Personally, I do try to work the characters I adopt into my own universe(s) and I do try to draw them at least once if not more. I have drawn that one character I adopted from you a few months back but I haven’t gotten around to digitalizing it and uploading it here. I do have a tentative idea for what I want to do but I should look more into the lore of the species and such.

Having a hard time replying to this because it almost sounds like seller's remorse except it's for entirely valid reasons which I agree are baffling D:

I fall in love with the characters and designs I make too much

Do you think you could add a commission of the adopt as a bonus? Like they get the character and an additional piece of art with them? I could see that possibly inspiring the adoptee to get more.

That would have to be charging extra of course (For something people already complain about paying for). And tried something similar in the past to a resounding dud.

As someone who has bought a lot of characters, I can tell you that just because you aren’t seeing any new art of a character that was bought doesn’t mean they aren’t getting the love and attention they deserve. I don’t have the money to get art of every character I get, but I can promise you every single one of them gets privately incorporated into my overarching canon and gets to interact with the rest of the cast as well as star in stories of their own. I’m a writer so weaving characters into personal stories is just how I show them love, even if no one knows but me and the character ;w;

Yeah I was gunna say, for a number of people, the adoptable is for them to use in stories and roleplays with other folks! Usually doesnt feel a need to get art for since they have art of the character themselves to more easily describe how the character is and etc.

Adopts tend to be cheaper than getting a commission, anyway. So I think it appeals to a sometimes different audience who has different priorities than ones who want to get pictures with their OCs more often!

Still, I do get wanting to see an adopted character get used in artwork and not hidden away forever.

Sadly it's mostly a financial issue. We all have limited funds and as such which character gets money spent on them is a slow process. I would post those full plans in a journal here on FA but they have a character limit (found this out when I tried to post it, lot of text was lost).

instead of a regular sale or auction, what if you manually selected the new owners? have interested parties state what they hope to see come from the character, maybe browse around their pages and see what they do with their current OCs/adopts etc, and decide the new home that way.

its would more work on your end, but I think it would definitely up the chances of finding a home the character would flourish at ^_^

Lmao background checks for adoptable characters
Make sure they go to a good home and won’t be locked up in a cage

It’s a valid idea if an artist is that concerned about their character’s usage like buck’s feeling but it sounds funny when you word it like an actual pet adoption

This might be the best idea, if you really wanna buckle down and make sure they get a good home.

I like to think it’s the same hole I find myself in. They like the OC themselves and want to use them but either wind up commissioning the same character out of habit or ease, or do have to make those hard financial choices like others mentioned and have to make tough choices, and unfortunately some characters probably just get deprioritized

I know that feeling, I see great adopts only for them to disappear forever. Many people with like 100’s of them. When I get an adopt I try and do lots of stuff with them, though I will admit I have one or two I haven’t really done enough with as I’ve been trying to find something worthy enough with then

As someone who used to buy adoptable compulsively before, I started to see the problems of doing that, too many ideas, too many characters, not enough time or money to do them all, or sometimes, not many artist willing to draw them,

Back then the idea of Adoptable was an idea to help people who either are new to the fandom and have nothing, have no artistic skills or simply needed to expand their family, good cause to help those specific people,
How it blew up I don't have a sure answer lol,

At some time ago, people got frustrated that some artist saw an opportunity to make more Buck (hurr) per work with adoptables than commissions, they're normally priced higher, freedom of design and not having to deal with people telling them what they want for commissions, which given some people can be incredibly terrible with the artists,
To some however, some artists they used to commission is becoming less and less available for them and more working on adoptables to the point it looked like they'll do nothing but adoptables, And people wanted their fix or felt there's no way to commission them so they go on buying the adoptables, first come first serve though,
Which in turn it brought the idea of "Bids" which encouraged artists to do them more often since they dubbed it fair way to sell, and brought them even more money, some artists used to make dozens or several hundreds of $$ ended up making thousands, sometimes in a day even,

I don't agree on making a rule to force people to use the characters they bought, I thought of it too but since later I backed away from it, not a good idea,

