I've actually been doing little art pieces here and there that I haven't uploaded anywhere recently. As you might've noticed I've been dumping some of these in my scraps folder. I guess my justification for this is that if I posted everything I did while I still had commissions in the backlog, it'd look like I'm slacking and just forgetting about the backlog. I mean, keeping silent like this isn't really that great of an option either.

I'm gonna keep uploading stuff to my scraps folder when I remember to, so check that out if ya want.

I've actually been working on a solo game project as well! I'm keeping a dev blog here: https://the-giik-games.tumblr.com/
It's a little farming rpg crossed with a puzzler. Still in its early stages though. I've been switching between coding that and doing art, trying to keep an even balance of dedicated art and code days.

Steadily working through the backlog! As always, you can check my progress here.

In the mean time, I'm gonna give a quick shoutout to  mangocream! She's super nice and is just starting on the whole commissions business; she's doing PWYW SFW things for now. It's...a bit tough to sift through her self-made art and commissioned stuff at the moment since she hasn't really organized her gallery yet. Some good examples of her art are these two:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/25316487/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24288839/

But yeah! I should give shoutouts more often 'cause there's a lot of fantastic artists out there.

I was hoping to do this before finishing the last thing in my backlog, but some stuff came up. Nothing to worry about!

So, yeah! I'm gonna open up another batch. BUT, before I do, I need to get a few things outta the way.

I'm NOT going to do 128x128, heavily animated stuff. Potentially 64x64 heavy stuff too, you'd have to ask. The reason for this is that I still have one more 128x thing in the backlog, and I don't want to divide my attention away from that too much. (That, and they're just really tough to do lol)

Also because of the backlog, I'm gonna try to get that out of the way before going whole hog on the rest of this batch. So they might take a while despite being smaller on average. Sorry 'bout that!

I'm thinkin' of doing 10 slots this time. With no huge things that shouldn't be THAT bad (i hope.)

1-  ucrodevil
2-  abonshell
3-  hornyabsol
4-  rukral
5-  fireorca
6-  trippledot
7-  2718281828
8-  neow46
9-  hedghog2234
10-  aristocrats

Note me here if you want one! As always, read up on my TOS before requesting something.

EDIT: All the slots are taken, thanks guys!

Still here! Wow!

I'm workin' on the two big comms I got...slowly. Animating is hard, folks. I'm trying some stuff I haven't really done before in the meantime, making sense of 3D spaces and generally just working on making stuff more solid and less, well, move-layers-everywhere-y.

Little update on whenever I reopen; I'm probably gonna have like, 10 "small" slots, and only 1 or 2 "big" slots. What defines a big thing is up to me, but generally if it's 128x128 and has more than one keyframe added on as per my commission terms, it'll be a big one. And I'll keep the small batches separate from the big batches.

I'll still wait until I get these last two big things done before switching to that method, though.

also OCTOBER OCTOBER OCTOBER WOO WHO'S HYPE FOR HALLOWEEN

Heya! Hope y'all are doing alright.

I'm thinking of changing the way I do commissions a bit. The first batch filled up in literally 10 minutes. Like, holy crap, that's fast.

The first two were done really fast; there was a collection of 5 of those 16x16 bouncy things seen here, and a static 64x64 thing seen here. The other three, well...they're taking quite a bit longer.

I'm considering opening commissions for the smaller sprites so I can do them while still working on the big ones. That way I'm not completely clogged up by that one last big project while you just want a smaller sprite. I dunno how many slots I'd take up.

On the other hand, I don't want to take the focus away from the big projects so they don't take friggin' forever to get done. Due to this I probably won't make the batch (or queue) for the small ones that big, just so it doesn't get overwhelming.

But yeah, that's about it for now.

Alright, I'm reopening! Sorry for keeping y'all waiting.

I'm gonna try something a little different this time, though. Instead of just having infinite slots on a waiting list with weird fluctuating limits, I'm gonna do batches. It doesn't matter how big or small something is, it'll take up a slot. Once the batch is filled up then I'll close comms until everything in that batch is done.
So batch times will probably be inconsistent, based on what people get. That's alright though.

I'll start with just a 5-slot batch to get back into the swing of things. We'll see how that goes. I'll probably raise how many slots are in it for future batches but I'm not sure.

If you take a look at my Commission Info page then you'll notice that I changed things up a bit. Instead of basing everything off of a 50x50 avatar price, I'm now separating them into different sorta "tiers" of sizes. Also, you can check out the last page of my TOS for more info about how these prices will work.

