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Discussion - Commissioners, Artists, and Happy Medium
11 years ago
A FOREWORD AND A THANK YOUAs I get nearer to finishing this latest round of commissions, I keep coming back to the idea of writing this journal. The last 3 weeks I've been trying to make art sustainable. You, my watchers, have made that happen. Full disclosure: in that time I've pulled in about $1,100 USD. That's an insane amount of money and there are a few ways to think about it.
A) It's a livable wage.
B) It's 70 sketches worth of patronage.
C) It's 1/17 the amount of money the site itself pulled in during the latest fundraiser.
No matter how I look at it, I can't help but consider myself incredibly grateful that I get to be here doing what I love and not starve because of it. The purpose of this journal is to determine where we should head next because the amount of ground we've covered already is amazing.
I'M GOING TO FIELD SOME IDEASKeep in mind we're just spit-balling here, but while $1,100 USD is sustainable, I have to make sure I at the very least maintain it. So I'm gonna throw out some personal philosophy here and you guys just tell me where I hit or miss. Let me open up with my sarcasm and get that out of the way. Because I'm feeling snarky, damn it.
WHAT I WILL AND WON'T DRAWThat's cute. Really, it's adorable that some full time artists have managed to be on the internet for so long and there are some things they simply just can't handle. No, I respect boundaries, I really do, I guess I'm just the odd one for not turning away business. Maybe I'm being cavalier, but this is my honest attitude. Want it? Sure, okay.
ADOPTABLESThis whole notion of character copyright that has been around since the early days of DeviantArt is laughable at best. Someone could take Blue, draw her, claim her as their own and there would be literally zero things I could do about it. And I've come to terms with that, but I don't play that system for money. I will never do adoptables. Why? Because each one of you could go into my gallery, take a character, draw it and say, "original character do not steal," and I would either never notice or regard it as fanart and move on without making stupid accusations that waste my time and resources. If you can make something out of my creations that I couldn't, you were the better business person to begin with I suppose.
YOUR CHARACTER HEREThis I like. I've never done them but I might in the future. It just seems so elegant. Gee, I have some free time but no commissions in the backlog. Well I'll just do a commission in advance. The commissioner knows what the picture will look like, which is a load off their shoulders, and I've turned my time that would have been worthless into cash.
CHANGING PRICESI haven't changed my prices in a year and a half. Changing this is never popular. In fact, I'm not sure it's popular with me. I like where I am. I've looked. It's HARD to find a decent sketch for $15. But I need to get more colored, finished art in my gallery in order to attract people in the future. To that end I may increase the price of sketches in order to lower the added cost of color. It's really a tradeoff and something I'm interested in engaging you, the watchers on. Think my prices are too much? Tell me that if you think so, too.
DAILY STREAMSI want to do this. I am unaware of anyone at the very upper echelon of FA who stream daily or semi-daily. I don't know of anyone period - besides a few close friends - where I can say to myself, "Are they streaming right now? Well it's 3 PM on a workday so they probably are." That shocks me. To be frank, I make all my donations streaming. I feel like this is just a lost opportunity. I almost pale to think of how much money I'd make if I was Kanel, Faust Sketcher, or Faint and streaming every day. Once I fix my 2Mb upload over wireless disaster, I'm doing this unless for some reason its terribly unpopular.
PATREONIt is no secret to me that Critical Condition is popular. Its been reposted countless places. I've seen dozens of people ask for sauce because its been recycled often enough people just don't know where I am. I'm not making a point about reposting or piracy here, or if I did I'd say please repost more because it's been great for me. The point is that a lot of people want to see it continued. Currently I'm in a situation where I can do personal projects and make nothing, or do more commissions and make something. The math isn't hard to figure out. But Patreon and places like it are a paradigm changer. The only reason I'm resistant is because everyone is doing it at the top. Am I worth as much as InCase? At some point doesn't it start to feel like e-begging? I'm not sure. But this option allows me to give you all content that everyone loves on a reliable repeating basis. If it didn't I wouldn't even list the option here.
