Updated PF.

I wish I had the same experience as the poster above, but it has been just the opposite.

I contacted Valery on Jan. 24th 2014 asking if she could make some tilesets for our game (similar to this post). She responded by saying she could and that she could work very quickly, but I would have to pay 1/3 upfront.

After talking about the general work, I sent her a contract to sign. I received the signed contract one week later (Jan. 31), and 3 days later (Feb. 2) I sent an upfront payment of $75 via Western Union. At that point I expected her to start working very quickly considering the she herself said that she could get all the work done very quickly.

Unfortunately WU takes some time before the money gets transferred and she had stated that she would not work until she received the payment. I was fine with that but I suggested that she go through the asset list I sent her and ask me any question before hand.

The money arrived on Feb. 6 I didn't hear back from Valery until Feb. 10. She explained that her laptop was giving her issues and that she did not have time to work. She then said that she could work that night and start making progress. The next day I asked for a timeline of when she could finish the assets and received no response. Then on Feb. 12 she responded by saying her laptop was still giving her problems. She said she would have it sorted out soon and would be able to finish all of the assets I sent by the end of the next day (Feb. 13). On Feb. 14 she got back saying that the repair took a bit longer and that she would try to finish the following day. I contacted her on Feb. 15,16, and 17 and finally heard back on the 17th. She said that she finally finished the laptop repair, but still did not provide a timeline.

And that was the last I heard from Valery. I contacted her several times (via email, skype, sms) and received no response. I think it is a shame since her portfolio is really nice and well done, and she seemed professional. The worst aspect was the poor communication. I kept getting short sentences or one word answers when I felt that more detailed explanations were needed to explain the situation.

If you work with Valery, I would suggest not paying upfront especially since it is through Western Union, and you have no way to get that money back if the deal turns bad.

I'll update this post if I hear back from Valery.

Hello.

My name is Oleg Klishin, also known online as Phoenix849. I know that I'm doing wrong starting an online holy war. But my patience is up, so I wanted to share with you some info about following individual.

The subject is Valery Kim currently living in Russia, St. Petersburg.

His known online handles and nicknames are:

- Valery Kim
- velerykimart / valerykimart_pub
- Thu / onethu
- Paleskins
- starscream_dev (twitch)
- venusianb (email)
- Deviance (on http://xgm.guru/ forums)
- deviance15 (skype)

He is best known for having a bunch of golden cups on pixeljoint (for best art of the month), and creating current header of Pixel Dailies community on twitter.

Besides that, subject has been spotted in following activities, more than once:

1. Constantly verbally harassing people in russian pixel communities, namely including Phoenix849 (that's me), Arcade Hero, Dehtyar, HUG and many others. Using a lot of curse words, sh*t talking, slander, defamation, racist, sexist, homophobic jokes and much more.
2. Streaming pixel art on twitch with the same attitude: calling names, insulting his followers and watchers, publicly insulting some known pixel artists in russian community (see pt. 1) and much more.
3. Following statements about artists both beginner and long-time practicing: "you are sh*t and you art art is sh*tty", "learn how to draw sh*thead".
4. Behaving like attention whore on his vk.com community: "You want pixel stream today?", "Guess not enough of you want it, f**k you all, idiots". He is unable to keep his word and meet his own terms after promising something. Afterwards he shows disdain and disrespect towards his followers instead of apologizing.
5. Statements towards pixeljoint: "Time to bend over PJ", "Time to f**k PJ, golden cup is mine!", "f**k Fool (aka Yuri Gusev) for posting this, I wanted the first place this month".
6. Public statements towards his clients for being idiots and too poor for his talent, including his Twitch stream and pixel-themed public chat in Skype.
7. Taking upfont payment for a job and never completing it.


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Taking upfront payment from a client on pixeljoint and disappearing (01 March 2014):
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=17155&PID=183534#183534
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13078&PID=183535#183535




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Publicly insulting artist known as Arcade Hero by renaming his own public community on vk.com (known as "Russian Facebook") to "Arcade Gnida" for 1232 followers. Also desecrating original art by Arcade Hero (who I dare to call a friend of mine). Gnida/Гнида translates from Russian like nit, crum or moron (1 April 2016):




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Taking my personal photo (Oleg Klishin aka Phoenix849) and drawing a penis over my face while publicly streaming this on twitch for 8 viewers. Then posting this on his community with the words "stream results" for 1273 followers (21 May 2016):

Proof pic 1: http://i.imgur.com/BSoIBcO.jpg

Proof pic 2: http://i.imgur.com/VuawDUv.jpg

A few hours later on twitter. He doesn't hold himself a bit responsible for his deeds and continues to publicly insult me:




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His attitude towards fellow artists and communities (namely pixeljoint). Also, he's clever enough to delete his threats and insults afterwards, so I just found a few.



On public russian chat (36 people) about Fool (aka Yuri Gusev):




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It's not the first and not the last time he's doing something similar. He is perfectly aware of what he is doing and he has always been that way since I first met him online 2 or 3 years ago. He continues to behave like this and calls those "jokes", justifying it for being bored. Most people somehow connected with russian pixel art communities know this, but they don't oppose him fearing they would be publicly mocked afterwards. He has also earned his reputation for making art liked by broad audience and for being a public asshole simultaneously, that brings him a lot of younger watchers and followers who are hungry for drama and edgy personality. Overral, he is behaving like The One and The Only God of pixel art, and others being not worthy. His two-faced behaviour for being "professional" and "caring about his reputation" on english-speaking internet segment contradicts a lot with what he really is.


Closing thoughts. It's none of my business if you are going to pay him money. I just wanted to finally make public what kind of person he is. So if you are considering hiring him, think does all of the above sound "professional" to you? Your call.


P.S.: Yes, I know I'm wrong for posting this, because I'm taking this as a personal offence. I will get over knowing someone's directly insulting me on the internet. But he never personally approached me with any claims on my account, preferring to publicly humiliate me on the web with no reason. So I don't know what's his problem with me. He is just behaving like this with many people I know and never holds himself responsible for his words and actions.

Copypaste from pixelation forums

Hello, I really want this situation to end asap so I'll try to do whatever I can to help.

First off I have to mention that I am Valery's friend so you can ignore whatever I say.

Next I have to say that this has nothing to do with neither Valery's nor Oleg's professional activities. Both of them are great competent artists that get their job done. So if you were going to hire either of them to do art for you, please do so and ignore this whole situation.

Now on to the situation itself. In my opinion both guys have acted as stupid as they could. On one hand we have Valery being Valery and joking around but this time going to far and actually hurting feelings of a guy that he is not friends with in front of an audience. On the other hand we have Oleg not asking Valery to stop doing this and starting digging all the 'dirty' stuff he could find about him and then posting all of it not only on his own social media pages but on Russian community twitter and all the pixel related forums too.

In my opinion both of you were wrong doing these things. But what's done is done. Best thing you guys could do right now is just calm down and apologize to each other. Than delete this whole forum discussion to avoid customer confusion and move on(since customers have nothing to do with this conflict). There really is no point in this whole situation.

I hope this will be resolved asap.

P.S.
If you actually care about all this 'dirty' stuff Oleg dug up.
Out of context all these quotes seem really rude and all but I hope you get the point.