okay so like, I'm kind of just molten rn bc this whole issue of exploitation of underpaid artist labor is why my hands don't work anymore, so I might edit this out later when I'm more sane, but…

so okay, the way art on independent sites like this works is that they rely on amateur artists in general. $15/hour is something like bare minimum living wage and since art is a highly physical labor, $30/hour is fairly standard base. $60/hour is if you actually get employed by someone who wants you to stay remotely healthy.

as a general rule with pet sites, they don't operate with a high enough profit margin for this sort of thing, so some of the things they do are either get gig work from amateur artists and pay them a flat rate for the item, or offer the users a way to generate content on their own. Both of those rely on the tradeoff of having “off-brand” or “unprofessional” art in your game, since you're basically looking for people who will accept unlivable wages.

that being said, sites often allow trading through currencies and offer players a way to “earn” money with their artwork as an incentive in some sort of elaborate ponzi scheme which is honestly fun to partake in, but full of questionable ethical choices.

Beyond that, there's the question of “how much leeway” do the sites give the volunteer artists to match the style and yeah! sites can be as strict or lax as they choose. The site provides the service of hosting the images so it's only fair that they can choose what they want to host and what they don't! but when you're already on the slippery slo pe of below minimum wage work, I think people have earned a degree of sympathy for not wanting to put in the extra unpaid hour or two required to check all 12 images they've donated to the site!

You are using the term exploitation to mean ‘not enough money to live on’, which is (in this context) not a meaningful use of that word. Rather, we should try to use exploitation here in an objective sense that can be analyzed materially. The most commonly accepted definition is “the difference between what someone is paid, and how much money the person paying them makes from their labor”.

In a website like this, that ratio is actually inverted, because the person is not getting paid anything “in real money" and the website is (theoretically) losing money (long term, due to hosting costs and what it will eventually take to maintain the DB and speed required if we look at a positive future for LW). What you are doing is making a purchase of the right to upload/host your image. Given that they are theoretically losing money (again, long term), they are well within their right to deny things that will lose them even more money.

It seems to me you are using “exploitation” as an excuse for why you should be able to upload art that would not be ‘worth’ as much money, however - you're not being paid, you are making a purchase, and they are refusing your money. If you feel the token is being held hostage, I would imagine one of the admins could refund you and/or cancel/reject the CA.

Example: this would be similar to why an art museum wouldn't host just anyone's art. It costs money to host, maintain, etc. So it's well within their right to deny something that they don't feel qualifies per their rules.

Note: I do believe that it's wrong for them to deny a CA for elements that are not visible with the naked eye and need special selection tools to locate, as some have mentioned in this thread and elsewhere has been the case.

Edit: Marvin and other shopkeepers are not rendered the same way as the wolves. They are uploaded as a flat png.

I disagree with CA admins monitoring for pixel bleed. I think it’s less about exploitation of labor, and more about, at some point, submitting CAs is no longer a game/hobby to do with my art. At that level of quality control it does become work and is no longer play.

Desnik hit the nail on the head for me. I can't really tackle the ethics here as someone who doesn't sell digital artwork, but my interest in making CAs is purely for fun. If the error isn't extreme/sloppy enough for most people to notice, I don't see the reason why it needs to be so heavily monitored. Support for more forgiveness with color bleed, stray pixels, etc in Custom apparel.

I just don't understand why the rules seem so arbitrary or are only added on and enforced FOR your specific submitted CA so there's no way you could've known beforehand that it might be rejected.

I had a CA rejected for containing ‘too many caps’ in the title and description. It was one word each: “The Tiger is OUT” and “Yes… YES!” for the description. Again, having description only be in camel case and no full words capitalized at all was not in the rules till they decided they didn’t like it and added the rule during the approval process for mine in order to reject it.

Meanwhile, the official death's head mushroom apparel description is full caps, multiple exclamation marks “DO NOT EAT!!!”

I understand wanting a certain level of internal logic for CAs to make sure they fall within a design vision. But some consistency on that vision within their own site would be nice. I should be able to look at in-game items to determine the kind of content that would be allowed.

Having thought about this overnight, I think a better solution for reworking is, if a small ‘mistake’ is spotted, the CA could get sent back and the designer could be asked if they want to fix a small problem before they proceed. Because proofing like that is hard and subjective from an art direction point of view. Also if I’m missing something silly I do actually appreciate having odd things pointed out.

However the designer could have the option to submit without editing if they please in those instances and still get their thing in the shop even if it does have a strange pixel. So that it’s less about ruling over work and more about working with designers and accepting their limits as free content providers.

I don't really do art or CAs, but IIRC you are allows to break the lineart with your apparel, so, in a non-rude manner, who are they to say that a stray pixel is bad? If you specifically had to stay within the lines, I could imagine, because allowing a stray pixel, would lead to allowing a couple stray pixels, would lead to people bending the rules more and more and eventually drawing outside of the lines. But since drawing outside of the lines is allowed, why are these pixels not allowed?

CA should be held to objective standards that can be measured, not opinions in quality/cleanness of the one approving!

Edit: Please let me delete forum posts, lorwolf.

I mean I am sensing trauma from taking on bad art gigs and being taken advantage of while having fun on something, and I totally empathize with both of these things. I've experienced that. I get where bob's coming from. It's good to be aware of this and exploitation in this field in general. In the end, we are not actually employees of this site, we're just volunteering content for it. So my take is that we shouldn't be held to site employee standards since we're not actually employees.

I was a little bit worried about this, the lack of boundary between site artists and player artists, when CAs were first implemented. Now I'm seeing how it shakes out. Even though we are making assets on a more official scale than most pet sites allow, we're still not the same as people who are paid to make the site polished and professional. What we need is to have a boundary between CA artists and official site artists. Since it's not as obvious as like Flight Rising's boundary between skin/accent artists and official site artists, we need to discuss, understand, and enforce a more subtle boundary here.

Personally I think Specifically on stray pixels that ruling is fair.

Especially since a lot of players spend real money to get MS for the apparel, i imagine it'd be beyond disappointing to have stray pixels interfere with your layering. At least I Personally really would not want to get CA with stray pixels, bleed issues, etc, and they would be easy to miss on purchase even if we had the more robust FR style previews as ordinarily there's no expectation for looking for that.

It could seriously discourage people from buying CA if that were the case.

In most programs that is an issue that's very easy to fix, maybe a few seconds at most, and as far as I am aware every other site has a similar clause about basic artwork clenliness and, if anything, LW is actually quite a bit looser than other sites comparatively as those demand a certain benchmark of style match and skill LW does not actually hold submissions to.

In fact, every other site I see monitors for stray pixels as standard, with Maybe the exception of 4dopt, but that's largely because 4dopt does not have the resources to moderate for QA at all with its sole dev [even then, it's rare to see something actually have stray pixels as obvious technical mistakes make content unpopular]

Additionally it's a fair assumption to make, that an average submitter would not want stray pixels in their final submission either, and, as the system does not currently allow for edits, they would want to make sure your submission is up to your own standards as well.

+the mods would not want you to lose out on the MS due to there being a visible clipping issue and people not buying the apparel because of it, or, worse, get angry messages from dissatisfied buyers that spent real money asking to refund it with MS you may not have

If you would like the apparel manually denied and the token/ms returned i presume you could message support so they can make it happen for you, though I feel like letting the players cancel the process with a button themselves IS a good idea.