I know the feeling with Twitter. Idk why you left but I feel that most people there are just there to say bad things about others, for absolutely no reasons other than for them to vent their own inner stress. I just can't use a platform that has civil-war level bait hashtags on the side while I'm just trying to browse furry stuff. I know you can turn it off, but it's like using that site I'm just promoting that, and it just triggers my fight and flight response. A lot of furries have considered Mastodon because of it, mental health issues are rampant on Twitter because of its flamebaiting nature, even the owners of Twitter have considered a more federated approach. Twitter offers no control for artists, anyway, and you never know if/when they might just suddenly ban NSFW furry stuff. It is a viable way to promote yourself for commissions, but you're probably best to do so via a bot to help keep your sanity.

One thing that help with anatomical proportion errors is to try to draw at the same size more consistently. I noticed people who draw at different sizes who then try a different pose/perspective start to mess things up. That said, sketching a bit smaller and measuring more thoroughly and then drawing bigger can also be effective. Just got to be sensitive with it I guess. For realistic stuff it's easier cause you can just use real life reference but it doesn't work so much with semianthros, pokemon or ferals. I try to work it out mentally without using references in my art as there's just no reference that I can use for my designs. Some try 3D models but I find them too limiting.

Can't say for what's more masturbatable myself because I don't focus on that element in my art, if it's NSFW it's just NSFW. I think presentation, dominance and sensory tenderness scores pretty highly for the majority of furries, even so much so that it doesn't need to be that artistic to get people off, as long as it's just sensorily stimulating. Different things do different things for bottoms and tops, females and males, straight and gay, and non-binary and herm. You could demograph via something like e6 since people tend to search by tag, but even then tag and score doesn't mean they actually masturbate to it more. People tend to upvote on entertainment value on such sites, otherwise humorous posts would not be upvoted. For uh "personal use" that's usually what people have favourited downloaded mostly, and unfortunately there's no easy catch-all measure for that.

Hope life is treating you well. Keep calm, carry on drawing :3

i've heard about mastodon before exactly twice. Cool if that works as a safer platform when you're deliberately trying to avoid fiery personalities,
I'm not gonna get into why I deleted my furry account on twitter (I still go there on my default unrelated one) but it wasn't because of getting undue shit or anything like that. People being flamey was never a problem for me anyway because I don't read the comments on long threads about even slightly sensitive topics, it's just a waste of my time.
Trying to get attention on the bigger platforms via bot seems like a sound idea, but I wouldn't have any concerns or considerations as far as marketing anyway. I'm not looking to sell my work since as soon as money comes into the picture I don't wanna do anything, much less work.

I appreciate you politely dropping insights on what to do with anatomical issues, but I want to stress that I really deliberately ignored those flaws this time just to get the thing out, it's fine. I've looked and I haven't found any 3d models either that would support the kinda thing I wanna do, but I don't think overlooking reference is a good idea if you atleast wanna make something like an Espeon specifically (at the minimum level) look convincing as a feline creature which it is vaguely based on.
It's not a bad idea to reach for consistent proportinality with the output, but (as long as I'm still experimenting) I think that trying to adhere to some consistency there as a perfectionist is extremely limiting, and getting things to flow well is more important for me to get to working on a thing these days. part of the reason why I needed a break too is that I constantly cripple myself trying to achieve perfection with that, and I complain a lot, but it seems as if creating good presentation and striking totality is much more interesting to look at vs this rigid adherence to the rules of constructing a figure that only intermediate+ craftspeople can even begin to appreciate or have the willingness to comment on.

The thing about fappabilty I wrote in as more or less a joke but sure. I mean, I think it's interesting to think about sometimes but getting someone to beat their meat over my work isn't a goal here, if anything I'm just trying to follow my own thirst regardless of what other people happen to be into. i got this friend who seems to get off on some of my pictures but I don't even wanna know like damn. Anyway, viewers orientations and preferences be damned when most people just kindof mindlessly consume and then discard things at a glance. If I start to try and demograph towards a specific crowd I could just start drawing inflation or vore and call it a day, but we're just not that desperate to get validation from horny strangers on the internet are we?

I appreciate your concerns and encouragement, life is treating me fine and right now it's just about yours truly taking advantage of opportunities before they pass me by. In regards to making more stuff here I think that as long as I stop chasing clout and coinage I'll be able to make the things I like without reservation, and ideally with higher frequency.
I'm always making something unrelated to this webzone, you hang in there too buddy.

That's fair. I don't NSFW for my own thirst, I just find it amusing in my own way :P. But I understand what you mean. Well I wouldn't say it be the extremes of validation, but more finding a balance. I don't think furries into NSFW aren't just plainly consuming and do value the thematic and composition, but they do have of course preference.

As for felid reference, I think it's better to understand the general shapes and flow unique to felids. Of course the creators of veelutions said that they're a combo of multiple animals, but mostly a combo of cat, fox, rabbit and dog. They took a variety of animals people find visually appealing and have the bonus of a higher range of reference should they need it. Just referencing outright without understanding the underlying anatomy and characteristics can break things in translation, though. It's ideal to make a framework of translation from reference to fantasy species if you actively use reference. But in general, I think studying these animals separately will build up your sense of proportion, acting, flow and other aspects. Basically, using reference isn't a way to skip ahead if you don't understand the subject. You have to build up the logical visuospatial memory of those critters rather than visual interpretation (or at worst, tracing something without understanding it). That'll help you develop the cohesion you can then adjust in your sketches.

Think of it more like studying the character/species' life force, appealing shape and the sculpture of the critter. It might seem obvious, but it's easy to forget as artists tend to go on cruise control when drawing, especially when beginning their daily session. And balancing between over-referencing and under-referencing is indeed an issue and one that can be fixed with an interest for the critter. It really all depends what you're going for. Though, abstractly designing construction aspects of the character to more easily rapidly draw in any scenario can be a nice middle translation when applying reference (or intuition) to what will become your character drawing. And thanks, I too have been putting my drawing skills to less illustrative things as of late.