I do wanna suggest we could instead encourage people to "RECYCLE" the characters! aka re-sell them to other people if they can't have ideas for them, same goes to the next owners, if they cannot get ideas for them, they could get encouraged to re-sell them to the next person and so on until that character finds someone who will eventually use them,

As for the artist, Could always do what some other artists do, give "INCENTIVE" to use those characters, by offering an attractive discount for the new owners to commission the artists to draw the characters said artist designed,
That way it increases the chance of those characters being shown more, and in a psychological way make the owner of the character more attached to it and more willing to use them rather than put them in a vault to dust,

What I am doing personally these days, I am giving away some characters to friends for free because I need to skim down on characters that look less special and focus on those that are more special in looks and/or idea-wise X3

I hope my little essay here kinda be informative in whatever way =P

And one thing I forgot to mention,
Some people use bought characters for other purposes too, like Vo-Rair above me said, they get to be used in stories, RP sessions or heck I actually saw some used in D&Ds XD

So in the end, you can't tell where the character will go, just gotta do what you personally believe is right for you in the end =3

Last comment, promise lol,
People ADORE the shape you gave my character, so Expect me to jump in your commission opportunity >=3

... Hmm YCH ideas with interesting shapes could be an idea to be used, "See your character be in such shape like this!"
Or encourage people to use bought characters to be drawn in a shape they might find fitting more than their previous shape/form! =D

i'm sorry

I don't even make characters, and I agree, super hard.
I do my best to use all the characters I adopt and give them good homes, and generally hold off If i don't feel I can (even if i have money and love the design)

Could offer a rebuy or resell clause in your TOS to try and encourage them to get back to you eventually, and find a better home through a second sale, but thats just throwing the dice again so ;-;

I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, I absolutely agree -- if you create an idea you're passionate about but don't have the time to use it yourself, you want to trust that whoever you give it to will exercise it as much as much as you would. It's a massive commitment to give your creation to someone else, and even disregarding the matter of money (which we shouldn't ignore in the labor and investment of designing and selling adoptables), it's natural to want to know that your trust in handing the design to a new user was well placed.

On the other hand, I don't really think it'd be practical to enforce the idea that adoptables need to be used. Even ignoring the matter of monitoring users, there's a lot of iffy logistics in that theoretical idea. How often would you need to use them? Do you have the skill and time and energy to draw them? If you don't, can you afford to commission art with them that often? What if you have other characters and you mostly commission art of your sona? What if you have a TON of adoptables?

I adopted a new OC this year and I love them very much, but I still only have a handful of pics with them. I want to commission more, but Cedi remains my sona and thus the focus of my attention span. I'm writing some ideas with them, but I've not really published them yet because they're unfinished short stories, and even then those are just prose where you can't really see the adoptable's design. And I'm just a guy with one adoptable in my roster of... 3 or so active characters (including sona) and a ton of additional OCs who are warming the bench, really.

But man, I want to commission more art of Ascent. Just the act of purchasing their design was such an exciting creative prompt to brainstorm a whole new OC concept to go with their design out of the blue, and they've become one of my favorite OCs. I have an idea for a group pic of them with a handful of other OCs I'd love to commission, and know exactly who I wanna commission for that, and they're someone whom I bet would love all three of those characters but especially Ascent.

And yet, if I HAD to use Ascent more often than I currently have, I think I'd just feel pressured more than anything and I'd lose a lot of that drive. It'd become an obligation, more of a source of anxiety.

But I want to.

But I don't want to have to.

But I want to... aaaaaaaaa

What if you put them up for sale, slightly higher than your bottom price for them, but offer a discount if they draw or write something and submit to show their interest and passion for the character. It won't Guarantee the character keeps popping up places, but it does give a better chance of the character getting loved on.

That being said, there's a lot of characters that I've gotten that get artwork and have head canon; I just don't have written out stories about them. I also don't post it here on FA because I didn't draw the artwork - I have their artwork stashed on my toyhou.se with them though!