I seem to struggle to really get an idea across. Every artist works different and many of the ones I deal work work almost exclusively with visual references. This makes it really hard to express an idea! Pose references, expression references, outfit references, accessory references, mood boards, scene reference (for background/context) and more can take hours to assemble to really communicate an idea and express something new! Using visual references of characters also means some character design errors get propagated and repeated and may end up becoming set in stone. Or a stylistic choice ends up getting reproduced outside of that style and becomes a design element instead of a style element.

Most of my characters have unusual anatomy, and this often requires some references too! And usually some corrections during the sketching phase. Sometimes it feels like I'm nitpicking the piece too much and giving the artist a hard time but I just want it to look right. And some times I just want to not bother them too much so I let small errors slide because it is unreasonable to expect a masterpiece. But at the same time, the reason I pay so much money for art is because it lasts forever and I can enjoy it for a very long time so some of these little errors can haunt me for a long while.

I want to get better commissions but communicating these ideas is such a struggle. I dare say I work better with long winded descriptions. Perhaps I should stick with those.