I just read a few of his posts. He sounds like a complete asshole. Always negative.
My question is, WHY did you give the job to this asshole in the first place? 
Aren’t you just rewarding the assholes? So ofcourse they will continue to act this way, and continue to scam people out of their hard earn money.
I would never give a job to any arrogant pricks for starter. BAD ATTITUDE is always a warning sign for any situation.
It was on the Unity forums too, you’ll notice in his post:
My original project posting: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/110587-PAID-NEED-IMMEDIATELY.-CUTE-STUFF-2d-3d-artist-animator
Ok well back to work.
His portfolio looks unpolished and rubbish i don’t know what did you in maybe the rates.But he is charging good i don’t for how many models.Its better to see the work in published titles so you know that he is a genuine artist who worked on published titles.
I have to say that I did not read all his posts, and you are right after reading them he is a total asshole and should not be rewarded. I have run into so many asshole artists that I can’t tell if it’s a norm for these people. I was much more cautious when looking for a developer which I found a great one here. 
That is exactly why I’m asking the forum for opinion as to what is expected and what is typical for the industry.
He sent videos of things that matched what I was working on. He was in the USA and the rates were well within a normal. Won’t be falling for that again. Since then I’ve had very good artists apply for the work and I see the difference in presentation and professionalism.
Atalanta, word of advice, if you want to look for good artists, you don’t look for them in forum like Unity/Garage Game/Gamedev/3DGamestudio/UDK/…etc etc.
You look for good artists in forums where ARTISTS GO TO. Eg. Polycount.com, GameArtisans.org, CGTalk.com…etc just to name a few.
There are MILLIONS of good, professional artists out there, I just can’t believe you chose that one…
Hec I even tried artists at the local Art Institute… found nothing but a-holes there too. Like I said…is this the standard for the industry? What are typical contracts and workflow?
Engineers are no problem. They are easily exposed with a few development questions from my server guy. They check in the code, invoice, we pay and go onto the next week.
Artists are a whole other world of stuff. Portfolios can be manufactured or are sometimes hidden for copyright reasons, many are arrogant but good at what they do. I’ve had artists work on spec, agree to a price and then fail delivery so I couldn’t pay them if I wanted to. It’s just nuts. I’m an artist…I’ve done all the 2d work in my game. I’ve never done these things to my clients.
Yes you are right.You should look in cgtalk cgarena or game-artist.net like websites.
They do charge industry rates but there are serious artist and professional there.You won’t disappoint.
This unity forums looks little scam for jobs because so much of amateur and kids wanting to earn quick bucks.
The real simple answer here is:
I worked with this guy XXX AKA “XXX” a while back, maybe 2 year ago when I first got into game development. Hopped on with a group that was trying to do an MMO using Hero Engine and this dude was apparently the main 3D artist of the group. He acted like he was the bomb at what he did and looking at his portfolio site now he still has the same stuff. You can see that he uses the same base mesh for all the characters that are on a t-pose, most likely a downloaded base mesh from someplace else. I would show him my 3D work which was a lot better than what he’s done and would HATE and would put it down and criticize like he knows better.
As a game artist I took the role of character design so I would finish up some characters for him to work on but he NEVER made them into 3D Models, not even any WIP. He would just show off his WIP models, the ones from his site and work on things like simple building models.
Anyway, I left that group and he still kept in contact with me from time to time and would chime in saying that he’s got this contract job from so and so company/studio and is making some awesome stuff, yeah right, his portfolio is still the same from 2 years ago…
But yeah, don’t work with this guy, he’s a douchebag and doesn’t know shit.
Now that I think about it, I was in a group with him a while ago using UDK. I don’t believe he was getting paid as it was a collaboration, but he did end up getting kicked out because of his constant attitude problems
Actually I’ve produced a lot of commercial software for large corporations. Never had to work with artists because I was always it. All the engineering aspects of the project are moving along just fine with extremely high quality people who have reputations. It’s the artists…always the artists. The 3d models are few and very simple. The game actually can launch with the 2d art and it looks better than many games out there. I just wanted some 3d models and was waiting until we go into test to have them made. So with regards to completing and marketing a commercial app…we got that down.
