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Portfolios / Re: Heavy Cat Studios Professional Artist Team
« on: September 25, 2013, 06:49:22 pm »
Just posting a review here of this company. It is not to be trusted and you should not work with, or for them.
As a former artist and producer for Heavy Cat Studios, I just want to caution anyone thinking of doing business with them that, while the artists are amazing and try their best, I would never ever recommend doing business with them.
The man in charge of the studio is very secretive and manipulative, he draws artists in by promising huge paychecks and amazing opportunities, and then basically drops a ton of work on them, and once they begin to realize that they aren't getting paid very much, and that the payments are getting smaller and smaller, and further apart, he cuts them off and ignores all correspondence from them.
I'm not the only one this has happened to, I know several other of the artists there, and one by one they are getting the same treatment. Through my research I've also found artists who left months before I even joined who are still fighting with him for the hundreds of dollars worth of artwork that they've done for him.
I worked as a producer there for a short time, which was what drove me to quit the company completely. They are so unbelievably unorganized it is disgraceful. The steps taken by Scott, (aka "cat" aka, the executive owner/leader of HCS) when a project is initially brought to him are these.
1.He takes the client's money.
2.He drops the project details (which are normally very very confusing and not even planned out) onto one of his 'producers'.
3. The producer's job then is to pull from a ever-changing bank of artists, who's skills and portfolios are nowhere organized or available easily, and "assign" parts of the project to different artists. This includes things like, deciding that since you think you remember that ArtistA is pretty good at sprites, they should do all 50 of the monster sprites, and artists B and C can do tiles, lets have them do the tiles.
(This is very confusing, and even worse, it is ALL done via a cluttered internet forum. Yes. Just like what you are reading now. Artists and Producers are expected to constantly keep up to date on sometimes several projects at a time, flipping back and forth from pixel sprites for one game, to colorist work for a manga, then struggling to sort out who is doing the character design sketches, while not realizing that another artist already completed them and posted them a day ago.)
Also, artists are not allowed direct contact with a client, the producer's job is to be the middle-man between the art team and the client. This becomes increasingly difficult when the client is a) on another time zone, b) confused about what they even want, c) impatient...ect.
For example, one project, the client knew he wanted monsters for 12 zones, but didn't have any idea what types of monsters for some zones. So instead of sitting down and letting us discuss ideas, the art team was assigned to draw up the amount of monsters he wanted, and then send them for approval. Now, this would of been alright, if those sketches hadn't cost the client several hundred dollars. He didn't like several of the monster sketches, and asked for different ideas, and Scott was kind enough to let him know after-the-fact, that doing so would result in several more fees.
THEN, if the project actually ever does get finished, all the parts are sent by the producer, to the client, it is stamped "done" and the relieved art team can sit back and work on the hundreds of other things they've been assigned, distracted by other projects from the fact that Scott is nowhere to be seen, with a pocket-full of cash this entire time.
When we've pushed past the awkwardness and confronted him about these things, he makes broad all-encompassing forum posts about our long-term goals, and how we are on the verge of becoming some amazing huge company. He throws around numbers like $500 paychecks, $10,000 potential earnings per month! %20 shares in projects, ect.
To make it simple, he is a con artist who uses his tricky numbers and legal terms to basically goad artists into believing something amazing is...always...around the corner.
I'm still owed money for projects we finished in April, 2013. Another artist who wishes not to be mentioned by name is still owed over $550 since January, and is actually contemplating taking legal action. Another artist is still working with the company, but says that if it gets any worse for him, he too will be leaving. He is disgusted enough by the way it is run that he wants to eventually make his own studio company, and run it the right way.
Heavy Cat Studios is a good soup in a broken bowl. Amazing artists go in, swim around for a while, and as they get cold, Scott just lets them drip out the cracks onto the table. Forgotten and unpaid, ignored on every correspondence network.
If you are still thinking of perhaps working with this man, sending your hard earned money to him, instead of finding good, honest artists who will work hard for you and actually be able to get the money in return, think of this other shocking detail.
Scott has no last name.
Nowhere through my research have I been successful in learning who this man actually is. To work there you have to sign a contract, surrendering your art to him, signed with your full name and literally faxed back to this mysterious person on the other end of the internet, but yet he is doing things so backwardly and shady that he does not anywhere confirm his actual full name.