🎉Yaaaay🎊

SLOTS:
1.  knightsquiggles (done)
2.  im-who (done)
3.  trippledot (In progress)
4.  ucrodevil (In progress)
5.  chaz-fox (done)

EDIT: Okay that was fast. I'll definitely do more than 5 on the next batch.

Sorry i'm takin' a while to open back up. Working up the motivation to get back into the grind is a biiiiiiitch. Being lazy is so much easier man.

I'm gonna try to figure out what to do with my patreon before reopening. I might just make the pledge tiers the same as my current commission prices but I dunno. My main concern is that the people with patreons (that i've seen) have a hard time keeping up with the monthly rewards they owe people. I guess it's just me being paranoid but that's kinda what's keeping me at the moment.

But yeah, soon™.

Okay, wow, cleared my backlog, finally. That took a long time. I didn't try to *rush* it but still holy jeez.

Alright, plans. Yeah. Those are a thing.

I actually royally messed up the thing i did for  abc163. If you look closely then you'll notice that the legs are completely wrong. Like, everything about them. So up next is fixing those so it's not horrible.

After that, I'm going to take about a week to myself to actually enjoy not having as much of a responsibility for a bit. I've been tossing around a game idea in my head for a while now and I want to try getting that started.

After that, I'll (finally) reopen commissions. I'll be changing up how I do things, though.
I'm gonna be pricing them as each size as separate categories, instead of having that weird expand add-on weirdness. The current draft of the new prices are as follows:

16x16 sprite: $5
Light animation: Free of charge
Heavy animation: $3 per keyframe
32x32 sprite: $10
Light animation: $5
Heavy animation: $7 per keyframe
64x64 sprite: $20
Light animation: $5
Heavy animation: $10 per keyframe
128x128 sprite: $30
Light animation: $5
Heavy animation: $10 per keyframe

Custom resolutions will use the next highest res listed here. So if you wanted a sprite that’s 24 x 24, it’ll use the pricing for 32x32. This results in the usual 50x50 icons using the 64x64 price, and 100x100 icons using the 128x128 price.

NOTE THAT THESE AREN'T FINAL. I might have separate prices for the icons, since they're significantly smaller than the next highest "tier". I might also reduce the price per keyframe for some options. Maybe not, I'm not sure yet.

I’m willing to break the resolution limits for negative space or small effects. So, stuff like empty space surrounding them (so the image doesn’t look “cramped”) or, say, smoke rising above the chosen sprite size, won’t affect the price if it goes above the listed res.

”Light” animation involves shifting static layers around, maybe redrawing some small details, but overall it doesn’t move too much. The little bouncy icons I've been doing count as light animation, since it's a lot of just moving the sprite up and down and changing a few things to account for it so they don't sink into the floor.

A keyframe is a term in animation for, essentially, pose changes. This is a good example of keyframes vs. other frames. So the more complex you want your animation, the more expensive it'll get. And even then, I'll have my own limits on this. I want to experiment with any ambitious projects for myself before taking commissions for something of that caliber.

--

The reason I'm adding those smaller options is basically because literally everyone was getting the most expensive options ever, which, while that's great, is a sign I'll need to raise my prices. That, and it started to really wear down on me personally. Doing those little 16x16 icons for people has been both fun and actually pretty well-received in the discord channels I'm in. Hopefully with these smaller options I'll be able to do this for longer before burning out.

I was also considering closing commissions on a regular schedule, so I can have planned, designated periods of clearing out backlogs instead of just having to stop accepting comms when I'm too stressed out.

So, yeah, that's about it for noowww. Unless I'm forgetting something. I probably did. Eh.

Lemme know what you think! Sorry I've been so quiet this whole time.

this is gonna be a little rambly, so bear with me.

I'm down to 3 things left in the queue. I wish I wasn't taking so long with these, but since this isn't the first time I've slowed down so much on comms I figured I'd take that into account when planning things for when I reopen.

For one, I'll be adding a hard limit to how much I'll take at any given time. 6 seems to be my limit, but I don't want to constantly push myself since that leads to burnout. 4 sounds like a good number, but we'll see. I think I'll keep the constant, rolling queue for now. See how that goes.

I'll also be raising the prices for animation. By how much, I'm not sure yet. But everyone who's commissioned me has gotten an animated thing, most of which are using the "extensive" price, which might be a sign that I need to raise it. Supply and demand, or whatever.

I was considering adding an option to have, like, "retro" sprites of some sort that mimics an NES game or something similar, as well. I dunno if that'd be a thing you guys want? but I guess it wouldn't hurt to put it out there.

