First gig

[ReneAigner]

Well, some doctors and lawyers, and mechanics do work for free-- At least at first. From what I know, anyway. And some simply do it for charity. In fact, the people who do that are probably the ones you'd trust the most.

You're comparing an artist doing unpaid work onm a commercial project with doctors doing charit work? Really? Not the same thing by a long shot.

But, it's quite common for people to take apprenticeships and volunteer for different projects of all kinds, across many different careers, in order to get a feel for what they're doing, in order to do what they love, or to decide whether they love doing it, and all kinds of other justified reasons.

Just because it's the norm doesn't mean its right. Sure, one can make a point for unpaid internships as a way for absolute beginners to get a feel for a job, and in some cases that can certainly be beneficial. In many cases though, it's just a way to get cheap (or free) labour. I know of companies that run almost entire art departments with unpaid interns. They are in the "bottom" segment usually (e.g. browser games), but that's abusive nevertheless. I would only suggest an unpaid internship to someone if they know the company and know that they won't get taken advantage of.

I'm not taking morals here, I'm talking business. Honesty doesn't put bread on my table. A client who agrees (in writing) to pay you for work and doesn't can always be taken to court. The time you've invested in a project that the producers themselves don't believe in enough to get funding is gone forever on the other hand.

And that's exactly the kind of thinking that these kinds of explotative "clients" are bargaining for. Just because you love doing something doesn't mean you should do it for free. I'm sure there are plenty of doctors, lawyers and mechanics our there who love what they do, nobody expects them to work for free.

By working on commercial projects without pay, you're hurting yourself and the professional community at large. Don't let yourself get brainwashed by anyone into thinking that because drawing/painting is "cool" or "fun", you don't need to/deserve to get paid.

The point wasn't about morality at all, it was actually only about business. A client that asks you if you'd like to contribute to a small game project and tells you straight you up nobody is making money off of it is clearly more professional than one that wants to pay you borderline minimum wage, and not only that but conveniently decides to "forget" to pay you. Whether or not you get the money is irrelevant. They were a bad, unprofessional client to begin with. Morality doesn't have anything to do with it. Living up to what you said you would do, as any professional business should, does.

Look, I don't even completely understand what your point is here. At no point did I say that you shouldn't work on non-commercial projects if you want to. Of course you can, if you can find the time. What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter if a client is upfront about not paying you, if the project is commercial that means that the client wants to earn money and wants to exploit you. So all their being honest about is their exploitation.

Nobody here is being "brainwashed" into thinking we don't deserve to get paid. Everyone here understands that its something you do the first 1 or 2 two times as a feeler, and I still don't see why that's such a bad thing. You seem to think these projects take up years of your life, when they more likely take up maybe a week or two, and since there's no contract or obligation to do the work you can skip out whenever.

I wasn't implying that anyone on here is doing the brainwashing, but there is quite a bit of that going on "out there", believe me. I get e-mails every week asking for spec work or praising the huge "exposure" i will get if I do project X for them.
If you have to make ends meet, 2 weeks of fulltime work is a huge amount to spend doing work for someone else without getting paid. The monetary damages are (depending on your specific hourly rate) in the thousands of dollars. This is a big deal. Not even including royalties or licensing payments that those kinds of clients also won't pay you.

As book said, the argument that creatives are the only ones that do some free work is just not true. It can happen to anyone and it's their judgement alone that should decide the value of that experience versus the time lost and not some "rule". and it does provide valuable, real world experience, more tangible than just using that time to study or make your own work.

As I said above, in very, very specific situations working for free (internship) can be beneficial, mostly if you're not sure if this particular line of work "is for you". However, I'm doubtful how often those criteria are really met in real life. I suspect that a lot of internship placements and virtually all unpaid work done on commercial projects happen in exploitative circumstances in which the artist is taken advantage of.

I think my other main point is this: If you can't get paid work, why is that? Usually it's because you're not producing the quality clients are looking for. That means you have to improve the quality. The kind of work that is dished out as spec work/ unpaid work to beginners (because pros won't touch that stuff in any case) doesn't really help with that because it doesn't let you focus on your weaknesses. You have to focus on what your freeloader-client wants you to focus on. Which is why it is a bad idea to do work like that for beginners as well.