I really dont understand the adoptable thing. Why pay money for a character when you can just come up with a design on your own?

It is weird when people pay for very simple and unoriginal designs, like a white fox with blue wings with emo hair and goth stockings.

However i understand when people want to pay for some very well designed characters that they happen to feel a connection to.

I think people also buy characters as an imaginary roleplay sort of thing, like when playing games such as neopets. The characters are pixels, but it can be fun to imagine them being real and taking care of them.

I'll pick up an occasional adoptable for RPing purposes because I'd rather spend my time on developing the character's personality, than on several paragraphs of physical description that nobody will read, or will totally misinterpret.
Especially since I tend to prefer more obscure species and generally stay away from canines and felines.

I don't draw, so I'm going to have to pay for art either way, and I've had some poor results when attempting to get an artist to draw what I visualize in my head. There have been some great successes, but there have also been some horrible misses.
So, if I see a character that really hits as someone I'd love to RP as, I consider grabbing it.

The one thing I don't do is purchase something done off a base, where the artist tries to see a half dozen identical characters, other than the colors.
If I'm going to pay an artist, it really needs to be a pose/design they at least came up with on their own.

One of my fears as an artist is misinterpreting what the commisioner had in their heads. I don't like to disappoint. Naturally, it can be difficult to get into the mind of someone else and visualize what they are visualizing. Someone may have very high hopes in you getting their art done perfectly, and then it gets scary thinking that you wont be up to their hopes and dreams xD.

Most of the time I've been lucky with the results being what I was looking for. But then, when preparing for such a commission, I've often spent several hours finding pictures and photos that have certain features I am looking for. Things like "the ears will look like what you see in photo A, but the snout is shorter and more like you see in photo B", etc...

It is then hopeful that the artist will present an initial sketch so that alterations can be made. I've had a few custom, new characters commissioned where I would suddenly get a finished pic as the first thing I see, and it's usually those that fail.

I think most people are pretty open to the artist's interpretation when it comes to a custom design for a character; as long as you don't ignore the most basic elements of the description, like size and build.


I think that's why adoptables work as well as they do. There is no misinterpretations. You get exactly what you see.

The problem I always have is that I'm looking for anthro, male, 'preyish' characters that are not canines or felines.
Do an FA search on "adopt%" and you will find hundreds of ferals, females and warrior-type characters, which while might look amazing, simply have no interest to me. Yet I imagine that this is what most people are buying, since that's what you keep seeing. :)

Alot of it is the fact that its quick and easy.
I honestly don't believe anyone has bought a adoptable to use as their main character, people tend to make their main characters themselves. But if you're a commissioner, its a hassle. Find and artist doing good refs, that's open, is within a certain price range that fits your wallet, you have to describe everything, and you might have a vision of what you want but you still have to make the artist see that and draw it.

All 3 of my utahraptors are adoptables, https://www.furaffinity.net/scraps/theraptorpack/ I just bought them for 15$ a pop and could start commissioning art with them immediatly. Rothar is the only character I designed myself.

I also see quiet a lot of that stuff on the front page. One way so can it be kind of annoying, but on the other hand so do one also have to think about what time of the month you see them most and such things. Like its after all getting pretty close to pay days and what not if they haven't already happened. But besides that so their of course plenty of people who doesn't care about day and time and simply tries their best to post reminders and what not as often they can without spamming. <.<

I wonder what the benefit is to buying a proper advertisement slot compared to posting lots and lots of reminders everyday other than time used. Because i think, from my experience, more people look at the submissions than the ads that play on the top and bottom of the website. But maybe the actual evidence/numbers are very different.

Also lets say someone has ten adoptables they want to sell. instead of making a single general "i am selling adoptables" ad, journal or submission, they can post ten different adoptable sale submission every few hours which can result in more clicks and views.

Normally when i look at the front page, at least 25% of submissions (5 out of 20) are advertisements. Sometimes over 50% are ads.

For ad banners attracting attention to your page and garnering revenue, I can vouch. I do think that it's potent to relay advertisements in different ways because people use ad block. For those who do - or simply want their mouse or their eyes to have nothing to do with the ad banners - alternatives help out.

When the advertisement is relevant to an auction, a YCH or whatever have you - all merits of the art being sold aside - it can help you reach a crowd separate from your watchers (but not excluding them) who will look at your art because it's front paging.

I still think that efficiency is key to marketing. You could post ten adoptable ads - content quantity is key, too - but how much more time will it take you, and will one single adoptable per submission v.s. many in one submission detract from overall clicks? I have no clue. Personally, if the adoptable is just a recolor I would slap all of the recolors on one submission; you could maybe get away with posting adoptables one by one by one if they're quality.

At the end of the day, there will always be some silly mofo who tries to sell a base, just as there are silly mofos who try to sell regular commission art for $200 when their tools of choice are MS paint and 2 months of art practise. The market will eventually whittle out whoever is not putting in enough effort.

Which doesn't solve the problem you perceive as spam, sadly. :p

I've never noticed the excess of ads before - maybe I just mentally block them.

