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What am I doing wrong as an artist?
a year ago
My pictures get so little traction: like they did on twitter, when I still had it, the same repeats on Bluesky.
Quite little reposts and likes. I have not made many posts go past 100 likes, most stay in 10s or 30s.
I know posting many YCHs aint the most riveting content. But it is one of the few ways I can make money and still draw a pose for myself I like and some original content with my own characters.
Patreon/SubscribeStar is out of the question for me as well, I do not have enough followers to make one and then I'd be tied to making full montly content for pocket money. And it was stressing me out a lot when I had patreon, tho I appreciated the few patreons who did support me.
I barely have any commissions either atm. Did I lift my prices too harshly? I did have to add in all the taxes, vat and fees I have to pay as an entrepeneur.
I honesly feel very demotivated today. I should come up with a new YCH pose again, but it is always blind shooting. When I think a pose will def sell and then it gets no customers.
Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for all the people who do support me. Regulars who come back to get a pic and new people who dare to try out my services.
But I do want to improve and I need to make a living and not just scrape by.
Quite little reposts and likes. I have not made many posts go past 100 likes, most stay in 10s or 30s.
I know posting many YCHs aint the most riveting content. But it is one of the few ways I can make money and still draw a pose for myself I like and some original content with my own characters.
Patreon/SubscribeStar is out of the question for me as well, I do not have enough followers to make one and then I'd be tied to making full montly content for pocket money. And it was stressing me out a lot when I had patreon, tho I appreciated the few patreons who did support me.
I barely have any commissions either atm. Did I lift my prices too harshly? I did have to add in all the taxes, vat and fees I have to pay as an entrepeneur.
I honesly feel very demotivated today. I should come up with a new YCH pose again, but it is always blind shooting. When I think a pose will def sell and then it gets no customers.
Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for all the people who do support me. Regulars who come back to get a pic and new people who dare to try out my services.
But I do want to improve and I need to make a living and not just scrape by.
Thank you for the tipps!
Of course, if you have to do YCH stuff, then you have to.
I will see what I can do.
I would've loved to commission something from you. But your prices are prohibitively expensive and way out of reach. Anyone who buys from you has to be swimming in money to be able to afford those prices. When you have bills to pay, food to put on the table, gas, unexpected expenses and what disposable income you DO get going into things I KNOW I can get and enjoy more, I've simply lost the drive to buy art anymore. There's only ONE person who I get art from, only one. His art may not be the best in the world, but he's always accessible to me and his prices are affordable.
I'm not saying all of this to be mean. But I don't sugarcoat the truth. Maybe you should offer a one-time steep discount for a first time buyer, so he can get something from you at least once. Other than that, I must pass forever. You seem like a great guy and a great artist, and I understand that you need to make money for your own reasons. But as a buyer, I can't afford your prices and I never will...same as with 98% of all other artists I would want to get a commission from. I'm sorry.
Yeah, living costs come before luxuries. I couldn't afford to hire myself for a commission. But half of the price for the pic can sometimes consist of taxes n fees too and the artist gets way less after all the middle hands and they still need to pay their bills too.
Its definitely not a financially smart career unless you can make yourself really big n known.
Im not gonna get into AI.
Its still nice to know people like the art. Cos you can get very much into ur own head n feel like its not desirable enough which leads to "you are not doing good enough" etc.
It's why I honestly don't think art as a main career works out unless you're crazy lucky like MilesDF, who sells for the 'brand'. I've seen too many artists struggle too hard because you have to juggle so many jobs and make less than minimum wage in comparison to average worker pay against time, then take on way too many comms in advance to compensate and then get burned out and trapped trying to fulfil them months out. I even know big 'expensive' artists who've gone through that. Were you working for a classic company and this was happening to you as an employee, conventional advice would be to leave ASAP and find another workplace
In essence, it's not a problem with you or your art, it's just a catch-22 situation and there's no easy way out of it
Yeah, majority of artists get below minimum wage and are dependend on support from family or covernment, patrons etc.
