First time commissioning, don't think I will do it again.
Sorry for the long post. I know not all artists are like this, but this experience really left a sour taste in my mouth and I just wanted to vent to people who might understand.
After being in a new D&D group for a while, I thought it would be cool to commission my first artwork of the whole party! I had absolutely no experience commissioning artists, so I made a post on this subreddit looking for one. Within three minutes I had around 20 responses.
I’ll admit I didn’t research people as carefully as I should have. After talking to a few artists and looking through portfolios, I picked one whose Behance account had a ton of different styles. I even found a style on there that I really liked, so I decided to go with them.
I sent over references for the characters, their heights, and the setting I wanted. They asked for half the payment upfront, which at the time seemed reasonable to me. I trusted that people in a field like this where artists put so much effort into their work and already struggle enough financially wouldn’t scam someone.
After paying, I told them there was no strict deadline and that they could take their time because it was a big piece. I wanted them to enjoy working on it without pressure. They estimated it would take about a month.
A month later they finally sent me the piece. At first glance I was honestly satisfied. The character heights were completely wrong, but since I don’t know much about art, I brushed it off. Then I sent it to a friend of mine who’s a 3D artist, and he immediately noticed something was off.
The entire thing was clearly AI-generated. And not even good AI-generated art. Once he pointed it out, it became painfully obvious.
When I confronted the artist, they denied using AI and claimed the messed-up hands were because “magic was happening in the scene” and that it was “just a rough sketch.” I asked for the layered files, and they couldn’t provide them.
Then my friend and I took another look through their Behance account. Very quickly we realized that at least half of the portfolio was blatantly stolen artwork from actual artists. When confronted, the scammer claimed the real artists had somehow stolen their work.
What finally exposed them completely was that one of the uploaded pieces still had the original artist’s signature on it the same artist they were accusing of theft. The moment I pointed that out, they went completely silent and ghosted me.
So yeah, lesson learned. I was naive, stupid, trusted too easily, and got scammed out of my money.
Maybe I’ll commission art again someday, but I will never pay upfront again without seeing a legitimate, undeniably non-AI sketch first.
In the pictures is their Behance, discord and reddit account, and you can see 2 of the so many clear and utterly disgusting evidence pieces that it's made by AI.