LoveEros ;~; Thank you for the reassurance. I really have to steel myself for these sorts of things. If this ever gets resolved (hopefully it will be), I'll be sure to do that.
September 9, 2021 Update: Corrected ceeony's twitter handle.
September 16, 2021 Update: Added some additional evidence of ceeony's recent online activity. Also corrected some minor grammatical errors and an incorrect date. In addition, this PSA has been cross-posted to Twitter here.
September 22, 2021 Update: ceeony has issued a general apology in the comments of this thread. Those who are still awaiting commissions from them should take a look at their post here.
September 25, 2021 Update: ceeony has resolved a transaction with one of the commenters on this PSA and is currently working towards completing my commission. Communication between us has been very good; I am pretty optimistic.
September 19, 2022 Update: ceeony is still working on my commission, with help from another artist. I have seen enough WIPs of this collab to agree that it is almost finished. A commenter on this PSA remarked that they are still waiting on an order from March 2021.
January 30, 2023 Update: Communications have been moved to discord. I am still optimistic.
November 20, 2023 Update: Five year anniversary coming up, folks!
February 28, 2024 Update: I have not heard from ceeony since March 29, 2023. I have not completely given up hope but I have decided that I might as well post the unfinished commission to my character profiles (authorized users only, sorry!). I mean, I did pay upfront and it has been over five years so.
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I really did not want to do this but after nearly three years of waiting, I have received absolutely no proof of progress from this artist. Their name is ceeony on Toyhou.se, deviantArt, and Instagram (though their instagram is private). They are also ceeony_art on Twitter. I was hesitant to confront this person at all or let people know what had happened because I know that they have been having lots of stressful personal issues to deal with. However, it seems like whenever I looked, they were always dealing with something.
I have to note beforehand that ceeony has always seemed apologetic and polite in our interactions. They really seemed earnest in their promises, so it's extremely frustrating that I never received anything to show for it.
I initially commissioned ceeony on December 22, 2018. When I asked for an estimate on how long a single commission would take, they gave an answer of about three weeks maximum. In the end, I ended up ordering three commissions:
2 Sibling Pair Busts
1 Single Character Bust
1 Single Character Fullbody
The total was 180 USD, which I paid that day via invoice.
Here is the link to the original commission thread: LINK
Image of the three week estimate:
Image of the agreed total:
Image of the paid invoice receipt:
In addition, some time after I placed the order, ceeony put up a dA journal / status asking for core in exchange for art. I admittedly have no record of her journal / status since it has been long since deleted but I do still have the dA receipt for it.
Image of the dA core gift receipt:
In short, this means that ceeony owes me 230 USD worth of art (or 180 USD since I cannot find the journal / status assuring art in trade for dA core).
I have to admit that I was also very poor at communication at this time. I was experiencing a pretty deep period of depression and to be perfectly honest, sometimes I couldn't even remember who I had commissioned. Once I did remember, I felt awkward about contracting ceeony in particular because it had been such a long period of time with no contact with them. They themself never contacted me. I was the one who had to initiate it every time.
I at last contacted this artist on May 9, 2020. This was the first time we had communicated since I gifted them core on January 1, 2019.
Image of May 9, 2020 contact:
Ceeony responded the next day that they had forgotten about my order. They were very apologetic and they did in fact offer a refund if I wanted it, as well as an upgrade in the commission type if I wanted to continue with my order.
Image of May 10, 2020 contact:
We communicated for a few more messages. Ceeony offered upgrades on my order, which I declined. We eventually settled on just four busts.
Images of continued communication. These messages are in standard dA note reply format (most recent message is at the top of the first image).
This was the last contact I had with ceeony in 2020. I received no WIPs, though they promised to work on my order that weekend. As before, I was very anxious about following up because I didn't want to stress them out. I actually gave up on my order because it had taken so long. After getting into a better mental space, however, being made to wait so long frustrated me enough that I contacted ceeony again on July 14, 2021. Since their dA was mostly inactive, I moved to twitter (which is also mostly inactive but still more active than their dA). Just in case, I also followed up via email.
Image of July 14, 2021 contact:
After a few days of waiting, ceeony messaged me back on twitter on July 20, 2021. Again, they offered me a refund, which I again declined because I didn't want to exacerbate whatever issues they were dealing with offline.
Image of July 20, 2021 contact:
I sent my new references in. This time, we agreed on a single fullbody couple as the entire order.
Image of new order agreement on July 20, 2021:
We communicated only for a short while longer about commission details. Afterwards, I never heard from ceeony again. I contacted them another three more times on August 21, August 27, and September 6 with no response.
Image of failed contact:
Admittedly, I contacted ceeony on August 21 both because it was exactly 1 month since our last contact and also their birthday was the day before on August 20. That was also the date of their last twitter post.
Image of ceeony's last twitter post:
Since their last liked post on twitter was made on August 25, I feel like they've probably seen my message and just didn't feel like responding? If not, then, well. I don't know. It seems strange.
I'm still a little uncertain if posting this PSA is the right thing to do. It really seems like they've been going through things and I really want to like them. But after almost three years, I'm just tired and wondering why I never got even the tiniest WIP.
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I wasn't sure at first if this was important but I'll add it anyways. ceeony has been active on Toyhou.se extremely recently, having edited a sales thread on September 13. If they are well enough to entertain only tentative offers on an OC, there is no reason why they can't take a minute to respond to my messages. Personally, I think it's pretty telling how low money is prioritized in their expected offers.
Image of ceeony's sales thread:
Image of the timestamp on ceeony's sales thread:
Rikki In hindsight, it was all very... well. I was so baffled at being "forgotten" twice, I suppose, that I wasn't sure how to react. Although, ceeony did offer refunds at two points so I guess I was just naive for not accepting it. There was a faint thought in the back of my mind, however, that maybe I'd get ghosted if I did say yes to them. It was super confusing, really. I have this natural tendency to like everybody by default and I'm just... very disappointed with the entire situation. It's made a little worse by the fact that I still don't dislike them, just the fact that this happened? :/ Outside of resolving all this, I'm definitely not interested in crossing paths with them ever again.
Well, this is disappointing news to have come across... I spoke with this user a few months ago about commission rates and am now going to wait until whatever issue is ongoing to be resolved.
sunshower I was going to say that maybe as a much more recent commissioner, you would be more likely to get a positive resolution but, looking at the reply right after you...
Milim That sounds... extremely familiar. My exact first thought when I saw your reply was "oh my God, that's their MO isn't it?" A friend told me right after I posted this PSA that there were most likely others with the same experience as mine but. That. That right there. I'm honestly a little speechless? That's pretty audacious of them. Just. Wow, thank you for letting me know, I no longer feel bad for them.
This is a bit surprising for me to hear because she offered art for a character I had up for offers last year and I received the art in a few days time without issue...while that's of course different from a financial transaction I still feel like I should mention it 😭
RyverWren That's honestly so ridiculous that they did that to you, wow... I wonder when this thing about ignoring commissioners started? I feel like I definitely remember ceeony uploading commissions before I placed my order and then afterwards, it tapered off. I could be wrong, though. Maybe it was just wistful thinking.
Snorkmaiden Yeah, maybe it was because we had bigger orders hmm... Still, I wonder why neither of us (RyverWren and I) ever got even a WIP. I really think you dodged a bullet there ;~;
Emy I just wanted to say I'm proud of you for doing this! I know you've been talking about it on the Discord.