But we also get to do what we love, which is to create. The problem comes with having to monetize your creations. It can take the creativity to a corner where it cannot back out.
Where the artist feels like they are only trying to make money, not art.
I do agree for a long term career, you gotta get big as an artist or educate yourself for something smarter. Be creative in another way.
It can just be hard to figure out what that is. And if you can afford to get educated higher.
I'll be honest, I know how the furry fandom can really come across as a popularity contest, I'd try n worry less about how many views/favs/retweets/etc, your artwork is getting, since at that point, you're gonna be stressing yourself out, and end up burning yourself out, (which from the sounds of you being demotivated, is already kind of happening.) so that's likely not helping with you feeling like you're doing something wrong.
Yeah fixating on the traction is not good for creativity nor mental health.
It can just be hard to try understand what makes someone else's content go viral and yours not. Even when you have been working years as an artist.
And you want to learn n improve n get better results. But it takes a lot of patience n hard work.
N many famous artist in history did not get popular in their lifetimes and lived a very poor life, but still enjoyed the process of creating.
Aww ❤
Only certain styles and indeed fanbase or popularity does come as a factor sometimes. Most of the favs show empty profiles, meaning they are only looking for "free" art.
Im going through the same thing. Im so glad and appreciated that i have my regulars who support me but they cant always
keep doing it but they do help.
Art Packs can work, and always, ALWAYS make room for improvement in your style. This benefits your quality and
will help you in your art business.
Art is not always a good source of income sometimes but we can only see what the viewers want, and if its free, well.....sorry
furries who like free but full time artists cant live off of free. They work full time real hard working on art to help people pull
their pants and masturbate. Support your artists people, support Mapolomi and other artists by buying some drawings and
they will do the best they can to make it look good.
The moment artists show art posters, create journals, furries hate it. Because they dont want to buy anything, they just want it free.
Not everyone, there are people who do support but the % is higher those who hate seeing someone advertising their commissions.
Conclusion, furries can sometimes be cheap, broke or rich. Most of the time though they will stay silent and just wait till
we post something that doesnt cost anything. It sucks but this is the new era of the fandom.
I think the best move is to find out what people what in art and just like you did here, what prices people can afford.
Sometimes they wont bite even if the price were to be as low as $20 even for color. It just sucks.
This is only what im seeing, not an opinion. Been a furry for 24 years so i do notice changes in the fandom.
I had my commissions at a low $30 and still no one wanted anything. It was always a silent treatment.
I may have to default on my credit because of it.
Yeah I agree, nobody likes seeing ads. And everyone loves free things, tho quality nor quantity of anything free cannot be big.
Hobby artists have very little time to draw as they gotta work elsewhere. This means their skills will then also develope slower too and they may only post few pics a year.
When it comes to payment:
You should never under sell yourself, even if times are tough. You will pay for it yourself by working very hard/long on it and not getting back your time or worth. Like working on a pic for a week and getting a day's salary out of it. Then the money goes to one bag of food. (Done that more than a few times.)
The plan is to gather skill and talent, then gain followers/customers and slowly lift your prices so you can get regular wage eventually. Its not easy getting there tho
And Im honestly not certain can I make it myself. But I will try as long as I can. I do enjoy drawing. Its one of the few things Im good at, besides cooking and being a good house maid xD.
I was feeling quite shit this morning and needed to express my work insecurities.
Thank you for taking the time to say something.
It is still sweet to hear.
I suggest working on your environment interactions. like showing clothing bunch or muscle flatten when someone is pressed against a way. maybe some dimpling of skin at tearing clothing.
facial expression is also a good place to expand on. I suggest doing some expression sheets and trying some variation on your style that allows for more expressiveness well still being comfortable for you. the subtlety of expressions can make it hard but enough practice can bring out a good assortment of stock expressions if nothing else.
I never put in enough work to expand my expressiveness or show better scene interactions. it was hard as an autistic to manufacture the expressions and i was lazy about practice sheets. i hope you can have better luck and drive living up your own work. i moved on a while back. ^/////^
Great advice.
