p

someone broke the smilie button. Please fix it. lol.

maybe i should start skinning... * /me "wonders" *

Oh yeah, look at the top artists here. You have adni18, Pixtudio, DuoPixels, and Mormegil, as top WB authors. TSF is top notch too. Why not hire one of them for one skin? I'm sure they can take criticism and change things to suit you. Then, once you have that one skin, maybe you could hire them for more. I'm requesting a copy of all premium skins designed under this suggestion, or usage of this idea is a copyright infringement. p

Isn't modesty a wonderful thing?

Isn't it though?



More like "confidence" and the fact that i can back up my boasts.

ROTFLMAO

I was simply offering someone the opportunity to add us to their resume and get paid for it.

First of all if you were worth adding to these artist's resumes you'd have enough money to pay for the spec skins to begin with. I have yet to see a company who was worth adding to a portfolio not be able to "pony" up the cash to get work done.

For the new artists adding any company to your portfolio is a good thing provided you aren't taken advantage of and working on spec in the hopes that the client likes it is not a good way to start an art studio. Let's be honest and i'm not saying that this guy is not legitimate but most new artists wouldn't and couldn't afford litigation if a foreign company decided to use your spec skins without paying you. What are you going to hire an attorney to fly to another country to sue them if something happened? Of course not. Companies know this and therefore seem to think they can get away with whatever they want. Again not saying this guy and his company is like that - just speaking in general.

Reality is you want assets created, then hire an artist and pay them for their time. Don't come here with an offer for artists to work for free on the chance that they may get hired. And artists reading this - do not work for free or hand over copyrights to your work without proper contracts. This guy and his company is in business to make money and if you're a commercial artist - then so are you. All i see is someone trying to get a free ride. No reputable corporation does business like this.

Skin Factory - You don't understand what i'm offering, you are pessimisticly speculating. You have no idea how difficult/easy/quick/long this task is. You have know idea how much i'm prepared to pay. No every business out there is a corporate monster trying to screw anyone they can.

and grayhaze: that did come off a bit cocky, more than i intended but it's also true. Look at our client list after only 3 years in business. Come on we earned the right to be a little cocky doncha think?

monstavision: i'm going by your offer. You said you can't afford to pay for something you don't like. True? Why should an artist spend their valuable time working to show you something you may not buy? It doesn't work that way. It's like a job interview. You ask artists to send samples of their work and then you negoitate a price after showing them what the job is all about. That's how it's supposed to be done. That way no one wastes time or money. You want these guys to work in the hopes that you will like their effort. No company works that way. And while i can afford to go litigate a company from another country, most of these people can't. My warning to them is not about you but a general warning. You are not the first company to come to the boards asking for the same exact thing.

and we look out for our own. Plain and simple.
[Message Edited]

*sigh* i am going to keep quiet

Some more words of advice for artists looking to make money doing this kind of thing:

After you negotiate a price for the job whether it's an hourly job or a flat rate you need to ask for 50% of the total cost of the project (flat rate or the estimated hourly total) and then when you're done you need to get the final 50% before you turn over any source files. Once you give a company the source files you're at their mercy. So protect yourself and make sure you hold the cards, not them. We do it all the time. I'd be happy to give anyone a copy of my Development Agreement contracts to use as a template. Just send me an email and i'll just remove TSF's stuff from it and send it over.

Fair enough, point taken. Here's a revised offer -
-Anyone interested can email me. [email protected]
-I'll brief you.
-You can send me either something that you've already designed (that slightly resembles our interface layout) or a quick concept drawing.
-We'll negotiate a fee to complete the background and buttons.
Any questions?

know = no = Not. Slow Your rushing monstaVision. You can view the portfolios (well I call them Portfolios) of the top authors on this site. ChasUGC mentioned a couple, there are many more. Pick out some that look good to you and email them an offer, preferably in $US. They can only say yes or no.

see that's how you do it. Also you should go to a specific skin section here and sort the section by most downloads or i think you can sort by ratings. That's a good way to headhunt for some new talent.

I've had a look but all these skins are for computer screens not touch screens. I'm kind of hoping someone will step up to the challenge and contact me.

we've done touch screen interfaces, it just means the buttons need to be bigger. Any artist here can make a button bigger when they're designing the UI.

/me has learned alot from speculating on this thread.

- bigger buttons = easier in many ways...making something look good with hardly any pixels to play with is the skill that makes the top skinners here the experts they are. For example, my skin WB is big and chunky, but I did that deliberately - however, I certainly wouldn't say it took any more skill to do than any of the good skinny ones.

In a way I'm tempted to e-mail for more info as big chunky buttons might be possible to throw together in short time (and could be fun to do). I had a quick look at the sort of products you make with the current interface, and with the revised offer it begins to sound like a proffesional basis to enter into a contract...but at the end of the day, the hassle of all the business malarky just makes it too much bother...unless the money were £5,000+...but if it were, then you'd have approached to pros anyhow!

like Groucho - I don't want to join any club that'll take me as member

It's important to make those new to this 'industry' aware that there ARE genuine Professionals within this community, people who attract prominent Industry figures as clientele....so when someone is dismissive of the skinners here [and elsewhere] as perhaps 'less than professional' it is somewhat grating.

Certainly there are hobbyists, novices and rank amateurs, but there are also some of the most highly regarded artisans of the GUI creation community.

