it's considered the culture to be unpaid workers for these sites
That's shady as hell and I hope it changes. Why is it this way? Is it because all of the would-be applicants are young or come from fannish environments where they don't expect compensation for (technically copyright infringing) fan art, so they don't know they should demand payment for artwork on an original IP?
Here I thought FR using UMAs as a way of driving gem purchases was shady too, since the community artists who submit UMA designs can't use them for anything else (since they are on proprietary bases) and never see a cent of that revenue, but other sites not paying "official" artists is so much worse.
Re: Pet sites
That's shady as hell and I hope it changes. Why is it this way? Is it because all of the would-be applicants are young or come from fannish environments where they don't expect compensation for (technically copyright infringing) fan art, so they don't know they should demand payment for artwork on an original IP?
Here I thought FR using UMAs as a way of driving gem purchases was shady too, since the community artists who submit UMA designs can't use them for anything else (since they are on proprietary bases) and never see a cent of that revenue, but other sites not paying "official" artists is so much worse.