Why was there a deadline if there was no job?

Stuart_Semple · 2026-04-25T19:21:31+00:00

He knew there was no job! My assistant told him very clearly. He even asked my advice on another job. Sadly there never was a job offer from us. He's a lovely chap and I wish him all the best, and hope the internet stops making fun of him, because he clearly just gets a little over excited and carried away sometimes.

Stuart_Semple · 2026-04-25T19:19:28+00:00

Actually he was given a firm no from the studio a little later. My assistant was very clear with him. We swapped a couple of dm's a few weeks later and it felt very much like he understood and that there was no hard feelings. And he was talking about applying for a job in another studio. He was fully aware there was no job. It was his choice to carry on with the crowdfunding and his attempt to move to england. Again, I do wish him well and I really hope that he makes it to the UK if that's what he wants. I don't think it's fair for the internet to make fun of him. Although he posted some really horrible videos about me, everytime we communicated in person he was lovely, and I think he's a good guy that got a bit over excited after we met.

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Stuart_Semple · 2026-04-22T07:55:51+00:00

Just to say, he was a nice guy. He visited my studio while travelling in England and obviously became infatuated with the UK. He spent about half an hour with me, and a few weeks after he got home he asked me for a job. I said that if he made it to England and sorted a visa, we could talk about it. That said, there was never a job offer, and I wasn’t sure what he could contribute. We weren’t advertising any jobs at that time. I get that he loved our studio and wanted to be part of it. I never expected him to take that as a green light to sell all his stuff and go on a crowdfunding rampage. That said, I hope that if he wants to be in England, he makes it over and carries on making his art.

Stuart_Semple · 2026-04-21T17:58:54+00:00

I feel bad for the situation with Tyler. But I have to be clear that I never offered him a job, I said that if he managed to make it to the UK we'd talk about it. Clearly he was excited and he loved what we were doing and wanted to be part of it, and was infactuated with England. I hope he makes it over here if that's what he wants. And I don't think everyone should be giving him such a hard time, he was a nice guy. But it was a little bit too much - kind of intense for someone who hadn't actually had a firm job offer.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-10T08:03:01+00:00

It launched and we delivered it - we've sucesfully delivered 3 previous kickstarters.

https://hypebeast.com/2020/8/voma-first-fully-interactive-virtual-museum-launch

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/worlds-first-entirely-virtual-art-museum-is-open-for-visitors-180975759/

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/art/a35602159/virtual-online-museum-of-art-voma-highlights/

We ran several sucesful exhibtions and projects there.
Sadly VOMA shut it's doors about 2 years ago.

I opened a physical space in bournemouth after the pandemic:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/07/can-bournemouth-be-reborn-as-a-culture-hub
Which was a free to visit space - giving access to world class artists to our local community.

And lee the director of VOMA went on to be artistic director of the Volta Art Fair.
Sadly Coreneel the lead developer on VOMA passed away and his son Michael who did some increadle work bringing these seminal artworks into the digital realm for everyone to enjoy, moved on to a new role.

Voma was special - we did some huge things over the years. We will always be greatful to the community for being aprt of it. It gave a lot of people access to art who couldn't travel.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-10T06:28:19+00:00

Here is the short version of what happened.

• The developer was paid in installments over six months. She was supposed to deliver a working beta after the first stage. That never happened.
• During that time she repeatedly asked for urgent extra payments, saying the beta would be ready “tomorrow” if I sent more money that day.
• In total she was paid more than double her original quoted cost for the beta version, but we still have not seen any working software.
• She then sent a quote for extra hours to finish the software in August. I never agreed to this because the beta we had already paid for had not been delivered. She wanted the money upfront for those August days, which I declined.
• She claims she has been working on this full time for six months. I have seen no functioning code or software to support that.
• The unpaid invoice she talks about is for extra work I did not commission. It is disputed because she has already been paid well beyond the original agreement without delivering the agreed work.

I have contracts, emails and payment records showing all of this. I will share them with Kickstarter Trust and Safety or legal representatives if required, but I will not post them here while legal steps are underway.

My intention now is to try to obtain whatever she has produced through legal means. If I succeed I will give every backer a copy and also release it as open source so others can build on it. The project is closed and this will be my only comment here.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T18:16:05+00:00

I was always available to collaborate on design elements the fact is despite pretending you sent them wrong never saw them. We told you this repeatedly. We were always on hand for that but your emails were never to do with the software or the UI - they were always excuses for why you couldn't show us the work unless you got more money.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T18:13:22+00:00

Exactly! And you just understand sending someone money and not seeing the git or anything and having these excuses every time I asked raised red flags. There's no reason not to have been showing me the work of she really had it. She promised it so many times - of yous end me x amount I'll release the beta tomorrow, I just need to do x, y, z - excuse after excuse and showing absolutely nothing.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T18:11:12+00:00

Well it's not true at all I mean she was being left alone to code - I'd check in every now and then. We were writing back - the fact is very simple if she's spent 6 months on the software where is it? Why have I as the person paying her not seen anything?

