John Biggs and Devin Coldewey asked me for a bid to illustrate a membership website they were designing. It was a gay meetup site with tips written mostly by Devin Coldewey on picking up other gay men in various settings.

I didn't object to the subject matter (at first) and John Biggs wasn't asking for explicit illustrations. These were mostly just ambiguous stock photos of ambiguously gay men in different settings. I mostly just had to find stock photos and then photoshop them so that colors matched website layout and to remove objects from the stock photos that made no sense for the tips being discussed.

I bid $1100 for the job. I was paid $200 in advance and promised the remainder when the job was finished. John Biggs approved each photo for each section of the website as I finished. He had no problems with any of my work and said it was fantastic.

The final section was kept a secret until I was done with the rest of the work. It turned out to be about how to pick up high school boys. I refused to have anything to do with it because that is illegal. I have no problem with their gay lifestyle or the rest of the site. I just didn't want to have anything to do with underage stuff or anything illegal.

I demanded most of my pay. I agreed that it would be OK to only be paid $800 more so that I wasn't being paid the final $100. Devin was ok with that, but John Biggs went postal and started making threats to destroy my reputation. He even made some comments that made me feel like I might be safer walking away from the money.

In the end, I asked Devin for just $500 since everyone agreed that my work was good and complete except for the illegal section. Devin refused and said it was John's decision. So I'm out the money. I was paid just $200 for $1100 worth of good work and received nothing but grief and threats for my work.