OTHER PRODUCTSMeesh sells $6 comics. That's neat. And I have a feeling it works pretty well. Right now if I do a 10 page comic (I'm working on one right now) I get about $300-450 depending on if its toned or not. So I have to ask myself, instead of Patreon would 75 people buy Hi-Res + Photoshop files of Critical Condition? Is it better to ask for money for a finished product or for a smaller more crowdfunded donation on a monthly basis? Are there other things I could sell, like private streams?
DISCUSSIONPlease let me know what you think, commissioners. I could really use your input. Are there methods I haven't thought of? What should I work on most? Is my skill not to professional standard at all? I mean really, if there was a time to be even overly-honest, this is it.
Sorry for taking so much of your time, but this would be really valuable to me.
As for alternative income methods available.
I have never been a fan of any subscription service, I tried it on Twitch with RootCatZ(starcaft2 zerg pro gamer) and dropped it after 2 months due to it just not feeling worth it to give Twitch any money if they are going to mute subscription only vods amongst other things. Instead I just drop him a donation every so often.
Never looked into what Patreon is other than I see it posted everywhere and The Titanium Physicist podcast has one now too.
From your description I don't think I like the idea of it.
If anything I would love to see you whip up a choose your own adventure style thing similar to what Drowtales does. Have a story line then come up with a couple options at the end of each page and if someone donates enough they can add their option at your discretion. This would most likely require your own web page, I wouldnt know if Patreon supports this type of thing.
As for my choice of picking you as an artist to aspire to this journal just reaffirms my decision.
I like how you think.
I love how you draw.
Keep at it.
P.S. I am a hypocrite I have subscribed to Drowtales Daydream for years (6usd/month).
~fortyfive
I'm sort of shying away from Patreon now in fact, due to that. But we'll see how it plays out. Patreons fees don't affect you, but they affect me and they are ludicrous. I don't want to get 90 cents per dollar. Paypal already takes a fee as it is.
Can I run with your choose your own adventure idea? Because that sounds awesome. Maybe make a donation-less suggestion count as $1 or something so the masses can still influence it.
If you would like to see what Drowtales does I would be happy to show you.
Another idea for you, although I am not sure it will fit with the type of payment/donation structure you want.
Ariana runs a pay as you go sequence on her site, I wouldn't say its a huge success but it pulls a bit out of my wallet now and again.
The idea being if YOU have a cool enough idea you can get other people to pay you to draw it. Not sure how much this would appeal to you considering the views you have expressed, but it is another idea.
Remember that fans of your art may not always have ideas for commissions and having the cost be as small as people would want to donate to to tick it up to the next page. This could be a great way to funnel just plane donations and give something back to your donators.
And as far as I see you always being worried about not enough colored work in your gallery, I point to Ariana again. It is like reading a book or having it read to you, maybe so far as to see the movie. The book alone always has its charm to the fact it leaves room for the mind to build the world it describes. That can go for art too. I for one enjoy plain inking from most artist, although I do like your colors.
In case you are not familiar with Ariana, she goes for quantity over quality and will draw a wide but not unlimited range of things.
And if you go and look you will see the the crazy long sequences she does. I do warn you the last artist I showed some of her work spazed out about perspective and anatomy problems.
http://arania.kamiki.net/
You mostly want the TF section. Oh and they are all commissions.
~fortyfive
I'll check out Drowtales too, but this voting idea is seriously a great suggestion. I may do this with CC. Thanks.
I would be more than happy to toss a stream up of it to show you.
They have been releasing collections of short stories with slower TF and illustration every few pages.
Some are just single longer short stories with more illustrations.
I have them all.
There is at one free one and the rest have been around 7USD.
Free one: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14524241/
Well I am off for the evening, looking forward to your next stream.
I have some questions about Manga studio and making a short comic.
~fortyfive
If you feel the need to get noticed, a raffle for a free sketch would work. Announcing it through
One thing I have seen is "Comic (or whatever) is on a set schedule (1 ever week or two). Donations go to making extra pages happen faster." But you need to make sure the script is worked out in advance.
Glad you are making full time art work! :3
I could go on but then I'd be ranting about a point you weren't even trying to make. xD
Your comment about advances the comic schedule via donations is brilliant. I might mix that into the fanmade plot direction thing for a decent way to make money off of personal manga projects.
