Recently, a few artists have had to deal with noted toe-ring fetishist Michael Hirtes and his attempts to scam free art out of people. I'll get to the two most recent victims of his bullshittery in a moment.
First, check out
this FA submission from ClubStripes' Midori (posted last September). Turns out, Hirtes tried to get a refund out of Midori because she hadn't finished the commission he'd ordered within a month; when she refused his refund, she ended up finishing the picture and reselling it (amusingly enough, the auction page says Dragoneer ended up with the winning bid, having to spend only 50 USD to get the pic). Hirtes, ever the stubborn jackass, tries to make himself out as a victim -- until Midori exposes his scam in the submission's comments by revealing PMs/communications showing that they'd never agreed to any sort of timeframe for delivery of the finished product (and tells Hirtes that, with her heavy work schedule, she would have never accepted a commission with such a tight timeframe for completion to begin with), leaving him to drift in the wind...
...up until the middle of last month. Artist Kat Smith, under her FA account "Chill", started accepting commissions and initially agreed to do one for Hirtes. But then she learned that he owed another artist money for a prior commission, and after talking with the artist in question, she dropped Hirtes from her commission list. This led Hirtes to try and make himself out as a victim
again, this time claiming that Kat screwed him out of a commission and shouldn't be trusted; he essentially tried to slander her and ruin her ability to do business. But then Kat let everyone know
why she'd dropped him as a client, and pretty much every place he posted on -- my site, FA, CYD, even Lulz.net -- told him he was full of shit.
(DISCLAIMER: I am on friendly terms with Kat Smith, though I don't believe that biases my perception of the facts of the situation.)And now, FA user Fluffball has become his latest victim. On April 3rd, Fluffball posted
this submission that had been commissioned by Hirtes (note that it features only characters that Fluffball created, and that Fluffball's own "fursona" (ugh) is covering her naughty bits; that's important to this story). On April 4th (Fluffball's birthday), she wakes up to find an e-mail in her inbox from Hirtes demanding a refund and the deletion of the image from FA. So what do you think she does?
A.) Quietly refunds his money and removes the submission
B.) Apologizes to him on an FA journal, then gives him a refund and removes the submission
C.) Calls him out on his bullshit on an FA journal, then refuses to refund him and remove the submission
If you guessed "C",
you win a no-prize. (You're also stupid for guessing, since I linked you to the submission earlier.) Turns out, Hirtes was demanding a refund because he said the image Fluffball posted was supposed to stay private, and he even went so far as to threaten to report Fluffball to PayPal if she didn't refund his money. However, Fluffball turned the tables and posted a PM that Hirtes had sent her (which Hirtes admits is genuine) that indicated the image would only stay private if Fluffball's "fursona" (ugh) had been fully exposed; she believed that since no agreement had been made between the two to keep the image private should the character remain "modest" in some form, she was free to post the finished image. Practically everyone ripped on Hirtes
again and called him out on his bullshit after he posted on Fluffball's journal.
So basically, Michael Hirtes is a scam artist whose reputation is starting to spread faster than the Black Plague during medieval times.
Oh, and one more thing: on his FA page, Hirtes has (as of the writing of this post) several shouts that are in support of him, the shoutee telling Hirtes that he thinks the fandom's "always accept, never judge" attitude is what's ruining it. Hirtes' response?
Ironically, it's vice-versa ("Never accept always judge") when it comes to how I'm treated here.
Because trying to screw artists out of money they worked hard to earn, insulting and demeaning and threatening said artists after they call you out on your scam-artist bullshit, and trying to make yourself out as a victim during the whole situation despite knowing you don't have any support at all TOTALLY deserves complete, unquestioning acceptance by your peers!