So yeah, that's what's on my mind for reopening. I don't know how long it'll take to get through the rest of my queue, but I'm almost there.

Heya. Short journal this time, maybe a little more unprofessional than usual. Between the heat and just general lack of drive I've been feeling lately, as well as IRL stuff getting in the way and just horrid organization on my part, I haven't really been able to get stuff here done regularly. I'm still trying to work through my backlog, but it's proving difficult.

I'll be fine, I'm just letting you guys know what's up. I swear, your collective patience is that of a saint's.

<3

Aaaalllright, I'm gonna be closing commissions again, I'm gonna need some time to clear out my current list and reorganize.

Having a constant backlog of like ~6 things is both a good and bad thing. It's good because, y'know, y'all still like my stuff, hah. The bad thing though is that it does end up being a constant pressure that I eventually slow down and can't keep up with. I might try doing other methods of accepting commissions, like just having a hard cap (I still don't! I'm a dum) or doing the batch-based system. Who knows!

Anyone that was already in the middle of talking to me about getting something can still get that done and I'll add it, but I won't be accepting new requests for the time being.

Before I reopen them, I will probably raise my prices again. Everyone's getting the super big and fancy animated ones! While that's super cool, it does take a lot more time relative to the smaller ones, so I'll have to balance that out somehow, and I'm still probably underselling myself anyway.

Another note, though, is that I started a patreon page like all of the cool kids hooray. However, I don't have any goals/rewards for patrons on it yet. It's a terrible patreon, I know. I'll see if I can add something for when I reopen commissions, but for now, only pledge to it purely if you wanna support me on this. Seriously, you don't need to. It's fine.

thanks for sticking around through this! I can't state how much I appreciate y'all for watching and all that jazz. I'll let you guys know when I'm gonna reopen before I do and what will change when I do.

So I've been doing the whole open queue for a while now. It's pretty good so far! But, my main issue with this method so far is that it's really hard to tell what the limits are until you find it by burning yourself out, and I hate having to turn down people or tell them to wait until I have it cleared out; in that time, someone else might be able to snag a slot and fill it up again, which I think is unfair for the first person who asked.

Right now my sorta soft-limit is 7 slots. I'm at the point where I've gained enough momentum to have to start turning people down. I don't want to have to resort to that as a regular thing, as it ends up being really unreliable and you'd have to keep pestering me to guarantee a slot, and that isn't fun for either side.

So right now my most apparent options are:

-Go hardball and accept everything until I can't anymore
Waiting a week, relatively, is hardly anything, it seems. One month seems like the threshold when people start getting impatient. I really don't want to start pushing the limits of your patience that far however (waiting a week already seems like quite a long time) so this option is pretty risky in that regard. Because not only does that result in a really large queue by itself, it can also mean it's a lot of pressure put on myself to finish the ever-growing infinite list of stuff, which is...discouraging, I guess. Is that the right word for it?

-Switch to batches.
Instead of having a rolling queue, just take commissions in batches, where I'd accept like 10 commissions and then close them until I get all 10 of them done. This would kinda mitigate the problem of not knowing whether I can take more or not, but on the other hand that means I'd have them closed often, and for quite a while as I get them done. Of course, I can do something lighter where I can reopen once there's only 2 things left in the current batch instead of 0, but that just reintroduces the question of how much can I take.

So I'm not sure! Let me know what you think. And again, thanks for being patient while I try to get out of this slump. It's lasting longer than I'd expected, and just burning out from marathoning a couple things in a single day might not be the sole cause of it as I suspected before. I'm still working through my current queue, slowly!

Love you all!

Yeeeeah, if you can't tell my submission rate slowed down a bit. Turns out if you get that feeling that you're totally on a roll and you should do two things in one day, don't! It'll ruin your pace and you won't get anything done the next day, or the day after that because you're just mentally exhausted. Downtime is important, kiddos!

That, and I just keep getting interrupted by other things that don't let me devote a good chunk of the day to art stuff, which is usually what I need to do something from start to finish.

Just lettin' ya guys know! I'm getting out of the rut now, no worries. (hopefully!)

-There's a new commission type holy mackerel!! I added the Battle Sprite option to my prices! Technically they're the same price of a 50x50 animated icon but I added it anyway for clarity. The ones I posted of Rust and Rivet seemed pretty popular so I decided to add those.

-Removed the "variants" thing on the emote pricing like I said in the last journal. Now you can get up to 5 of whatever the heck you want! To compensate, the price for them is now $8, from $5 previously. Also, the "5 more" price is up to $5, from $3 previously.

