts and willing to let everyone know about it. Then I am not sure that this is 100% related to the initial objective of the thread.

3) Some interest to add additional information regarding artists (prices of APs, prices of sketches, original art still available, etc.)
-> I think this is interesting though it must remain relatively short. All information related to one artist cannot be captured easily. Take Dan Frazier for example, it's impossible to tell all the original still up for sale, their price, the price and availability of APs, etc.
I think however that just letting people know if the artist is opened to sketch APs, to sell originals, etc. is intereting and should be mentioned.

4) Ideas to be more ambitious and develop a sub-website dedicated to artists.
-> I am not against having a website or a part of this website dedicated to artists. It could include much more information, etc.
However it raises a few issues:
i) It's way too much of a job for the time I have and I would not ba able to design / maintain it
ii) There is a serious question Ralph would need to answer, which is: "As the owner of this site, do I want to endorse full responsibility of what can be told about any MtG artist". Developping a section of the website and administrating a thread is very different.

Here is what I suggest. I can start by maintaining a thread and, if it provides satisfaction to people and grows too much, we could consider developping a website.

In order to keep the thread on-topic, I wouldn't hesitate to ask Ralph to delete off-topic posts. I would create another topic for anyone willing to react to the thread while not contributing to fill-it with relevant information

In order to have the consolidated information on front page, I would post several blank replies to the initial topic that I could edit later.



Some time this week or next week-end, I'll develop a tentative "Dealing with artists" thread and fill it with my own experience.
In the meantime, please feel free to post any additional comment / reaction.

Thanks!
Eric.