It's also important to remind people that all the online public skinning sites enjoy [mostly] the same skinner base as their members, so what rankles at one site very likely will be received poorly at another as well...

good points

As a commercial artist and design engineer in another industry, and an executive who has routinely hired commercial art and design firms, I'd have to say that while I believe monstaVision's approach has been clumsy and a bit ham-handed, the practice of submitting mockups and concept proposals and even concept or design prototypes on speculation is not at all unusual in other areas of commercial art and design.

The company I work for designs interior cockpit solutions for the luxury automotive industry, and faceplates and interfaces for the appliance and electronics industries. We are now a leader, to greater or lesser degree, in all of the markets in which we compete. But I remember how much time, money and other resources we had to spend to break into some markets, all on spec, with no guarantee of return. I also remember times when we, like The Skins Factory now, were a clear leader and innovator, and could more or less dictate terms. And now, as some of these markets have matured, and global competition has increased, we once again find ourselves spending millions of dollars annually on digital design proposals, design samples, mockups and concept prototypes, all done on spec as part of the bidding and nomination process.

As an executive with that company, I also am solicited, indeed inundated at times, by marketing and freelance design artists with samples, concepts and mockups, again, all done on spec with no guarantee of a return or any compensation at all for time and materials. We also, can and do, seek out other artists with a "name" and in those cases, the name artists are able to negotiate better terms, just as my company is now able to negotiate better terms for our products now that we are a leader in our market.

I'm not trying to say this is an apples to apples comparison - you skin software interfaces, we "skin" hardware. One of the main differences is that our industry is much more mature, and competition is much greater. Procedures and practices have evolved over time. But I'm old enough to have seen how similar ways of doing business transfer from industry to industry as markets mature and competition increases.

To Jesh and the others at The Skins Factory, I sincerely admire your work and you clearly deserve your success and the fruits thereof. Enjoy it while it lasts. If you can continue to be innovative and in tune with the market demand, you may well enjoy it for your lifetime. But as this industry matures, you may also find that you need to work a bit harder to stay ahead. I wish you well in any case.

To newer artists that don't enjoy the prestigious position TSF, DuoPixels, adni18, Pixtudio, and others have, keeping faith with your fellow artists in terms of ethics and standards is vital. But business is business, as TSF pointed out, and when you are trying to get started, and your reputation is not yet developed, sometimes you have to work under less desirable terms and conditions, and even take work from clients who make clumsy approaches or don't otherwise appeal to you.

Shameless Designs: You're absolutely right and it does depend on the industry. In your industry (Industrial Design i imagine and in the advertisment industry, companies will have to do mock-ups and bid for work. The software interface industry is different as it is more "niche" and the number of competitors who actually pose a "threat" are few and far between. Will that change? I'm sure it will. By the time it does i'm pretty sure we will have such an advantage that we won't be hurting too much. I have had clients ask me if i would be willing to submit spec comps to them before they would sign on. We won't. We're just too busy and our portfolio is diverse enough to show what we have to offer. The only time i'm willing to devote resources for free is for charity. I also have a problem giving companies ideas for free only to have them hire a cheaper company to work off of our ideas.

As far as worrying about "staying ahead" i don't. An art studio's strength comes from it's portfolio and it's client list. We also have an extremely strong word-of-mouth reputation.

I don't think artists here should be expected to submit mock-ups for work. This isn't a professional environment in that respect. This isn't monster.com or a job service. So i think the rules of creating mock-ups for every company that comes to the message board looking for cheap labor doesn't apply and should not be catered to. The artist here have their "virtual portfolios" up for all to view.
[Message Edited]

TSF,

Sorry if I gave the impression that I was recommending that you, or anyone else who has established themselves in this market, begin creating mockups or concept packages. I agree with you completely on that score, given your position in the market. The longer you and your competitors are able to maintain that practice, the better it will be for all of you. That's a part of what I was alluding to when I mentioned keeping faith with fellow artists on ethics and standards - I should have mentioned practices as well.

The point I was trying to make is that such practices do exist and are the norm more than the exception in what many businesses will consider the commercial graphic design industry. Like it or not, skinners are not going to be considered artists in the same vein as sculptors, painters, photographers, or others who work in traditional physical media for a long time, if ever. Especially when the art of skinning also contains elements of functionality, and when the whole object is to not have one unique artistic work which stands on its own, but to have one unique artistic element which is perceived from the beginning by those who commission it to be a feature to aid in marketing their "real" product.

Please don't misunderstand and think I'm saying that skinners are not real artists. I personally have the greatest admiration for so many of the artists in this community and continue to be amazed by your talents with each new work. What I am talking about is the perception of the skinner's art as a commodity in the commercial arena.

The Skins Factory, Skinplant, DuoPixels, Pixtudio, adni18, mormegil, and a handful of others are in a position to dictate terms to companies that can afford them. There are a number of very talented artists here though, who have not yet developed a comparable portfolio, who may benefit by expending a bit more effort to be cooperative with reputable companies during the "courtship phase" to obtain a contract. Comments such as, "Sure he's talented, but my gawd he's arrogant and impossible to work with," have killed more than one artist's career, I assure you.

I'm not defending monstaVision's approach to this community. I agree absolutely that it was unprofessional and poorly conceived. And as you mentioned, there have been others like him, and more will come. But as clumsy as some of the approaches will be, there will be some of them which offer a real opportunity to a less-established artist, if they take the time to tactfully educate the customer on standard practices and show a bit more willingness to be flexible.