Sometimes it makes me wonder with the amount of YCH's there are on furaffinity if direct commissioning an artist is becoming harder to do. I see more YCH's than actual comissions. Granted, if the auction goes well, the artist makes a hell of a lot more money than with a normal comission, but then those who would want something personalized feel intimidated when the majority of their gallery is completed ych's. Just a thought on my end.

YCH'es are very very popular, i dont think i saw them back when i first started here. I think it has just been a very successful way for people to make money without having to go through the difficulty of interpreting a wall of text into a custom piece of artwork. Its just 'insert character here into a predefined scenario where there is no room for misinterpretation'. Simple, done. Sometimes it is more of a mass manufacturing of art (like a factory creating many tables instead of a craftsman creating a unique table).

Sometimes it's also the idea that sells too. A number of people just aren't good with coming up with enticing scenarios. Being offered a role with a character can also be a factor. IE a character someone finds really hot that they normally would really have a shot at appearing with since they aren't particularly close enough to the owner for it.

Yep, that too.

I never really thought about it that way. I mostly look past them to find the good and original artwork. Still, I can understand why people would leave reminders. Not everyone has a lot of patience. I have trouble with patience myself sometimes.

Need to get more potential bidders and maybe there will be that one crazy person who gives in to that 300 dollar autobuy. ;)

Competition is part of it to I suppose. Still, I don't really pay to mind to all of these auctions. Art is art to me, my standards with art are not very high. A story is a story, a drawing is a drawing. All art is beautiful to me.

Yeah. Even little pencil drawings by someone who isn't very experienced still has a LOT of charm to me.

Was that sarcasm? Part of me thinks that was sarcasm.

Nope, I'm being serious. I love those.

Than in that case, it is good to find someone who shares my sentiment on art. I admit: I do have my gripes, especially with vore art. Regardless, every story, every audio work, every picture, every video game should be treasured as art.

To clarify, the big thing with vore art is that there is not a lot of variety. So many anthro wolves and pokemon, and so many perfect inspirations from nature are ignored. We need more exotic preds.

I've never used one myself, but their are scripts that people have written for filtering out different types of content on FA:
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/b.....uraffinity.net

I have no idea how complex they are to configure, or if they actually work, but I know that there are people using them, so they must at least do something right.

That seems like it will be very handy, thanks for showing me this. Il see if it works out for me.

To be honest, I never really enjoyed artists that tried to use the furry fandom as a career.

It seems to be becoming more and more of a thing. I think a lot more people now compared to the past use furaffinity solely for making money and not for community engagement.
I use FA to make some pocket money to help out finances while i study, but not as a sole source of income. I think it is really unwise for someone to treat this website as a sole source of income especially if they can't draw at all (eg: only using bases, entire gallery is full of premade bace YCH'es). But that is just my point of view. Maybe those people have no other way to earn an income with absolutely no way of getting a stable job.

That is an interesting point you make.

But if they can then there is clearly demand. We can only "blame" ourselves.

You wouldn't have a fandom if artists weren't able to at least supplement their incomes making furry art. Most of the leading early artists-DarkNatascha/Goldenwolf, Jay Naylor-and artists who help make it more popular (Blotch, Rukis) are able to keep making art because of commissions. Where else are they supposed to go? What are they supposed to do? Paint sailboats? What about people who think paining sailboats shouldn't be a career? What about people who feel creating art isn't a valid career pursuit?

What you're saying doesn't make sense. We'd have no furry fandom without artists-even those who aren't furry. What about the people who made Zootopia? Most of them might not be furries but they're making furry content. By feeling that way you're just shooting yourself in the foot because if nobody made furry art a career there would be no furry art, period.

All I did was post my opinion. I apologise for doing so.

I'm kind of on mixed thoughts on all of it as well and the need to constantly remind just ensure it gets more advertisement to draw in more potential bidders. I admit that I see a sort of point for the ych auctions for some artists whom want to draw something specific but would rather leave it up to the community to see who would be drawn in it rather that one's own characters. Of course I will never get big enough to do something like that so I am content offering some free request things for a ych. Word spreads and I may get a commission or two along the way.

At first I thought surely it isn't that bad, but after giving the front page a closer look I count 14 such submissions. I don't remember there being quite so many "ads" even a year ago... Now I can't say it's necessarily a bad thing, but it does seem like FA would benefit from a dedicated commission market. Nothing fancy, just a separate category to submit to or something.

Seems to be a sporadic thing. When I looked it was 2 YCHs, 2 reminders and 1 commission stream. But having a separate category would definitely be nice, because it would help both sides. People who don't want to see them don't have to, and people who do can find them easier.

