Nowadays I've been leaning much more heavily towards more simplistic designs (or, rather, interesting/unique real species with more simplistic markings).

I dont usually have a ton of money to commission art, and I realized that (especially as I'm fairly new/rough when it comes to digital art), I really do need more simplistic designs in order for me to be able to draw them.

My focus has always been more on concept art/trying to nail down my anatomy and poses (and also putting a focus into distinction between species- i.e. making sure all my dog faces dont look the exact same, etc) and so doing the markings themselves has kinda fallen by the wayside as I usually dont ever produce a true "finished" piece :X

TL;DR- for me, simplistic patterns/palettes/markings with complex/unique anatomy/species is what I usually go for.

Ah, nice. I hadn't considered the difference between complex anatomy vs complex markings. Thanks for bringing it up!

For new characters/species/whatnot, I prefer simple, because sometimes I'm not sure of how I want it to look, and want to see a visual rough draft (as it were) so I can see if there's any changes I want to make to the design. It's cheaper this way and also quicker turn around for the artist. And yeah, I can have them modify bits in a live stream, but if I decide on a hugely different direction, I'd rather pay for each rough sketch. I'll also do simplistic for 'artist representations' of a thing; My husband and I are working on a game, and having different artists conjure up their idea of their character (with the races and classes we provide) would be pretty nifty (haven't done this yet, wanted the game to be more finished)

For established characters and planned art for myself, I want detailed stuff, simply because I'm in the mind of sketches and whatnot are for books, details are for hanging on the wall, heh.