Wow, the number of scam artists here is skyrocketing. Easy to spot too. They're trying to appear legit by following a bunch of people then get followbacks.
You click on some of their commissions which they say is for a certain person but you go to the account of the person they say it's for and they haven't posted in over a year. Also you don't see that commission in their Favorites or Gallery. I mean who gets a commission and doesn't fav it?

Anyway be safe out there and Trust No One. *X files music plays*

Well the cat or rather the spider is out of the bag. Yeah I'm a rare breed, an arachnophile. Let's hear it for natural bondage.
So if you're female giant spider. Give me a note. There's tons of spiders on the world wide web right? : D

Hi hi. I'm not dead. Just been lurking. For *checks watch*. A year? Geez, time flies.
I have a bit of time off from work so with the extra energy I may be able to upload more of my commissions. Gotta be honest you're seeing like 10% of what I get on a regular basis, even in Favs.

Ciao,

~Alexandrite "Alexa" Draconis

Pretty much all my commissions are in my favorites. I almost never repost unless the original artist didn't.
I just point towards their upload. : ) Check em out.

I now have more commissions open at one time then ever. My new record is 9. I need a damn spreadsheet to track them all.
Oh and reinforcing my previous journal, I believe 5 of them are Russian artists. They're really dominating the market lately.

I see that we're going through the post summer lull where most artists have either disappeared or lost their minds.
I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to find someone to draw my sexy new demon mare. NSFW would be ideal but I'd even take SFW at this point. Or tasteful equine nudity.
I'm open to good equine artist with commissions suggestions.

Etherross is booked, mercurial64 is as well as far as I know, Wiredhooves has headed for the hills. Didn't get in with Truegrave9. Etc, etc.

Edit: Hooray I eventually found exactly what I was looking for. So you'll see that in the future.

Ok so I've been getting commissions for over twenty years regularly. I'm ancient, but hey I look great. lol
So let's start with the disclaimer, I'm a scientist, pattern recognition is my super power. But hey these are quite literally my opinions and observations so take it with a grain of salt. Also I will not get into some ePeen discussion of who or what or who is right and wrong.
I don't play those games, so save it. This isn't interactive. I publish and walk away.

Let's start with the controversial, ala the hot takes. This is from my buyer side prospective.
YCH and auctions are NEVER worth it. That bears repeating. Anything with a competitive price is NEVER WORTH IT. I mean yes for the artist it is, but if you want to pay 200%, 300%+ the price. Get into a bidding war. Let's not split hairs, there are techfurs with more money than brains and they will swoop in and drive up prices to stupid levels. That $1200 commission might be worth it to you, but it sure as fuck isn't to me. I can get 7 or 8 custom crafted pics for those prices. The TLDR is I can pay those prices, but I won't. I don't even look at variable pricing. Value is what is important to me. That'll factor in later, you'll see.
Also I don't know about you but I don't want some random fur fucking up a YCH with a terrible design for multiple slots. Let's not beat around the bush here, artists do YCHs to rapidly output work, or to combine multiple payers into a single piece or minimum of work to maximize their cost (time) / benefit ratio.

Ok so let's go back in time. pre 2000s, say 90's before wide spread computerization you'd pay somewhere between $30-$60 for a pencil sketch with maybe simple colors. The market was small, you were lucky to get any pics at all. Artists primarily did comics and published material. Commissions were pretty much just at cons and they were simple. What could be drawn in a few hours.

So let's jump forward to like 2006. A year after FA opened. Now there was a reliable marketplace. Buyers and artists were connected. Artists figured out that you could create enough output to make art a full time job. I think the average price was $80-$120.
So as time goes on new artists join the fandom, old artists get famous, some drop out. It creates a churn. A pattern forms.
New artist shows up and is cheap. I notice them and get a few pics at a great price. Over time they get more popular. Raise their prices. Take too many commissions. Long pause as they slowly lose their mind. Then it becomes impossible to commission them as they either reduce their queue to a rare few openings or raise their prices to levels where it's no longer worth it for me. There's always new artists out there and they're cheaper. It takes quite awhile for new artists to figure out the business aspect btw. At first they're like wow this is like printing money, I can take 30 pics at $200 each and make a fortune. Not of course realizing they've just committed to six months of non stop work, which of course inevitably leads to burnout.

I can tell you exactly when prices drop. It's when a large group of new artists get computers and start business. I remember the south east asian countries, Vietnam and Malyasian artists started showing up from like 2010 to 2015. Now these days it's the Russians, 2018 to current.
The Russians are crazy skilled, but their prices have jumped up incredibly high in a short time. About 300% in those three years.

So here we are 2021. The average price of commission I'm paying is $200+. Some as high as $300+ and it bothers me a lot as the most expensive commission I've gotten up until now I believe is $550 in 2018 and surprise it's not even my most favorite pic. I mean I like it, but I like value more.

Why are prices high? Obviously people will pay them. A lot of people did quite well in 2020 so can push that kind of wealth around. Inflation is up like 30% so artists are pushing the costs along. Also I believe that it's funds that people would have used on cons or outside experiences that our lovely pandemic has made impossible.