I just wish that they could lump all the YCH bullshit into its own category, so if you really feel the need to delve into that side of things you could just go to the YCH/auction part of the site, and not have the artists posting 12 reminders within 4 days of the same submission

the problem are the amount of reminders.
if i do an auction of any sort I only do 1 reminder 10 hours befor ending and never more.
I don't get how all 3 hours a reminder is working better than 1 single one. it only annoyes people and those only looking once in their submission box will only see one anyways if they 3hour reminders get deleted each time.

and yes ych's and adoptables can do more than commissions and if you got anxiety problems it might be better to know you can draw what they pay for instead of hoping you'll be able to do their wishes and no need to say no (what a lot fear to do as well) if they ask you to draw something.

i get why reminders are annoying. and a filter for the front page would be a good idea, I agree.

also, I never used the frontpage to browse for art. not even once.
I only use browsing themes, search terms, the people I watch and especially fav lists of other people to find good stuff.
just searching or browsing for the stuff you want to see is much easier and effective than using a list of all art uploaded which is clustered with stuff you don't need.

and usually I don't want to draw for money, my dream was to be an artist who is able to do a lot art and I don't really care about money much as long I am alive and got fun within the furry fandom, but if you need hardware or replacement of hardware to draw or conventions you're sometimes forced to step a bit more into the paid area.
especially if you got no other job in RL you could earn money with.

I suppose it is because those people have not worked to gather an audience yet, so they spam a whole bunch of ads to get attention from the public as they do not have the watchers.

I think it benefits artists to gather an audience first BEFORE trying to make money. Put out some finished works of high quality to get watchers, maybe take a couple of free requests, and then after than start opening commissions.

Yup. Not that I'm against artists getting paid for their work, but the amount of money-driven things (Patreon ads/crops, YCHs, auctions, commission notifications, etc) is growing to the point that it feels like this site can be half content, half advertisement.

Yeah. I love that people can make a little bit of money off of their hobby, but the site is getting to the point that it is more shopping than community (from a front page perspective). But that is just from my limited point of view of course.

I don't like seeing an adoptable, getting attracted to the design, then finding out it was drawn on a base not drawn by the maker of the adoptable. Then I don't want to buy it anymore. And it's annoying to just see that all over the front page. And the immense amount of YCH. And half of those YCH are also drawn on bases.

Yep. Some people make money (or try to) ENTIRELY off of bases made by other people. I check out some of these pages and i see nothing but YCH or adoptable ad submissions off of bases. Little to no original artwork at all, and that kinda makes me sad. I like seeing original works, and i kinda wish more people like these will be encouraged to learn how to draw and create something more original to sell if they wanted to make money off art.

*shrug* Design work is a skill. So is colouring. Adopts are more than just bucket-filling a premade base; coming up with aesthetically pleasing colour palette and interesting markings is harder than you might think. So I don't see anything wrong with folks charging money for those skills, even if they didn't draw the bases they're using. It's not more artistic to just draw and sell linework, and a lot of folks do that.

Easy for people feel that way until they need money and are trying to compete with a fandom full of artists. That and as well as said 'ads' being easily scrolled past they help support artists and keep this community thriving. The furry fandom was started by a bunch of sci-fi fans many of whom were published artists, musicians and authors. It's always been a commercial venture at least in part. Plus 99.999% of the anthropomorphic art that inspired its creation and that people call themselves furry because of are commercial ventures. Moves, TV shows, comic books, cartoons-all made for profit ventures. Many of them are outright ads for toys (IE every 80's cartoon).

I see people here complaining about adopts, ads, YCH's etc and it makes me shake my head. Do people want furry to thrive and continue to exist or not? Because not supporting artists commercial ventures means you're expecting artists to create great art but never be compensated for it. Kind of misguided if you're a fan of furry art and especially if one is an artist.

I did mention this in an earlier comment, that maybe these people who try to make money off of art they didn't draw are in poor circumstances and have no other way to make money.

It really shouldn't matter why they do it though.

Well no, lots of things don't matter in the world. But there will always be things that don't matter that bother people, and people can voice their opinions on what bothers them.

I just wish to remind you that for every upload, for every journal, comment, and submission. A lot of these "starving artist" make their money from FA, but unless they've bought adds on the banner, FA is getting nothing for it.

I'm feeling the exact same way, it's boring to always see the same reminder for the same ych, with the same hight prices and such. It kinda kill the originality of the piece when they are too much art of the same ych, so with time I think the value keep decreasing until reaching 0 because 1000 people already have an art with this one.
And same with the adopt think, people charged 20$ on an horrible design made on a free base and then they spam to selling thrm without even crediting the original base. Also of course saying "It worth 20$ because it's HQ art, go away haters" It happen like 50 times a day on Amino to showing an exemple XD

People really start loosing interest and passion, all they cared about is money, money and always more money. Even if the quality is decreasing, they don't care anymore.

People can do it if they want to, I advocate for a free and open market, but I just don't want to see ads so much so it would be nice if there was a feature to filter out advertisement pieces. It kinda sucks too that money is more important than originality, but that is how different people go. Different people value different things, and quite a lot of people just see the adoptable and YCH (on premade bases especially) as an easy source of money and try to exploit that market. That being said there are plenty of very skilled artists who made very beautiful designs as well.

I know this is an old journal but I know the feeling. FA is a very old site and isn't well maintained to be honest.