Does anyone know Laughing Ferret?

[Sargon]

I commissioned David from Laughing Ferret Studio to paint a Dark Elf team for me and had a lot of great communication with him before making a down payment and mailing him my team in September. He quickly sent some initial samples back to me and said he would paint the team as quickly as possible and we talked about an October/November timeframe for when he would hopefully be able to have them ready.

A couple months went by without any updates, so I sent David an email to check on the status and did not get a response. I followed up again a few weeks later and still have not received a response to either email.

I don't believe there is anything nefarious going on here. From what I can see, he has been around the Blood Bowl community for a long time and has done quite a few commissions. Add that to the communication I had with him and I have no reason to believe that there is any intentional scheming on his part. With that said, I am wondering if anyone here knows him and whether something may have happened to him, or if there is another way to get in contact with him? Hopefully he is just busy and hasn't had a chance to respond yet, but it has been quite a long time since I have heard anything and he was always very responsive prior to this. If anyone has any information or might be able to get in contact with him, I would appreciate it if you could let me know.

Thanks!

[Xtreme]

Only met him once but have followed his blog and work. I hope everything is ok, this is from his website.

2014 brought a physical injury and a personal life tragedy.
There's no way around it, sometimes life just hurls asteroids at you and the impact is damaging.

Late 2014 pieces are being picked back up and a return to projects ensues.

[daloonieshaman]

David is a top notch guy
Great Painter, Talented BloodBowler, overall Good Person

I am sure there to be some outside influence without personally calling him to find out. He is a great communicator so my theory is that he is busy putting out MAJOR fires of "real" life but will get to you asap.

I would not hesitate for a second to have his back.

Dennis

[Sargon]

I originally posted this message in December and, unfortunately, I have to report that I never got my team back from Laughing Ferret and I haven't had any contact whatsoever with him since March. It has now been almost a full year since I mailed my team and paid 50% of the commission cost up front.

Has anyone heard anything at all from him in recent months? Does anyone have any way to get in contact with him? I have been as patient as I can possibly be, but I don't know what other options I have to get some resolution to this.

[Sargon]

Nobody knows anything?

It seems that my team is a lost cause, but the situation as a whole is unfortunate.

[harvestmouse]

Well looking at the site, Laughing Ferret is active on ebay. You might try contacting him via there. Full sympathies for personal tragedies and injuries. However I have to say, what's happening to you is not on, no matter what. I think you're entitled to take whatever action is necessary at this point.

[Sargon]

Well looking at the site, Laughing Ferret is active on ebay.

You are right. I don't know whether that information will get me anywhere, but it confirms that he is still active online. I can only conclude that he doesn't intend to contact me at any point, since he has had enough time to list several items on eBay but hasn't given me so much as status update since March.

[Sargon]

I sent Laughing Ferret a message on eBay, where he continues to be active listing new items, but he did not respond to me. This will be my last post on the subject unless the situation changes.

Laughing Ferret is an unreliable, dishonest, person and one could go so far as to call him a thief since he has made off with my miniatures and a substantial down payment. I have no recompense with Paypal, since the payment was made over a year ago and also wasn't for physical goods. I just want to make it clear here that Laughing Ferret cannot be trusted and you should avoid doing business with him. I don't want to see anyone else put in the same situation that I am in.

I will be happy to post back here and recant my above statement if he delivers on our agreement or refunds my money, but I find both of those scenarios extremely unlikely. It is unfortunate that there are people like this in an otherwise outstanding community.

[Olaf the Stout]

Very odd behaviour from him as he was a very prolific painter. Not sure what happened that made him take your money and minis and then refuse to respond to your emails, whilst still painting and selling Blood Bowl minis.

[bound for glory]

wow. this sucks.
but thanks for the heads up. i do my own painting, but about 6 months ago i was in contact with him about doing some conversions.
as it was, the project was quite a bit higher than i wanted to pay. now, i'm glad i did'nt do it.

[DinoTitanedition]

Painting services....never had much love for them...

[rolo]

There's a lot of upstanding people doing painting on commission.

Not everyone who plays automatically likes to paint.

Sucks about Laughing Ferret though.

[DinoTitanedition]

Yeah, and I don`t blame them for putting their talent to use, I just don`t like it. But that`s a personal point of view. From my perspective I can ask of people to spend time and effort for a good and hinest paint job, just as one can ask the other to learn the rules properly. But then again...I strongly beliebe, that the hobby as a whole has to be lived in all facets, not just one.

[Regash]

As I am what you might call a "bad painter", I wish I could afford to have my minis painted by someone who is better than me.
Axias low standard is way more than I could ever achieve, I'm afraid.
So painting services are okay, I guess. You don't have to have the same approach to the hobby as other people.
There also people who only paint and never play.

What keeps me from using services like that is the fact that I would have to send money and miniatures and then believe in the good of people I don't even know and hope for the best.
Oh, and the prices, they keep me away too!

[rolo]

The prices aren't even bad if you do out the math ... just buying spray, paints and brushes and stuff can easily cost 50-70 (Dollars, Euros, etc) or more. Painting up a team is probably about 20+ hours of work in total maybe more but definitely not a lot less, usually spread across several nights and a few weekends. How much do you value your free time? You can actually put a number on that, by calculating how much you save per hour by painting your own figures.

Then at the end you have a team that's painted "good enough". Or maybe not. But it won't be nearly as good as a professional would do.

Don't get me wrong, I love painting, and while I'm definitely not the best, I like to think that my teams end up presentable. But not everyone likes painting, or is any good at it, and I certainly won't hold it against them, or consider them a lesser gamer somehow.

But there is an issue of trust ... in the end, you're sending money and valuable models to a stranger. Personal recommendations are everything in situations like that. Someone like Axia posts here frequently, I know several people who have commissioned teams from them and they are all happy with his work. Someone like Laughing Ferret, with a black mark on their record from this post, is blacklisted until this is resolved.