-I updated the recommendations list. I originally had a point in there saying what your favorite flavor of ice cream is as a way to show that you actually noticed that by reading through the TOS. I got rid of that 'cause it felt weird and out of place and nobody did it anyway.

I'll be honest, the whole "variants" nonsense is just me being lazy. So soon™ I'll be changing up the TOS so you'll be able to get up to 5 pixel emoji of anything you want, instead of getting one emoji and getting up to 4 variants/recolors/whatever of it. It was confusing and restrictive like that!

Note that this might mean I'll have to raise the prices of that option. Maybe to like $8, and then $5 for the extra sets of em, instead of $5 base and $3 extra sets.

Just lettin' you guys know!

Just gettin' that old journal out of the way here. Commissions are open again! Yay!

So I'm down to 5 things left, 2 of which are trades, and one of those is kinda low priority since the other side is busy with more important things as well. So that's like 3 actual commissions left! Might as well let you guys know what my plans are for when I reopen commissions and get back into the groove of things.

Concerning the slot limit, I'm definitely gonna have a hard limit on slots. I used to consider 5 the "it'll take a while" soft limit and 7 being the "okay that's enough backlog for now" but that might not be the best limit for a rolling queue, where slots open up as they're completed. I'll probably lower it to 5 being the definite cutoff point.

For adult stuff, I definitely want to do adult things. I'll have to rewrite my terms so it defines what kind of kinks I think are okay and which ones I flat out won't do. I might have a separate limit for how many adult things I can have in my backlog compared to the total just so I'm not doing porn 24/7. It gets tiring after a while! That, and I like clothes.

For Icons, those will stay the same. As my animation skills get better and the requests get more extravagant I might raise the price of getting it animated but for the most part I'm okay with where it is right now.

Emotes! I'm planning on opening a new commission type, where you can get a 16x16 or 32x32 emote like the ones seen here and here. They'd be pretty cheap, like $5, and extra expressions could be like $.50 each since that's just editing a few pixels most of the time. These would be restricted to bust shots, as well. I'm not making a 16x16 of your dick. Maybe. If there's enough want for that then I'd do it. But not now.

Non-icon stuff! I wanna do different resolutions. 50x50 and 100x100 are good baselines but I wanna branch out from that. I haven't figured out prices yet but as a base they'll be a little more expensive than the icon prices, and more depending on how large you want it. Pixel art is weird, in that the larger something gets the more difficult it gets, when in most other art forms that isn't really even a thing. Embroidering, maybe.

I've also been considering other things like YCHs and character adopts. Lemme touch on those, actually. YCHs are pretty cool, if I do those I definitely won't do those weird restrictions you see like only certain genders or species. The template's already there!
Character adopts are...weird. They get really expensive really fast, and while the greed is alluring I don't really like the overall concept, especially when the people who adopt it never do anything with them afterwards. It just seems like a shady waste of money. I've seen people buy a character just because they like the design and then they regret it because they don't know what to do with them, multiple times. So if I do end up doing adopts, I'd pack something else in there too like a free commission featuring that character or discounts for using that character from then on, so getting the design is actually worth something other than "I own that design now". No promises, though.

But yeah! I've really been enjoying doing this for you guys so far. It's had its ups and downs but overall it's nice, it's just part of a learning experience.

Long story short, I wanna get my backlog cleared out before accepting anything more. That, and while they're closed I can work on rewriting my TOS and stuff so I can figure out where to take this thing next.

Once I'm done with that, I will be reopening them.

That's basically all you need to know. Below is kinda personal, so I don't really care if you skip that or not.

--


I gotta work on self-discipline. I've been at the point where motivation has run out and the "grind," as it were, set in. Motivation is a stupid and inconsistent force, and you shouldn't rely on it by itself to do anything, especially professionally. That's mostly why I've been going slower on commissions, and art in general.

At my peak I'm able to get something done within like, 2 days. Maybe a single day if it's small. But that's when I'm totally 100%. As time goes on the novelty of "wow doing art for money this is great" wears off, you start to get distracted and frustrated (especially with zelda), and the burden of having that backlog still sitting there can weigh down on you. That's natural. That's motivation running out. What really matters is your ability to power through those and still get stuff done at least at a decent rate, and I'm definitely not at that part yet, admittedly.

And I have to say, you guys are fantastic. You're incredibly patient and supportive (I wanna call out someone in particular who comments on everything I upload, but is positive namedropping in journals still bad? either way, you know who you are!) and I don't regret getting involved here one bit.

