I personally just treat commissions as a buisness transaction. I.e. if paid said person should furfil what they agreed to do. Or else not accept the commission to begin with.

Things like twitter numbers imo shouldnt be brought up cause you paid for the thing.

The ones of them later saying they dont like doing said piece after accepting payment always feels bad to the person commissioning it

I get that money is always tempting especially when trying to make ends meet, but still, you should honor your word.

On my end I only accept commissions if i am absolutely sure i can deliver.

Best practice indeed; business is business. I think this tends to happen more with younger artists (18-24) who have less work experience too so I sometimes give them the benefit of the doubt.

Yes, its also an integrity thing. If pple dont trust the artist they wont come back

I'd much rather an artist be blunt and straight with me when I comm something. I know a couple characters might irk an artist or two so I always preface every comm that "If this isn't a good character for you, I am okay with changing the comm to another character."

It's better to build those relationships than to not. And either party being weird about things helps neither, commissioner or artist respectively.

Yup. And when an artist says they will take up the commission (even if begrudgingly), then the onus is on them to deliver. Of course, I would by this point, suggest an alternative character by this point (if i feel like i'm not sacrificing too much from my original idea)

I always prefer artists that are super excited and happy. If it's just a transaction thing.. I often don't return. I like it when artists are enthusiastic and bubbly like me!

Kobold needs to feel like the artist is giving hugs!

Its always a good bonus when the artist is happy about the commission
XD

These tend to be very good to work with.

1) I have never heard of that before....but then again I dont hang around social media.
Still crazy....

2) Thats happened to me ONCE, and I quit that artist.
Fund out later she turned into areal shit-heel and people stopped going to them

3) Well...yeah...and my Money.
The idea is you work for that money, just like I had to XD

But, Ive been at this a very long time, and have wasted ALOT of time and money on commissioning and have my own novel I could write on my journey as a commissioner supporting Furry Artists.
Mostly good! But man, the bad ones really hurt.

I've had an artist just not do the work (they offered me a refund). They had ample opportunity to do it but rather focused on a comic they where writing... I was really annoyed because I paid good money and they'd rather work on something they werent being paid for!

I've also had an artist "work" on a piece for 3 years and the end piece was awful...

I won't say names as I don't want to cause drama

It's truly an achievement when an artists doesn't deliver something in years and yet they are active online and producing other people's works. Definitely infuriating. Glad to hear you got a refund, albeit a refund that still leaves you very disappointed

That's rhe thing I didn't.

I couldn't be bothered to chase it.

I don't mind waiting for pieces, I get it, life gets in the way and they may have a backlog. for example, ive worked with KSaiden multiple times, I know they will get to my piece eventually so its fine to wait.

The artist in question however, frequently said "oh ill have a sketch by xyz" then never did, then posted another comic page. It was really annoying. Cut communication and unsubscribe from theor patreon.

God.. the twitter numbers thing is such a kneejerk reaction.. i also read this is AFTER payment.. thats basically scamming for the second one right?? and not to mention the third one makes me feel so goddamn depressed about even suggesting it T_T honestly the stuff that makes me come back are the people that are excited to do the pic.. honestly its why most of my commissions are of something i know the artist will like.. or something that involves their characters.

Yup. I find that a great motivating factor for some artists is the inclusion of their own OCs into some sort of collab. Ofc, ideally you'd want an artist who can still produce art with the same quality and passion as if they're doing a personal work, or a work that includes their OCs

As for twitter numbers (or just the number game in general), I'm pretty sure artists these days could just draw a couple of franchise characters, and boom, views. Taking one or two commissions that aren't franchise characters shouldn't harm their numbers

I've not had THIS particular issue with any artist (yet), but one issue I HAVE had a couple times in the past is Artist not "Listing their Do nots". I've had a couple artist complete the piece for me, only to suddenly get angry because "I didn't know it was this theme and I don't do that theme!" - IE: I had an Incest picture done, CLEARLY informed them it was Father and Daughter (Even still have the original Note to them!) and they approved it, completed the picture, but once I posted it with all the 'story' bits, suddenly they were furious they had done it. But NO WHERE in their Profile, Artist info, or anything did it say they were against it.

So for me, I love it when I see an Artist posting "Will not do" and "Will do" stuff. I know it's not everyone's cup-o-tea so I'm not chuffed about that, it's about being OK'd, Got it Done, THEN got angry.

That sounds incredibly frustrating, but you're in the right because you've repeatedly indicated a theme, and they said yes (in literally black and white text).