One thing I've seen done a few times is the set-price pre-pose list, like ordering from a fast food joint ("I'll take a number 7 with extra spooge, please.")
I'll not hold it against someone for sell their work for any price they can get, but I can understand your position on prices. I figure it just motivates me to keep hunting for newer, cheaper artists and let the expensive ones have their success.
I am not really a fan, but they do sell (...even I have bought one after I swore I never would...) so there is that. While it looks like doing that would really rankle your personal philosophy on IP, this is a thing some people seem to want, so I wouldn't count it out if the right situation occurs. EXAMPLES: If you ever hit a moment where you randomly doodle out a character or two just for fun but have no personal use for or interest in them, or you trim the cast on something you were planning, you might as well try to hock the misfit characters. Anything decently drawn and reasonably different or interesting seems to sell very quickly, and while you personally may not care for the IP on these things the fact is some people are more then willing to throw money at you for your personal blessing on running off with said characters, ... soooo why not let them?
YOUR CHARACTER HERE
This seems to work very well for artists from what I have seen. I personally hate these and have never bought one, but in terms of time, control, effort, and monetary return these do work out very well for artists. As such I hold nothing against artists who do them (return on investment is so good I probably would too), but I have zero personal interest.
CHANGING PRICES
Doesn't bother me, even when artists raise prices to where they outprice my range (like say Strype). Honestly while this is unpopular with a lot of people, flopping prices around to get things right (encouraging and discouraging the type of commissions you want) is something I don't feel artists do enough. Misspricing actually can destroy things. Mamabliss is currently in a bit of a death spiral because she refuses to raise prices even though prices are so low relative to demand and necessity that things are imploding. Ironically, raising prices wouldn't just make her life better, it actually would make her commissioners happier (even though many might not think so) because it would reduce the ever growing rate of backlogged comms and thus increase the turnaround time (plus increase the quality relative to when things get dangerously rushed due to scrambling at an overflowing backlog pile while it builds up further). I honestly recommend every artist who is getting saturated demand on comms and the like to raise prices at least just a tad (like $5 across the board) to try and keep supply and demand matched, because when those go out of whack everything falls apart. As such I am all for price changes as long as I can follow the changes and am never out of the loop about what things cost (i.e. no surprises: some warning for impending changes and current prices always on clear display.)
DAILY STREAMS
I think you are right. That could be a really amazing niche to fill – the Cora show, now with new episodes seven days a week.
PATREON
This is a little out of my area of expertise, but my gut feeling is that a CC Patreon would be a fantastic thing especially if you are looking for stability. It would, however need time to break in. As popular as CC was, it will take it a little while to be renoticed, and it will take a while longer after that with some proven consistency of both regularity and quality of updates before the Patreon matures to a level where it has reached a steady dependable "maximum" funding level. If you are willing to invest the time and effort in pushing things through to that point my gut feeling is that long run it would totally be worth it, but in the short run it will probably not be worth much. It is definitely a long term investment, but a potentially valuable one if you really apply yourself to it and are willing to wait for its eventual dividends. ... again thought this is out of my area of expertise so I would hate to give you bad advice on it, which for all I know I have.
PRODUCTS
Yah, I do buy stuff like comic bundles and the like. Private stream purchase could be kind of interesting (... but that would reduce the number of people I get to be a ranging ass in front of .) Generally though I like commissions above all else – I have so many (now color) comics I want to buy from you – here is hoping that you are selling.
I already watch a lot of video game streams at all ranges of skill.
I kinda want to see you play though some DeadCore
I kinda want to see you play though some DeadCore
Wait, what, me? I am amused and curious as to why anyone would want to watch me do anything! Please do tell, I am really interested why you think it might be interesting to watch me play something, and why DeadCore would be a good something in particular for me to play.
Eh the DeadCore was meant to be @Cora, but I would watch anyone play DeadCore on their first play through assuming they had at least their mic on.
