I'm writing this tutorial because of the many good artists who gave very bad answers to the few job offers I posted here on dA. It's even worse because I've seen similiar bad (or even worse) answers posted everywhere in the job forums and on commission journals.
Those artists effectively disqualify themselves from ever getting a professional art job if they continue to ignore even minimum etiquette and consideration in their answers...

The basic problem with most answers is that those artists don't understand that everyone's time is expensive - they often demand that the artists' time has to be paid for, but they ignore the fact that the same applies to the people hiring artists. Please try to keep that in mind while I explain the most often made mistakes considering answers to job offers.



Rule 1: Read the job offer completely
If the job offer contains only a short description this is no problem - but sometimes the job description is longer or links to a lot of reference material for the job. Do not answer such a job application until you have read everything posted or linked there.

There are several reasons for this - the most obvious is that the job offer can contain special conditions on accepting it. For example the offer might contain a description on how to accept the offer and all artists who don't follow that description are automatically disqualified. Or the offer can contain a statement that you're automatically accept special licencing rules if you apply to it - e.g. that all submitted material will be considered open content or something like this.

But even if there are no special conditions in that description - if the artists gets the job, he will reveal that he didn't read the description by not knowing what was written there. And the person who wrote the job offer will at least be angry because the artist ignored the working time needed to write the informations into the job offer.

Answering a job offer without reading it will sooner or later sound as "I can do it - I don't know what I'm supposed to do because I didn't read the job description, but I can do it".
Do you hire unknown workers from the street who promise to repair your house, if they don't even know wether the damage was electrical or a flood?



Rule 2: Always provide a link to a specific similiar artwork in your gallery
Remember - you aren't the only one answering to that commission offer. The commissioner most probably has to choose an artist from several dozen answers, if the job is even halfway decent. Do you really think he will spent half an hour on every artist who answered to look at each complete profile/gallery? Even with only a dozen answers he would need a full working day to do that, and his time is as valuable as the artists' time - probably more, because he is the one who has money to spent, not the other way around...

The exact time limits differ depending on the job and the amount of money involved, but usually the process is a two-step-selection. In the first step the entire number of artists get a quick check to find the best few for a more intense consideration. That means you have about one minute or around 10 clicks to get past that preselection to be even considered for the job, no matter how good you are.

After reading the job description you know what the commissioner wants, and because you also know your own profile it should be a matter of seconds to find and link the specific works that are closest to the job's description. By pointing directly to those parts in your answer, you're allowing the commissioner to spent more of that limited preselection-time on the artwork he's interested in.

Answering like "Please look at my Gallery" usually translates into "Please waste half an hour of your time looking at the wrong artwork in my 400+ Gallery, because I don't care enough about your job offer to take the one minute I would need to point you to the correct pictures."




Rule 3: Make a personal answer, referring to points mentioned in the job offer
A copy & paste of "I'm interested" has absolutely no content - you wouldn't answer if you weren't interested at all, so this doesn't tell the commissioner anything new - beside the fact that you didn't take the time to write an answer...
The best way to make your answer is by asking about details not mentioned in the job offer - it's almost impossible to write everything needed in an offer, so there should be things you need to know even before starting commission work, and if you ask those in your job application then you also prove to the commissioner that you have read the job and are interested enough to think about that job.

It is also a form of courtesy - by answering personally to the job offer you accept the commissioner as a person to talk to, and if there is a choice between two artists of identical ability anyone will always choose the one he could better talk to.




Rule 4: Do not answer the job offer unless you answer correctly
Of course it takes time to follow the first three rules - time to read the job offer, time to write an answer, time to check and copy the links to specific artworks and so on. A simple copy & paste of "I'm interested, look at my gallery" is a lot faster. And in some cases the payment on the commission is not enough to warrant such a time - I wouldn't read through ten pages of description to get a job for 5$, either.

Some people might consider to do the copy & paste for a small chance of getting that job, because the copy & paste doesn't cost them anything at all.

DON'T!!!

If there is even one other artist who did take the time to make a good answer, then your chances of getting the job are non-existant. And even if everyone gives only a copy & paste, your chances are low - because you made only one of several dozen faceless answers.

However by making such a crap answer you give the impression that there are dozens of artists to hire from - and even if the commissioner doesn't plan to look at such crap answers he can use their existence in the negotiations with the better artist as a reason to pay less - the other artist can see his competition as well, and he has no way of knowing that the commissioner wouldn't hire anyone of them.
Think about that for a while...


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These are my opinion about that theme - I'm not an artist and usually place the job offers, but I always try to be fair to all sides - because only in that case the artist will be interested in additional future works for me.

Anyone may copy this (and post it in a better format than text-only at his own profile), but please provide a link back here with a copyright notice (c) rpgAvarion - I can always use a few more page hits, and this might result in better answers from better artists when I ask for artists next time