The only possible explanation to this could be language barrier? Maybe they don't know the word "incest", but figured it out after understanding the long story?

While i am super open to wide range of themes (with a strange exception to male animal genitalia), I rather have artists with clear and explicit "will not do" lists. In fact, artists who ONLY put "will no do lists" implies they are open to everything else not included in said list lol

Oh no, they spoke English. It was drawn during a picarto stream, so I knew they spoke it fleuantly. But yes, I agree a "No Go" List is something all artist should put down in their profile or in the description of their "Price list" posts. Just so folks know "Ok this guy wont do Incest. She doesn't like human-faced characters, and ohh that guy wont do wings at all." makes it so much easier to narrow it down!

This might sound a bit petty on my part: but I have a special distaste for artists who A) hike prices and then B) complain that they aren't selling enough commission slots. Doubly so if the latter includes something like "I have bills to pay etc. etc."

Maybe I'm just a bit embittered; considering I've had 3 or 4 artists take my money and vanish into the digital void, and been scammed once.

You remind me of a particular artist that I've been saving up every months a few years ago. And yet there is this one "suspiciously rich furry" who just kept money dumping this artist, causing them to raise prices that it cancelled each of my month's furry budget.

We're talking about price increases by few hundreds. Today, their price range is from 800 USD+ for a solo char (I forgot the exact amount), up from 250 USD (for 2 char) when I first found said artist

As an artist, I do my job, if I agreed to an order I do everything in my power, although there are unsuccessful works, but it is not about the character, but about inspiration or the composition did not work out as it should, (although I try to develop my skill so that this does not happen) but it happens that the work does not go and I put it off for a week or two. Even if I do not like the character right away, for example, he has a poor-quality reference, I think how to make it better and in my style, so that it is cool and this gives me inspiration and a challenge.

I also believe that this is work and the work must be done within a reasonable time and both parties to the transaction must be as polite as possible. That's why I don't accept it when artists write rude things, drag out deadlines for six months to a year, and insult characters (if you don't like this character, just politely refuse the job)

Although sometimes it seems to me that I speak too dryly and to the point with clients and they may not like it and they wanted more informal communication, I don't know... (Please write if this is really important, I'm currently collecting opinions on this topic)

You are good! I've commissioned you before and I have a great working relationship with you. At least for me, I feel like having dry communication makes things clearer. Informal writing should only be limited to commissioner and artists who speak the same language (and slang). For me, I rarely use informal writing when commissioning non-English artists.

That said, I wrote this journal because I think there are some artists who express themselves too much (especially negatively) while doing a commission (and where payment and/or progress has already been made). I totally agree with you though, both parties need to be polite and professional about it. As a commissioner, I've made past mistakes of sometimes being too impatient or asking for too many changes.

Thank you! I also wrote this message because I am tired of seeing how some artists ruin the reputation of the entire artistic community, creating a negative image of the creator. I believe that when money is involved, you need to be a professional first and foremost, not a capricious creator

It's good that you understood where you might have been wrong, although I personally am not against edits, a person still pays money for a finished product, although after several iterations edits should be paid for, especially after the sketch is approved. For me, it's best when the client has a clear technical specification and understands well what he wants in the end :3

Okay, thoughts on each point:

1. They need better priorities than numbers, numbers are nice, but they are not everything, people need to stop with this number BS

2. If you don't like doing commissions, then why did you take it? Or do you just not feel this commission? Like, I get that the power of wanting to be doing something else while doing the work you have to do, like this is a normal feeling, so give longer wait times OR Schedule time to do stuff for yourself, or make the first 1 hour of work just for you.

3. This is technically true, this one irks me the least, because it is their money and I was hired to do a job. Now, what does irk me as an artist is when I tell them that the pose they are suggesting would lead to broken back syndrome and they insist on it anyway. When I see this happen, I am like "uh....no, I am not the artist you want then." But this aside, like, we as an artist are not always here to judge if a character does or does not look good. Trust me I had one character I did a commission of and man, it was fine in the description and then it went just a bit too far into the over the top land, but generally I had worked with this person before, trusted them, they trusted me to make sure I did a good job regardless of how I felt. And I can't recall if I mentioned that it was bit on the muchness side as character details went, but I think it turned well made and they seemed to like it considering they used the face for their icon.

Like, being a commission based artist can be an interesting tight rope to walk, Cause like you want to draw what you like, but you might not always have the luxury of doing so.