I used to be against them. Even made journals against them.

Then I realized why it wasn't bad: Participation is optional.

Everyone who bids on or joins in on a YCH is doing so because they want to. If YCH's were so terrible, people wouldn't but them, and they would have died out long ago. Fact is, it makes for happy customers, and that's all that matters.

And I'm certainly not trying to dissuade that. I see your point. And I agree, they could be from a really popular artist who is doing them to get something out to their fans quickly. I kinda feel like it loses a little personal touch. Though you are right, they would have died out if the market wasn't there.

I have yet to see an adoptable that I'd want. most artists selling them won't "allow" you to make changes to the design even after you buy it

oh, pardon, *eh hem* After you Adopt them...

ych's are of little interest only because most them them aren't what I'd like...

*shrugs* then again, most of the artists I've commissioned I've said "here's my character, do something with them and makes it pretty!" I leave a LOT up to the artist MOST of the time because I'm not that creative

VERY rarely I want a specific picture, and the artist doesn't wanna do that picture.

A drawing is a drawing, the fact that the pose was chosen for you doesn't really change anything and I don't think it's greedy at all. Some commissioners find it really hard to come up with poses, but then they see a prepose and really like how it looks and they just have to have it for their character. That's a big reason I do preposes, and they're usually slightly discounted from my regular commission prices too (since you didn't have the privellege of chosing the pose). Heck, some people just like to have art of a character in a certain artists style and they getting a prepose saves the time and effort of having to come up with a pose. It's also easier for artists, the sketch is by far, the longest part of the process in a commission. All the minor tweaks to get the pose perfect, shooting emails back and fourth sometimes for days before they decide they like something. Preposes eliminate that time consuming process.

I do however, disagree with auctioned preposes. If you're saving up for something in particular or for a charity and need to raise funds relatively quickly, that's fine, I understand. But when you charge like 30$ for a regular single character cell shaded commission and you're auctioning a picture of a single character cell shaded with an autobuy of 60$, you're basically charging people double for no reason. I don't agree with that, at all. Plus, I've seen quite a few popular artists earning insane amounts of money on these prepose auctions and then the final product they deliver looks lazy, sloppy and hardly worth the money (and I don't mean that in the sense that I feel their art is not worth it, but that it lacks the quality of their other works), it's disgusting.

I disagree with the part about the sketch being the longest part. For me, it's the coloring. But I suppose everyone is different.

I agree that there is a lot of effort and time eliminated in using pre-posed characters. I feel like those are missed opportunities to get the feel of the character, to present something new/different. Not just your own style, but the character's.

I just don't like the idea of artists milling out characters so quickly that they miss the part about relaying a message. And in not sending a message, that sends me a message that they don't care about your interests in the character, just your money. But again, I may be the only one that feels that way.

People don't buy preposes if they don't think it fits their character. People always try to look for a pose that they can see their character in, if they can't imagine their character like that, then they don't buy it. To say that you can't get the feel of a character by using a prepose is just wrong. It's all down to the commissioner picking the right pose, and that's assuming their character even has any personality. So many characters on FA exist just for porn, so no one even thinks about, or cares about their personality beyond "she's a big dicked nymphomaniac hermaphrodite" and that's all you have to work with.

We're not "milling out characters so quickly" that we miss relaying anything. Majority of preposes are porn, porn doesn't have a message. If people want a meaningful image with a message, they commission one. Putting a message across is not the point of a prepose in most cases and art doesn't even have to have a message at all. Wanting to earn money certainly does NOT mean that someone doesn't care about the character. I care about each and every single one of my commissions, I communicate with my commissioners constantly and always tell them to be honest with me if there's something they don't like so I can fix it. Maybe not all artists work that way, but just because we're doing this to get paid does not mean we do not care. We all have to earn a living, that's the entire point of doing commissions, no one does commissions because they WANT to, they do it because they have to earn money. If they didn't need to earn money, they'd just do requests instead. To imply that an artist is greedy for wanting to save time and make more money by doing preposes is really naive. Who DOESN'T want to earn money? Is the plumber who fixes your toilet greedy? What about the man who does your taxes? Provide a service, get paid. Some people care about the work more than others but we all deserve to get paid for it.

You're an artist yourself, you know the industry, you know how little we get paid. I can spend eight hours on a two character image and only earn 45$, that's only around £28, I could earn that in four and a half hours at a minimum wage job. We're already incredibly underpaid (and the market is incredibly competitive), if someone wants to do a prepose so they don't have to spend ages tweaking a sketch to get it perfect for a commissioner (or to draw a pose only to have the commissioner tell them that they misunderstood entirely and they have to redraw the image from scratch), that's their prerogative. Commissioners also like preposes because it means that they don't have to spend ages trying to explain what kind of pose they want, the pose is already there and they love it enough to want to buy it so they can see their character like that. Let's not forget that preposes can be tweaked if the commissioner asks for it. Again, not all artists care, not all artists want to do good work, some people DO just care about money, but you can't lump every artist who does preposes in the same category. I'm certainly not going to say some people aren't lazy, I saw a prepose go for 90$ at auction the other day and the final product was lazy and messy and that pisses me off because some poor sap just got ripped off for sub-standard work (the artist was capable of doing better) and it gives the rest of us a bad name.