"What I will and won't draw" is a thing for me, like there are just certain things that I do not like to draw (like Pokemon and MLP.... sorry fan peeps, I just don't care for it.) So that's in my list of things I "won't" draw. Will people scoff and turn away from commissioning me because of it? Sure. I'm okay with that, because it would not be enjoyable for me, and I don't wanna draw things I don't enjoy :D
Adoptables are a HUGE thing right now. I see so many people making huge amounts of money off of them, and whether or not it's stupid people WILL throw money out for these things. I am totally guilty of this. I have bought so many adoptable things..... >_> I just can't help myself, I see something cool and it's like "You can buy that??" ....I think you can buy just about anything in this world xD So it's a very viable option. The only thing I can say here is give it a shot, people might like what you make! Plus I find it to be a great personal exercise to try to come up with new and interesting creatures and characters ^^
YCH auctions... I did one awhile back and didn't have much luck with it, but it still sold even at the base price. I think if I posted them on FA I would have better luck. I personally don't buy them but some people out there really like them. Plus you've already done the sketch so once someone buys it it's like smooth sailing from there, right? I like tiered YCH auctions, you can set brackets for whatever the price goes up to, you'll do X amount of work on it. Autobuys are nice too, on YCH's and Adoptables. If someone wants it bad enough they're willing to pay whatever the cost to be sure to get it!
On Pricing.... I definitely do not think your prices are too high, they could use a bit of an increase actually. But it's all relative, depending on how long each type of piece takes you. If it takes you 5+ hours to do lineart... then definitely charge more than that. If you can crank out a damn good sketch in half an hour, then it's worth $15. (I had to take a serious look at this when I was spending 8-12 hours on a watercolor painting and charging $20 for it.... that's a seriously crap wage if you ask me.) If you're concerned about pricing in general, a lot of artists I've seen are going to hourly rate charges now. Some charge upwards of $35-$40 an hour. Yeah, that sounds high, but it's completely worth it. I'm actually going to move to an hourly rate when I open commissions again, flat rates just don't do it for me anymore. (It's definitely going to be below $20 to start out with though, ha.) If that drives people away... I'm ok with that. I want my commissioners to be the ones that want quality art for a price that is basically an hourly wage, because artWORK is work, and the I don't want people who bitch about prices to commission me. :)
Daily (or even every other day) streams is a GREAT idea!!! I love watching people stream and getting in on discussions and also sharing techniques and art advice! There are a few people I know of who I can pretty much guess when they are streaming. It's great for watchers and it's great for you to gather a following :D I think it's a fantastic idea and I hope you start doing that soon! ^^
Lastly.... Patreon. I fully condone and enjoy Patreon. Although I've had one for months and have only gotten two supporters, but that's besides the point! People will pay for what they like. If you offer perks that people can't get anywhere else, they will likely pay for it. Kinda like adoptables, only it's ongoing and they can get more stuff out of it :D I saw one person that opened a Patreon a month ago and she has enough supporters to make an extra $250 a month. You have to find the right perks I guess, the things that people want from you the most. Maybe exclusive comic pages, tutorials, streams, or other types of things you wouldn't post anywhere else!
Lastly I guess I would suggest Tumblr as well, just to get stuff out there. There are several great furry blogs that you can use to get your stuff seen and gather a bigger fanbase :3 Plus who doesn't love endless scrolling through fabulous art??
Ok.... There is my novel, sorry for rambling. ^^ I'm totally always up for discussing these things <3
Adoptables and Patreon are totally legitimate options, and I'm open to changing my mind in the future, it's just that currently adoptables feel like snake oil to me and Patreon takes too much off the top. I have seen people do adoptables where it's like, "You'll can use this character however you want AND you'll get a never before seen piece of art with it." That is something I'd consider but likely won't do in the next few weeks.
And though I was being kind of snobby about what I will and won't draw, I was sincere when I said that if people have boundaries, I respect them. When it comes to adult art I have always imagined you as a cute, shy prude for example. Nothing wrong with that. You certainly have more stuff you can show potential employers than me. Haha. It's just that I realize that work isn't fun all the time. I mean, this week I did a private commission of Squall giving a BJ to Bahamut. I'm not even kidding. And it turned out great, too, I got the likenesses down. But I don't like drawing canon characters. Especially when it messes with my childhood. I got paid though, and it was... an interesting experience. xD
Daily streams are gonna happen in December at the latest when my internet recovers from being awful.