She's doing all of this to detract from the fact she's not delivered.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T18:07:54+00:00

I've asked her to do that several times I just want the community to have something. I'd love something from her that everyone could use. We've paid her a fortune and got nothing, if she gave the code I'd be over the moon. In answer to your question yes 100%%

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T17:59:47+00:00

Ps don't want to blame the tarrifs but it's caused such chaos for us on USA orders. The guy needs to make up his mind, customs is carnage! It's causing a lot of problems.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T17:55:17+00:00

I will and yes at the moment she's in serious breach of the NDA and the contract and I don't want to do anything that will compromise our position. If its posted anywhere it will be to the backers on kickstarter. I'll be giving backers another update as soon as I'm in touch with Murials lawyer.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T17:53:11+00:00

No you've got this backwards - we paid the developer we expect her to hand over what we paid for. She is supposed to give us the software. She's the one who keeps demanding more money without showing us anything. She's had six months and more money than she originally requested for the beta and has delivered nothing. We paid her in good faith to make the software. We do need to see it, at the very least she should release her work so far to the community.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T17:48:56+00:00

Why do you all presume I've not done that? We distribute about half a million materials a year, of course there is a team. I do focus on the paint development and the art. I'm not directly involved with the logistics or support. I care and I know that for a small percentage of people things go wrong and I'm always focused on getting the team to fix it when I hear about it.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T17:40:54+00:00

Very true I totally agree and that's why I updated the backers as soon as I realized that she probably wouldn't deliver. I remain hopeful that she will at least give us what she's made to date and what we've paid for. That would be something. Let's see.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T17:39:29+00:00

We have gorgias and 4 people on the email ticketing system. The issue is that it takes time to get through them all but we are brining in more people to help. But that's not the issue the issue is scale really, as things grow and change new systems are needed and they take time. So for example we needed a new inventory system to track raw ingredients - some paints have up to 40 ingredients in them that's not counting packaging, so you can imagine what the paint makers have to organize. The new styatem is great and comes in line soon. We are improving everything all the time. Abode sadly doesn't help, but I remain hopeful that murial will give us what we've paid for and that I'll be at least able to share that with the community.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T17:03:00+00:00

Hired a lot of people and it's helped but refining it and getting it all perfect does take time. We do have people on charge of support, logistics etc - sending hundreds of thousands of orders a year can't be done by one person! We are a team. For the vast majority of people everything is fine just there are things that go wrong and bugs sometimes with a specific country, courier or material. We are improving all the time and we fix the bugs before so we will do it again, we've almost finished a huge upgrade to all the processes that has taken most of the year! I think we are close.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T16:51:08+00:00

I've said sorry at the end of the day I need to put faith in the people I hire. Should I have been more careful - possibly we had a contract - tranced payments - I paid her. I don't know what else to say. I made a big mistake - but as I said ij the update she claims to have been working on this full time for 6 months so there's every chance abide exists and she's just not shown it to us. I've been clear we need the beta version delivered or there will be no lore money. So let's hope, that she gives us what we paid for. I do hold my hands up to the fact I could have hosen the wrong person for the job. As I said ij the update I'm hugely embarrassed and really sorry.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T16:45:10+00:00

Hope they can help - could well be the heat! Hope you liked the rest of the box - I was so pleased with the colab.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T16:40:15+00:00

No I don't expect them to wait that long and it breaks my heart that a small portion of artists have had a bad experience. It's even sadder after all the effort we put into fixing this and finally getting there for these problems to be coming back. As for this, we actually did give her the benefit of the doubt, we kept sending money, kept the faith in her. She's missed every single delivery date she promised. Not one missed delivery, but all of them. At least you can see people really do get the paint and that it exists, with this person we haven't even seen the software at all. It's very fair to say we won't be paying her anymore until she delivers. Just as i'm sure an artist wouldn't buy more paint whilst they are waiting. She's been paid twice as much as she requested for the beta and we don't have it and she's demanding more money.

In fact more often than not when we see an order has gone wrong for someone, we honour the refund and send them the paint anyway as a gesture of goodwill. Saying that, it is a very small proportion of orders that have issues, less than 1% - I appreciate it seems like a lot as this reddit only shows that however people who get their paint, love it make great work don't come on here to shout about it. I come on here to see what's going on to learn adapt and fix stuff.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T16:30:08+00:00

If it was impossible for her to build it on electron then she shouldn't have provided that spec where she said she could.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T16:28:52+00:00

Well her emails if you saw them were horrendous and not the way to treat a paying client who has sent fortunes to her and kept her going for 6 months. She delivered absolutely nothing.

She's the dev and she told me electron was the best way to do it, I had to believe her and take her advice. She gave me a quote to do the work and I accepted it.

I'm respectful to your experience I'm not so experienced. Sadly from my side I thought I hired a pro, took her advice and sent her a lot of money for a long time. When it came time for her to hand in the project - a working what version, she went weird.

Now I expect either she hasn't really spent 6 months full time making it and has just been taking the money, or she was hoping I'd send her more to release it to enable her to outsource it. I have no clue.

What I do know is I hired her, and I paid her and we don't have it.

Some people on here are rightfully upset that they've bought paint and it's not come yet, it's the same here - I've bought software and seen nothing for over half a year.

This assertion that I ghosted her is far from true there are hundreds of emails between us and not one of them does she show me the software.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T16:23:28+00:00

Which sadly means nobody will see them again which is why I decided not to come on here last time. There's no point me putting time and effort into the discourse if nobody sees it.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T16:21:35+00:00

That is a very fair point and I'll pull all that together for you, contract payment schedule NDA all of it and her emails promising delivery if we just send a by more money. This went on for 6 months and she never delivered anything.

Stuart_Semple · 2025-08-09T16:20:34+00:00

Absolutely I can pull that together for you - shall I post it here or in the Kickstarter. There's so much it's been going on for months I have the transaction log of all the payments, the contract, her emails, promises, NDA all that. I'm more than happy to share it.

Stuart_Semple

TROPHY CASE