As a former artist and producer for Heavy Cat Studios, I just want to caution anyone thinking of doing business with them that, while the artists are amazing and try their best, I would never ever recommend doing business with them.
The man in charge of the studio is very secretive and manipulative, he draws artists in by promising huge paychecks and amazing opportunities, and then basically drops a ton of work on them, and once they begin to realize that they aren't getting paid very much, and that the payments are getting smaller and smaller, and further apart, he cuts them off and ignores all correspondence from them.
I'm not the only one this has happened to, I know several other of the artists there, and one by one they are getting the same treatment. Through my research I've also found artists who left months before I even joined who are still fighting with him for the hundreds of dollars worth of artwork that they've done for him.
I worked as a producer there for a short time, which was what drove me to quit the company completely. They are so unbelievably unorganized it is disgraceful. The steps taken by Scott, (aka "cat" aka, the executive owner/leader of HCS) when a project is initially brought to him are these.
1.He takes the client's money.
2.He drops the project details (which are normally very very confusing and not even planned out) onto one of his 'producers'.
3. The producer's job then is to pull from a ever-changing bank of artists, who's skills and portfolios are nowhere organized or available easily, and "assign" parts of the project to different artists. This includes things like, deciding that since you think you remember that ArtistA is pretty good at sprites, they should do all 50 of the monster sprites, and artists B and C can do tiles, lets have them do the tiles.
(This is very confusing, and even worse, it is ALL done via a cluttered internet forum. Yes. Just like what you are reading now. Artists and Producers are expected to constantly keep up to date on sometimes several projects at a time, flipping back and forth from pixel sprites for one game, to colorist work for a manga, then struggling to sort out who is doing the character design sketches, while not realizing that another artist already completed them and posted them a day ago.)
Also, artists are not allowed direct contact with a client, the producer's job is to be the middle-man between the art team and the client. This becomes increasingly difficult when the client is a) on another time zone, b) confused about what they even want, c) impatient...ect.
For example, one project, the client knew he wanted monsters for 12 zones, but didn't have any idea what types of monsters for some zones. So instead of sitting down and letting us discuss ideas, the art team was assigned to draw up the amount of monsters he wanted, and then send them for approval. Now, this would of been alright, if those sketches hadn't cost the client several hundred dollars. He didn't like several of the monster sketches, and asked for different ideas, and Scott was kind enough to let him know after-the-fact, that doing so would result in several more fees.
THEN, if the project actually ever does get finished, all the parts are sent by the producer, to the client, it is stamped "done" and the relieved art team can sit back and work on the hundreds of other things they've been assigned, distracted by other projects from the fact that Scott is nowhere to be seen, with a pocket-full of cash this entire time.
When we've pushed past the awkwardness and confronted him about these things, he makes broad all-encompassing forum posts about our long-term goals, and how we are on the verge of becoming some amazing huge company. He throws around numbers like $500 paychecks, $10,000 potential earnings per month! %20 shares in projects, ect.
To make it simple, he is a con artist who uses his tricky numbers and legal terms to basically goad artists into believing something amazing is...always...around the corner.
I'm still owed money for projects we finished in April, 2013. Another artist who wishes not to be mentioned by name is still owed over $550 since January, and is actually contemplating taking legal action. Another artist is still working with the company, but says that if it gets any worse for him, he too will be leaving. He is disgusted enough by the way it is run that he wants to eventually make his own studio company, and run it the right way.
Heavy Cat Studios is a good soup in a broken bowl. Amazing artists go in, swim around for a while, and as they get cold, Scott just lets them drip out the cracks onto the table. Forgotten and unpaid, ignored on every correspondence network.
If you are still thinking of perhaps working with this man, sending your hard earned money to him, instead of finding good, honest artists who will work hard for you and actually be able to get the money in return, think of this other shocking detail.
Scott has no last name.
Nowhere through my research have I been successful in learning who this man actually is. To work there you have to sign a contract, surrendering your art to him, signed with your full name and literally faxed back to this mysterious person on the other end of the internet, but yet he is doing things so backwardly and shady that he does not anywhere confirm his actual full name.