So the future does not look good. I used to commission about 20-30 pics a year. Now that will probably drop to 10-15 given these prices. That is of course unless another large group enters the fandom. South America? lol

Addendum: In all the years I've commissioned artists most have been chill. A minority are complete assholes. They're super prickly like a cactus to work with. I guess they feel their work is good enough you can burn bridges with every order. Because I sure as hell won't be a repeat customer.
I've paid more and regularly to some artists just because they're fun to work with. If you're pleasant and collaborative I will return, because I enjoyed the experience.

Also don't even get me started on Patreon and locking art beyond a paywall. Terrible ideas.

Ok so I'm going through all my commission pics to see what hasn't been uploaded. You'll find the bulk of my stuff is in my favorites, because I only post on my account what the artist hasn't. They did the art after all, I just provide the ideas and the details.
I have a lot to say about commissions and the state of the art industry, but I'll save that for another journal coming up.
The TLDR is prices have gone up significantly and it's getting harder to get commissions.


~Alexandrite

I need to get off my lazy pink tail and update my gallery.

I'm so sick of seeing decent artists, then I'm like hmmm maybe I'll get a commission and i see NO FERALS. I'm greatly annoyed. I'm a quad and proud of it. : P
Ah well, they are the ones missing out on a portion of their market.

Now I'm just unfollowing them. I may like their style but if they don't have anything I like in their gallery there's no point in sticking around.

So hard to find good vore artists.
What does a dragoness have to do to get devoured by a giant snake these days? : P

Wow, I never realized how many people watch me. Why do you people watch me? I'm curious to know.

-Alexandrite

I'm not usually one for blatant promotion but  SteelMoon is doing this free collar giveaway thingie here http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3514067/ .

Quite the nice craftsmanship. I like the glow in the dark rings. As a dragoness I've always been a sucker for metal collars. Neoprene and rubber are nice, but cold unyielding metal has a specialness. }: )

So I drove down to L.A. on Friday and Got to meet the My Little Pony voice actresses and have them sign some art for me.

 Blackfury did this pic. http://www.flickr.com/photos/571908.....02/7194768026/ I just had Tara Strong (Twilight Sparkle) sign it. She seemed delighted at the "saucy pony picture", a press photographer took a photo of her posing with it. Woot, epic win.

[edit]http://t.co/uCXU95Dq Um ya like this.

Now I need to clear some wall space and frame all these pics.

Also I hung out with the soCal bronies at Canter's restaurant after and ironically met a creative director for mightyfineinc (the guys who run welovefine.com who sell pony shirts) outside at a meter. She was pretty nice and gave me her business card.

Blam. I guess I just needed a break because everything is working perfectly now.

Check out my screenshots for my new heavily modded unicorn. Look familiar? ; )
http://www.flickr.com/photos/571908.....7629790241647/

oh and I threw one out there of my succubus character. I'm getting damn good at this modding stuff.

-Alexandrite

So I've literally spent the last 11 hours today screwing around and messing with my Skyrim mods.
Here's what I can do:
Play as a horse.
Play as an mare.
Play as a Unicorn.

But I can't seem to reach the next step and play as a unicorn mare. There's two different .nif files involved and my skill with Nifskope is lacking.
I screwed all my horse files up then had to put them all back and make them play nice with my mods again. I still don't think I managed it 100% as nothing seems off in game but in loading screens the horse model has no texture.

Bleh back to square one. Well slightly better I think as I don't remember being able to play a unicorn yesterday. Oh I've also got a nice Succubus character as well but she's on the backburner.

Oh and I've only spent about 10 min actually playing the game as I've been doing all this tweaking. On the plus side I've learned a ton about creating and using mods,nifs, and dds textures. I CAN put highlights in my mane to match my avatar but I think it would add them to every horse as there is only two mane files, one for light horse hair and one for dark.

Now you'll excuse me I seem to have not eaten in 24 hours. Now I remember why I switched from being a computer science major back in the day.

If there are other modders or groups on FA I'd certainly like to chat. I mean if there are that many furs who have played it why wouldn't they make it more furry like I have?

Here's some screenshots I took of my mare adventurer in modded Skyrim.
Note the anatomically correctness and "horse" tagged race in the skills and load screens.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/571908.....57629712883715

I've just spent the last seven hours installing and modding the crap out of Skyrim but I did it! I'm playing as a black anatomically correct mare. : )
It even says "Horse" under race in my save files and status.

I haven't figured out how to use spells in horse form so that might be a problem. But it is glorious. First day as a mare adventurer and I go wander in an ice cave full of wolves. It's actually funny as they mostly tried to run away from me while I stomped on them. Take that fuzzheads.

Now I just have to figure out how to do screenshots.

My god this thing is fast. I own the fastest computer I've ever used or seen in my life. I think it and it happens. There is no lag, there is no hesitation, click, done.

I've got her overclocked from 3.6 to a moderate 4.5 GHZ. stable at 30C. That took some effort as while tweaking I introduced some kind of intermittent reset problem. Had to roll the bios back a few times before getting it right. She's good now though.