I def noticed my poses are too stiff, I've focused too much on muscle anatomy and neglected the backgrounds and my expressions need lot more variety.
But this is why I decided to not do freelance art full time because of speed bumps like this and it's why I just do half and half (irl part time job / freelance art) so I don't gave to worry as much because ever since post covid and AI art. I have noticed that a lot of artists who aren't super super popular gave taken a hit in the commission department.
Most def things got more quiet after the whole covid/war inflation and AI coming along.
I wouldnt mind a part time job, the problem is I dont want to be tied to it. I want to be able to travel too.
The part time jobs we have here are scattered so far away it is not worth the gas to drive to do them from the country side. Half of your salary would go to driving costs and our car is already falling apart xD
In cities the rent is so high, you cannot cover the cost with a part time job only. Has to be full time job. I know peeps who work full time just to come to a plus-minus zero at the end of the month after rent and living costs. Gathering no savings. It is tough out there. Prices go up but the salaries dont.
I wish I could offer some helpful adivce but this really is a standstill. I understand why you rose your prices but a question, did you start seeing a decline in commissions even before you raised your prices?
But I will make do and see if I can get by. If next year things arent looking better then I gotta see finding a fulltime job.
Living in a city would be nice, but the rents are just getting higher and higher. The covernment is trying to force people to move to the countrysides, but there is not enough work there for people either.
So either you live in a city n put ur salary into the rent or live on the countryside and travel hour to do jobs all over and money goes to car maintanence and gas. Either way you are still poor n barely getting by. XD
And yeah, totally understandable if that is what it comes down to but I hope you still keep the passion for art even with the full-time job.
And that is terrible. You'd think the government woudl realize this gentrification and how problematic it really is.
It seems this conservative government is only about rich and racist people. Making sure rich stay richer and immigrants have no right to come here, unless they are super rich, then their differences maybe tolerated.
They seem to have forgotten all about global warming n human rights. Gay people should not exist and women should go back behind the stove making puns and 100% finnish babies only etc.
Hopefully a more liberal covernment steps up in the next election.
Shading:
The first thing that stands out to me, in your pics the shading looks plasticy or airbrushed. The shading is cranked up, sort of looks like oiled up bodybuilder under stage lights or like a texture like spandex. Things are too smooth and shiny or glossy. This sort of doesn’t match the texture furred anthros would have.
Just glancing through the gallery, this one is a lot better: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52011373/ most of the body is a matte texture and the shiny shading occurs on the parts that’d be skin: cock and balls. This sort of glossiness would be ok for head hair.
I looked up images of “horse glossy coat” and horses do get very glossy, but there are still imperfections and textures that show in their fur.
Maybe try turning down how dynamically you’re shading. Maybe work on textures.
My bias is that I really like painterly styles over cartoony or cell-shaded, just noticed “Stream’s result so far WIP” from 3 months ago for example.
Physique:
A lot of the bodies look identical, as in the muscle and shapes and physiques. A lot of them look like 0% body fat, like the bodybuilder-est of bodybuilders, like amped up physique competitors as opposed to mass-monsters. The adonis belts are really emphasized and perfect with very narrow hips for example.
(I’ve noticed with a few muscle artists, it’s like they take a pic of a buff guy and exaggerate existing muscles or physique as opposed to how a larger body would be structured a bit different or thicker in different ways, like muscles literally inflating into unrealistic spheres versus the Hulk being big and thick with muscle definition--both would be very strong. This is a matter of taste and varies with how the fantasy is for each of us.)
Try some different body shapes, like other sorts of muscle guys. Do some with thick torsos or imperfect abs or with bigger shoulders and arms and less pec. Could try more like fitness models or powerlifter type bodies, or off-season bodybuilders.
