he said it was because his old artist disappeared without warning. Even so the drop in quality is insane. He quickly settled for mediocrity in the name of supposed reliability.
Sadly this is how mediocre artists are able to get consistent work, even at the high-grade professional level.
Cheap, fast, and consistent is more valuable than high quality. Or rather, it's a balancing act between the four aspects and you really only get to choose 3.
If your work is expensive, they can't afford to use you.
If you're slow, the project drags on and can end up costing more money (especially for projects with multiple paid employees that aren't work-for-hire)
If you're inconsistent, no one can rely on you and it stresses out the employer...AND can end up costing them more money if they have to compensate.
So high quality artists end up coming with an issue:
In the best case scenario, they're fast and consistent, but expensive. This, to me, is the most fair result and, while painful, is probably due to give you the best returns. Good, consistent quality at a good, consistent pace is wonderful. And costs money.
Next you have ones that are slow. They're cheap, thankfully, and consistent...but they take 3x as long as the guy above because they have other projects or responsibilities. This is annoying, but is at least understandable. It can also work to your benefit if you're an indie commissioning them since it gives you time to work out the kinks in other aspects before the art is finished.
But the worst is being inconsistent. This usually means "The person I'm paying money to for this should probably be spending the commission money on getting their life on track". You can predict expensive, you can work with slow. But inconsistent? A nightmare. It's like rolling the dice every time you want to make something. It's also the most prone to requiring reworks.
But there's one more aspect that the dev ran into that is, to me, an absolute 100% requirement and is worth sacrificing two of these 4 categories for because it is THAT important: COMMUNICATIVE.
So many projects right here on this very forum have the same old song and dance: "The artist/programmer/translator dropped off the face of the earth for 6+ months so we had to X". Of course this also applies to clients but you see it most often with work-for-hire.
Someone who is all 5 categories is worth their weight in gold and probably has a commission waiting list the size of a phonebook and/or holds hunger games style events to decide who gets open slots.
But if you're not communicative and at least 2 of the other categories, you're worth less than an actual phonebook.