Raid 0 is a colossal pain in my tail. The Intel site is obtuse. I'm still setting that up for my drives. Bleh this annoys me. Can I switch to RAID after I've already installed Win 7 Pro 64 bit in AHCI? When I switch it in the BIOS it doesn't let me boot into windows anymore. I want to solve this quick because I might have to do a reinstall.

Still working the bugs out.

It's funny I don't follow tech obsessively. I haven't built my own system or upgraded since 2005. I think it's overdue.
So I call her Princess Luna after a certain hot lil pony. I'm going to make her glow all pretty blue soon. }: ) I've also got a cool picture on the side. Always customize!

I'm taking photos as I put her together. Damn there's a lot of wiring to do. I think there's more in there than my car.


Samsung S27A350H 27-Inch Class LED Monitor $340 Also using a dell 19" LCD I got for free from work but I like the new one. I think I'll pick up another 27 incher in April or May. I want to go tri display off of my GTX680 anyway.

Windows 7 (64) Pro $140 (I can't believe I actually paid for a microsoft product. First time for everything. I was going to pirate it, but not worth the effort)

Intel i7 3820 3.6Ghz LGA2011 $320

Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler $109

ASUS Republic of Gamers Rampage IV Extreme X79 socket LGA2011 Motherboard $450

Corsair HX Professional Series 850-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply $150

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory $400 I'll double this next month bringing it up to 64GB. Why? Because I can.

ASUS GTX680-2GD5 GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card $500 brand new and shiny as of the 22nd.

COOLER MASTER HAF X Blue Edition RC-942-KKN3 Black Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case with Black Interior and Four Blue LED Fans-1x 140mm rear fan, 1x 200mm top fan, 1x 200mm side fan, and 1x 230mm front fan $210 This sucker is a monster. It's huge.

Corsair Force Series GT 120 GB SATA 2.5-Inch SATA III Solid State Drive (For the OS and stuff) $165

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1502FAEX 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive x2 $150 each so $300

And of course all for...... Skyrim $53 cause I want to play a horse.

Wow uh $3200 just to watch my little pony. No wonder I haven't been eating out much this month. Heh dragoness' take it to the limit.
Hmm it's been about a month to get delivered and assemble all these shiny new parts.

Now I just need a rubber piggy!

Hmm there's some signs of life around here lately so maybe people have emerged from whatever hole they're in.

My new computer is coming together nicely. I imagine Ewoks looking up as the death star is being built in orbit.
The thing has bankrupted me for a month in parts and I'm still not done. That is saying something. It's a fucking monster. If it went all skynet and achieved sentience I would not be surprised. It's funny cause I don't know what I'll use it for besides watching MLP and playing modded Skyrim on max settings maybe while doing four other things at the same time. I suppose it's like buying a Ferrari and doing donuts in someone's lawn cause you can. It's my tribute to excess.

Speaking of Skyrim now that the creation kit is out can someone with some programming skills please make a play as a horse mod? I mean seriously I don't think it's even that hard as all the models and animations are in the game. It just needs to be tweaked as a custom race or something. Someone get on that. I want to play the damn game through as a sexy mare. Especially since they have the anatomically correct mare mod and horse armor mod ready.

um....waffles.

Hmmm I've noticed that artwork around here has slowed. It's not nearly as good either. Things seem on the decline.
I mean I'm aware of artist turnover. Perhaps I should go looking for new ones.

Hiya everyone! Since valentines is coming up let me share with you what I love. I've never defined my kinks and stuff I find arousing so here goes. Even though I have several pics and commissions making it fairly obvious I just thought I'd spell it out.
If anyone wants to feature me in a picture of theirs or a commission with your characters, incorporating any of this list let me know what you have in mind. I'm very likely to be up for it.

Slavery
Heavy bondage (hoods, ball gags, etc.)
Domination (receiving)
Rape and other nonconsenting stuff
Latex/rubber
Mummification/encasement/cocooning
Soft vore (especially large snakes,oozes/cubes, plants, spiders)
Tentacles
Impregnation
Suspension
Sensory deprivation (i.e. stasis tubing)
Alice in wonderland
Medical play

Dragons, Xenomorphs(Aliens), equines plants, spiders, snakes, oozes. That of course incorporate the above.

I wonder if I forgot anything. }: )

Why's everyone so quiet? Weird.

Anyway I've been thinking about a pony name all day. How about Moonlight Silk?
Know any good pony artists accepting commissions?

I give in, I've joined the herd and I'm into my little pony. I must be since I just dropped $230 on MLP shirts. }: )
This is the reason I haven't been around lately, watched the entire first season from beginning to end. Mmm sugary crack. Rarity of course is my favorite.
Anyway if you've seen my sculptures and commissioned pics I've always been into equines anyway. I need to develop a ponysona so that Rarity can top me heh.

Dying to play a MLP roleplaying game. I think it would be fun.

Anyway what's up? I wonder if I can play a horse in skyrim yet. I have to look into that.

[edit]Nope still can't play an equine in Skyrim. That sucks.

Oh Princess Luna I'd lick your hooves you're so hot and Domme. *drool* [/edit]