The 3d artists are another whole jungle. I appreciate the forum’s insights. An influence system on the forum would be good…then all your insights would be available to someone like me. In any case I will just have to go back to acting like a bail agent when I deal with artists (yes I used to chase bails too).
No, definitely not. Arrogant a-holes exist in every industry, so I wouldn’t say its a norm. Show of arrogance means they are insecure about themselves - and it will always be a humbling experience for these types in the professional forums like Polycount/CGTalk/GameArtisans so they probably don’t go there. Everyone knows they are nobody special when they know there is someone out there even better than them, and in places like these the experience is always humbling so people are always pretty nice.
Haha, not a good way to go, just saying. Treating people like criminal isn’t the right way because it means you will always only get criminals.
THINK YOU WILL FIND A SYSTEM ARCHITECT OR ENGINEER IN THIS GROUP?
Like I said before, know where to look for the right people is the only way to go. You don’t go to places where they pick up foreign day-laborers to find System Architects or Engineers.
My advice when you ask them whether they can do the job then they say like oh it is very easy or yes it is a days work or that is exactly my type of work things like that then yes there is something not right going on.
Right, just like what everyone is saying. Check out their work to see if it’s what you’re looking for, don’t offer or agree to any payment ahead, that’s a red flag for me already, specially when they’re asking for a $600 Paypal transfer before any work is done.
Draw up a contract if possible outlining what they’ll do for you and the amount of payment, maybe he/she will provide the contract instead. Give all the information in regards to what you’re wanting to get done and work with them often as possible every step of the way to make sure that what he’s working on is what you want.
Bottom line is to get all your bases covered.
Bawss, I’ve even had artists who were recommended by peers AND were definitely working at game companies. Artists with spectacular portfolios. *The same junk over and over again. Hearing that he also worked at established game companies and scammed them too kinda takes the edge off. Consider lesson learned…that’s what I get for relaxing a little. * Next time I’ll just go all bail agent on them again before hiring 
Actually I’ve had better luck with the workers on the curb, at least they try.
I have had some higher quality people respond. I will give them a try. Was reluctant because they’re not in the US but as we see…that really worked out for me.
FWIW, there used to be a great thread about “good people to do business with.” Might be time to reactive that one. Sort of an informal feedback service.
I agree with the above- but then, it’s not just Artists scamming, it’s some of us getting scammed ourselves. I had the misfortune of working with someone similar early this year, who decided to not contact me, and then not pay. I should work both ways- good people to hire, and people who actually pay. It would, I think for me at least, be a lot easier to get a job that way- alot of people are very cautious nowadays, and I don’t blame them.
Many people here suggested that paying upfront is a mistake.
I can say that working upfront is a mistake too. Someone on the forum contacted me to do a level generator for a 2D scrolling game. Since i had a thread where i said i will take jobs for low payments with the scope of building a portfolio of real clients I agreed with his $300. It took me 2 weeks to complete more than he requested initially. After 2 weeks i told him that if he wants to escalate the job on a full game (I ended up designing the game anyway) he have to pay more than we agreed initial. The game was made in such a way that it is easy for an artist to tweak the settings to construct levels and create gameplay.
At this point our relation start to chill, he begin to respond very hard to emails until I get frustrated and give up. In the end i worked almost a month, adding more things than initially agreed, only to get burned.
So, you see is not only the worker who is the bad guy here. And for workers is more difficult to avoid scamers or time wasters. Also for beginners in game programming (not programming) is way much harder to make an impression on an employer than for an artist. Not to mention the fact that as programmer it is not possible to cover all the fields of a game: AI, gui scripting, physics, networking, databases, web, shaders, IOS, Android, Java, C++ and so on. And most of the times an employee list all this in his request. You can be good at several of them, but i doubt that a database developer is going to have an easy day trying to write shaders.
Having said these, I would never again take a job without a milestone payment from sources not trusted.