(no subject)

I just came back from watching Inception (good movie!) and had to bicycle through what can only be called a torrential downpour. (Cyn, remember that Narrows Hike we did? Some of the bike lanes looked a lot like that trail.)
Of course it's mostly stopped now that I'm home... but if I'd waited it out at the theater it would still be going on: basic law of metaphysics. Anyway, when I hear the flist talk about temperatures of 30-40°C, I'm DEEPLY DEEPLY ENVIOUS! Just for the record. *sigh*

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my roommate is writing a guided tour for the Museum of Natural History and has two specific questions about koscher food she couldn't find an answer to on the net. She doesn't know any Jewish people here so I offered to ask my friends list. (It is technically not part of the actual program (Animals of the Bible) but she would like to be able to answer questions from visitors even when they go into more detail.)

How not to hire an artist

This has been linked to art communities all over the web:
How to find an artist: in a nutshell: 16 year old game developer gives advice on where to find young, inexperienced artists and how to best exploit them. "Keep them in the dark" is only one of the gems. (I suggest to ignore his updated tl;dr in the beginning and scroll right down to Original Article Starts Here.)
No question that the guy is a douche extraordinaire, but since he was so incredibly naive yet helpful to post his 'advice' publicly for the artist community to see, his post makes a great example of the kind of mindset you need to watch out for when you're a working artist.

And here is an excellent rebuttal that doesn't so much appeal to that guy's sense of ethics (lol i know) but points out why it would be indeed good common sense and good business practice to treat your business partners fairly.

And that's what publishers (or game developers) and artists are: business partners. No one is doing us a favor when they're hiring us, they're hiring us because they want to sell a product and need our work. We are equal partners. Publishers need writers and artists because without us, let's face it, they wouldn't have much of a product to sell. We need them for marketing and distribution.* A fair trade, everybody wins. Ideally.
*(printing, not so much any more. And I'm not getting into self-publishing here because it would lead too far offtopic.)

It needs to be said: any artist who works under price saws on the branch on which they sit... and not just they - all of us. That's why the artist community needs to network and communicate about stuff like that... it's in all our interest, really.

I could go on for ages about this topic but I have to work...