I have not tried the PWYW commissions as I'm super nervous about those same with Iron Artist and Art Slave
but the last two are ones I want to try.

I do know that depending on how much you offer with Art Slaves is the amount of art that the buyer gets during that month (the time frame set) Basically if you have someone buy you for 300$ you designate what types of art in specific to that price tag and when you'll do those as well as stating days you have off that you won't do commission work.

Iron Artist is a new one that I don't know enough information on to really tell.

PWYW are usually (from what I understand) ways of doing cheap things, giving people who normally cant get the art or something a chance, or if they have like a hankering for a certain theme, but a lot of the time I see people give a general idea or minimum of what they were thinking and I see a lot of people giving over the minimum so thats always nice c:

Iron Artist are like a challenge I think where they try to draw a certain amount of things like "one of this type of pic a day" or something

art slave I believe are buying time slots essentially where they will draw you a picture in that specific slot like if you pay for 4 hours you can get a fancy picture that would take about that much time to do or some smaller ones to add up to 4 hours?

From what I've seen of PWYW, people set minimums on what can be offered. And you tell them what their offered amount can get them. If it's below a price you're willing to consider you are well within your rights to decline. So you'd basically tell people that you're doing them, but that you'll tell them what they can get based on the amount they offer and that you reserve the right to decline any pwyw commission if it's below an amount you're comfortable working for, it's not something you want to draw, or they're asking for something outrageous [full color, shade, etc. for your minimum price]. So yeah. If you set rules in place, you should be good. ^^

The Iron Artist things I've seen have been a set number [I've seen 50-100 at a time, though I'm sure you could do however many?] of slots in a specific style, usually a faster slightly lesser quality because it's to be done quickly rather than at normal paces. The amount of detail, color type [I've seen monochrome or flats, or a color 'pop' for specific colors where it's greyscale otherwise], and the like are totally up to you based on what you feel comfortable offering and how fast you can do something, since they're designed to be done in a short amount. The ones I've seen have been 1-3 hour pieces, where they're to be done in that amount of time. Generally the theme or pose is left up to the artist [I've seen headshot ones, dynamic pose ones, horror ones, etc.] but I've also seen one artist give people the chance to request whatever they'd like within reason.

Art slaves are basically people bidding [or buying out at a flat price] a fairly high number, and you work out what that amount gets. Art slave auctions generally work better as a ladder type auction where you increase what they can request throughout the month based on the amounts met. You'd want to specify what days, how many pieces total, and also have a clause in for emergencies in case you can't work on something on a day they've requested so it can be made up later. Flat rate ones you can decide how much work you're willing to do for that amount throughout the month, and the rest is the same as an auction. You list out what you are willing to do for the rate, what days are unavailable for that month [and future months if it's a multiple month thing], and set rules for communication and illness + regular commissions that you are also working on so that the art slave person can't pitch a fit if they see you doing personal or commission work [I've seen it happen, even when it was on a day they weren't supposed to be working on art slave stuff, but the commissioner felt that they 'owned' them].

Sorry if this is rambling. My mind's all over the place tonight but I wanted to answer while I remembered to. ^^;

The only thing I have to add is to your Iron Artist...what I've been told (by three or four stream artists) it's all that you said except the color part. Most work with a set number for color pallets (3-5), and the commissioner gets to choose the colors.

For the PWYW: I've mostly seen people do it in tiers, If you pay $X-$X , you will get a sketch, and x-x you get line art, x-x you get flat color .. etc.. So basically they can pay more or less and you can draw an appropriate imagine.


Iron artist seems to be a way for artist to work on their ability to create lineart/sketches/flat colors in a shorter amount of time. and I've seen the prices anywhere from $10 (really fast sketch) to $80 (shadded waist up)


Art Slave: I think it depends on how you want to do it. Some people do it for a week, a month or year. and it's basically you promise them a certain about of art. so maybe for the week, if you got $50, that may be 1 fully rendered pic, or 1 line and 1 flat color. It depends on you and what you think you can shell out.

The real definition of Iron Artist is a Challenge to do a set amount of images (or an image) in a set amount of time, primarily with a specific Theme in mind. People have butchered it down to being a way of making a profit without giving themselves any challenge or limitations, which pretty much made them into what I hear some refer to as an annoying "Money-Making" scheme. Granted you can make a good profit, but you really can't call it Iron Artist when there is no challenge being taken or given.

There are the rare people that actually do the challenge in accordance to its original design. A few years ago, someone on FA gave himself 3 days to do 100 Images at $10 a piece and he succeeded. Posted the opening journal and the closing when it was done, even made it seem fun by thinking of it as a "3 days to save the World" gimmick. I glanced over all the images he did and they were not sloppy at all, they were full page Line Art images. Made me sorry that I didn't get in on the opportunity.

There's also another that isn't exactly an Iron Artist, but the challenge was apparently too much for any Artist to handle. It's called the 100 Theme Image Challenge. The challenge is meant to improve an Artists' skill by giving them Themes that are not normally in their repertoire and get them to expand on their limited content and make them more versatile rather than stay stagnant with where they stand. Problem: Many don't even get to the first quarter of it before bailing out, and generally with no reason. Despite how they could vary it to make it work for them, they don't bother and just go right back into the same Mobius Strip they've been in. It's ironic how artists are always wanting to improve so much, yet ignore the chance to do so with no logic behind it outside of wanting to do what they want to do. With that kind of a mentality, how can you expect to improve if you're not going to actually do something different than what you have apparently been doing for years? Doesn't take a Brainiac to know that you won't get better if you keep doing the same thing without any form of variation from your current flow, which is why they can be compared to a river: No real change will come to the flow unless something big occurs along its path.