Tigaer-Design.com ::vs:: Tune-up.com

newsLets go back to august 29th. Studiomx-eu, on deviantart.com, wrote me a note to a website. “That site’s name sounds familiar…” was what I thought. The link lead to a website that was holding a contest for wallpapers, icons and other desktop modifications. The website was www.tune-up.com. There are probably no windows user that did not somehow heard of the windows tune up software they put together. It’s well known and respected tool in windows-world.

So I saw the wallpaper contest that was going on there. Winners already picked. And what did win? My ‘Artificial’ wallpaper!!!! And guess who won! NOT ME!

My first thought was “wow”…

“I won a contest without even participating…!” – it was like magiccc. Of course I realized that ‘someone’ took my wallpaper, changed the colors a bit, and submitted it, using his name, to the contest. That someone shall remain nameless. That someone even won a money prize with his truly amazing artwork.

As you can imagine this furry little guy here was definitely NOT amused. I thought about what I could do to resolve that issue. At first I did write tune-up.com a mail. I waited a week with no response from their side. Until then I was calm as a hindu cow and waited for things to happen. Nothing happened and I really got pissed off. The company is based in Germany and I got me their address and wrote them a nice letter. Something in the lines of “move your rear and lets figure out that damn issue…” – more politely of course. ;p I’m not an asshole. At least not all the time. I basically told them to do something against the issue or there will be consequences that both of us don’t want to see happening.

Sure enough this little furball got a phone call 3 days later.

When I hang up the phone again, my first thought was “good for them…”. They excused themselves for not reacting to my email. Promised to resolve the issue asap. Handing out the prize money to me instead that ‘someone’. I was completely fine with that. The only thing they wanted to do was to contact that ‘someone’ to find out his opinion about what happened.

Two weeks later…

I was about to write tune-up another email, asking what takes them so long. The day I wanted to write that mail I got another phone call from them. I told them that I was about to write another mail, just to let them know. They apologized again and thanked me for my patience. “Fine…” I thought. This time they were calling me in a conference. lol That was a quite interesting experience. They, obviously, really saw the importance of what’s going on. They even assured me to give out a short official statement to that whole farce. Then they asked me for some material that can truly prove that the picture was done by me. “Sure man, no problem… I can send you a 5000×3333 psd file if you want…”. That was too much for them. They just wanted some smaller pics that mr. ‘someone’ will never be able to deliver. So I prepared some project testrenders (print res) and other genuine material… I even sent them the original jpg I used to create the terrain. They said, after checking out my website, they trusted me, but want to be 100% sure about the matter. Something I can completely understand. I sent them the material.

Another one and a half weeks later…

I wrote them a mail asking how things work out. Since I did not recognize any progress on their website. There was still the name of mr. ‘someone’ beneath MY work. One day later I got a reply that they contacted him. I got told that mr. someone is still stating that the pic was done by himself alone. He’s refusing to admit that he got the pic from somewhere off the net and used it for that contest. That made me crack up… laughing… seriously. How can someone be soooooo daaaamn…. – whatever. While I did send them all that material – he did send them some weird screenshot. Tune-up told me they would write him another last email asking for more material. They did not expect anything more to come. So I joined another waiting game…

One more week…

Today I got mail from tune-up that told me that mr. somebody did not react to any further mails from them. They took that as an ‘I give up’ from the other end. Finally they reworked their website contest page. It now states my name for the winner and they wrote a short statement on the page about what happened etc.

Finally… it’s unbelievable how much time goes into stuff like that.

In the end that whole episode stole a lot of time, on both sides. It took about two months to resolve that issue. Far too much time. Fortunately tune-up.com turned out to be a friendly and capable institution. There are still good, responsible, people out there.

So much for this pointless thing.

Hope you enjoyed the read. ;p

PS: Thanks again to Studiomx-eu – I would have never found out about this contest without his help. And thanks to Holger at tune-up.com.

Regards

signed

4 Responses to “Tigaer-Design.com ::vs:: Tune-up.com”

  1. BOB Says:

    wow, i read the ‘making of’ for artificial and was really impressed.

    I was looking for wallpapers at the time when i found yours, no offence but there are some other pics i like a bit more than artificial but reading on how you made it and everything made me choose artificial as my wallpaper simply out of respect.

    mr. somebody mustve been pretty desperate for cash… did you try to contact mr. somebody? ;)

  2. Tigaer Says:

    i contacted the guys at tuneup.com about it and together we fortunately cleared it all up. there is a short walkthrough available to my ‘epica’ picture… which can be found here: http://v5.tigaer-design.com/?page_id=68 – i also wrote an walkthrough article about my ‘down the river arend’ painting for the cgchosen mag. -> http://www.3dm3.com/mag/cgchosen/no05_environments/ – i’m glad you enjoy my work. thanks for your feedback.

  3. Joe Says:

    So you ended up winning your own wallpaper in a contest you never entered? Did I get that right? Weird turn of events there!

  4. Tigaer Says:

    exactly. but i wouldn’t have noticed that contest at all without people writing me about it, that someone used/ripped my art. so a big thanks goes out to these people.

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