In the “Stream’s result so far WIP” the shoulders, arms, and legs look fine. The width of the back/torso is really narrow for how developed the other parts of the body are. Maybe try making the torsos wider. (I have thought and wondered before how actually super-buff guys would look really horizontal, or start looking like meatballs. lol)
Additionally:
A lot of the art has really heavy black lines outlining the shapes. This sort of thing is more of a cell-shaded coloring style. It flattens the character while separating or lifting them out of the background which makes the shading stand out more. Clicking around your gallery “tied up prince” is one I see that doesn’t do this and it looks good here.
A lot of the eyes look a bit anime-esque. I think it’s when it’s black-black lines that are mostly straight or angular, that sort of stands out as unlikely to be natural. This works well for some species, probably, perhaps like dragons. You might want to try some other faces/eye styles for other species.
The previous paragraphs above this are getting at that the characters tend to be very stylized and perfect-looking. It might be hard or daunting for people to have their characters ‘step-into’ your world by you doing a com for them.
Pricing:
YCHs are turn-offs to me. If I did art, I can imagine after a certain point I might have ideas for pictures or scenes I can see in my head and want to do but be out of ideas for specific characters to be in them and I’d invite someone to pay to have their character be the character in the image, so I get that sort of YCH, more like an invitation to complete a picture. I dislike YCHs where someone cranks out several versions of the same image but just colors or tweaks the species for each character. I dislike ads/reminders for YCHs. I dislike it when cranked out YCHs are priced at a full price.
I am comfortable paying up to $100-125 for a digital piece. I’ve paid more but it’s definitely a stretch and it’s when I have an idea I really want to see or an artist in particular I want to get something from. I’m in the US and I can get physical art from local artists for the low $100s. I can buy actual art paintings from galleries starting at $300. Of course, these aren’t furry or muscle related. I’ve gotten actual watercolors of centaur pics for $75.
(Maybe have a lower priced cell-shaded sort of commission and you simplify what you do with them and the backgrounds so you finish them faster, and keep a higher price for a more painterly/shaded style since it takes longer to do?)
Some more thoughts:
In furry art in general I’ve noticed it is common for the focus of the piece to be a picture of a character like a portrait, and just enough of everything else is there for the image to not be incomplete. Like art is priced based on the character and how detailed and then just “adding a background” or whatever. I’ve had an interest in doing some pieces more like a scene with my character in part of it, more like a still from a movie. I want my/the character to be in the scene, not like a cell-shaded character on top of a background.
I like thinking of the art I get and enjoy the most as of a glimpse into a world/reality where there is a character who is hyper muscular or Anthro or something like that. Maybe think about for a given scene how if it were real or a photograph instead, how it’d be staged and composed and where the camera would be and how photography of it would turn out and that might give some insights to changing poses or composition or focal length effects.
Maybe something to think about is what is the story of your art in the big picture or what is it saying? Is there a common world or thread that runs through it, or are the pieces trying to say something. What sort of setting are they in? This could lead to ideas for different sorts of scenes and poses.
Some artists I’ve noticed have a set of their own characters and they make art of candid scenes from the characters’ lives and what they’re up to, and over time a little world builds up and characters develop personalities and little stories occur in them. That might stir interest in commissions because then you doing a commission in your style means that pic shows their character existing in the fun/sexy world of your characters.
For the poses and scenes, a lot of your gallery looks like muscle flex pics. Might try to do some pieces that have dynamic action in them, like characters being physically active, like going boating/canoeing, hiking, swimming, jogging, camping out, playing various sports. What would these guys be doing for jobs? What do they do for hobbies? Where do they spend time? Regular life scenes would be interesting. This could connect back around to building a world that people would want to see their characters in.
You could also try incorporating some adjacent fetishes to expand the audience your pics would appeal to, or help your pics come up in more search results.
Hope this helps!
I certainly do got things to improve in my shading and textures, to not look so boring or plasticy.
Bodies need a lot more variety as well. I am a sucker for thin waist and very wide shoulders tho. But I do like bellies as well.
Poses could be more lively yeah and I do like when a pic has a story behind it.
I will slowly develop, the more hours I put to improve my work. Just like anyone else. Question is, can I make a living while learning it all.