So remember, kids: Discipline, not motivation.

I'm mainly putting this out here to get rid of the current featured journal, which at the time of writing is this one. I already got my prices raised, man, I don't need to have this up anymore.

But, yeah. For those of you who don't religiously check my profile, I'm under a bit of an art block at the moment. I can still draw things, and they look nice, but it's all personal stuff. I can't seem to get in the groove for commissions and it's annoying! It's just a temporary thing, I know, but I'm saying it anyway because that obviously means commissions are goin' slower. Bummer.

Though, good news is, a super-cool friend of mine is selling me his spare tablet! I don't actually have one yet, it's all been mouse work so far. I'm super looking forward to when it gets here so I can pretend i'm a real artist finally ;w;

And that's about it for now. Thanks for...reading...words that I typed. You really put in your all to read this. We're all very proud of you.

You can only do so much with SFW stuff, I know. So I'm probably gonna be opening some limited adult commission slots so you can get some sweet pixel pornstuffs.

The reason I'm going to limit this in some way is simply a matter of, well, I don't want to be someone who does ONLY porn. Once you open adult commissions it seems to slip into something you draw 99% of the time, and it kinda wears down on ya.

But on the other hand, I don't want to stay entirely SFW, as it can be fun to draw raunchy stuff sometimes! Plus that'll give you guys more opportunities to commission me.

I'm not sure how I'll limit it or on what kind of time frame, but I'm just putting this out there to let you guys know!

On February 21st, one week away from the time of writing, I'll be raising my prices for commissions. Here's what they'll be:

Base price: $10 -> $15
+Larger Res: $3 -> $5
+Animation: $5 -> $10
+Background: $5 -> $10
+Extra Character: $5 -> $10

Now, this might suck for some people who've been waiting for payday to get a commission, or some sort of similar situations. So leave a comment in here before prices are raised if you want to kinda "reserve" one for the old price. I'll need to know when you're planning on commissioning me just so this isn't some special forever discount thing.

I want to keep the base price still pretty down low, so if you don't want to shell out too much you can still get something, it just won't have all the fancy stuff the addons will have. So hopefully this is a pretty good price range!

If you haven't noticed, I've slowed down a lot in terms of upload rate. I'm fine, nothing major. It's mostly a matter of weekends getting kinda hectic, and some difficulty prioritizing commissions and...well, not-commissions. I'll get back to it ASAP, but I'm not sure when ASAP is yet. Most likely in a scale of days, and thankfully not weeks or something.

Sorry if you're waiting on something from me. Stuff happens, y'know?

Just letting you guys know, I'm going to be adding a separate list for larger/more complex things and bulk commissions that I think will need more time to complete.

The reason I'm doing this is mostly for organizational purposes; having a list is great, but the difficulty of each one can vary wildly. So if someone commissions a bunch of things at the same time, or a complex animation whenever I add prices for that, I can keep those in separate lists. From there I can work on them at the same time, and potentially finish smaller ones before a bigger one, even if the smaller ones were added afterwards.

Another purpose this will serve is more realistic expectations; Bigger commissions take longer, obviously, so if I think it'll take longer than usual I can sort it into there, where it's kind of expected to take a while.

<3

So, first off, "subtle" animation is both kinda confusing as to what that actually means, and also restrictive as to what you can get. Basically, if I can just tween + clean up or just mess with details, that counts as subtle. For instance, if someone's pointing straight ahead, I can make them point up and that would still count as subtle, since all I'm doing is rotating the arm and cleaning up stray pixels.

As I get more confident in my animation skills, I'm also able to do more dynamic things with it. So eventually I'm thinking of adding prices for "complex" animation as well. What that means is animating between at least two "keyframes", or alternate poses. Think of it like street fighter animations; a standard idle stance can just be a few parts shifting and maybe a couple rotations and small re-draws. A punching animation, however, requires redrawing a lot of things; the arm itself, the torso leaning forward, the head tilting slightly, so on and so forth.

I may price them per keyframe, so the price will vary wildly depending on how complex the animation is. This will also take significantly longer to produce, so other, simpler commissions may be pushed ahead in the queue so a relatively large animation doesn't clog up the list.

I don't have any planned date for adding this, it's mainly just a thought.
--

As for the price raise, I've been told by multiple people that I'm underselling myself, and I agree. I want to stay affordable, but some add-ons may be getting more expensive. The base price seems pretty fitting; a static, single character, 50x50 icon is fairly simple and quick to make, but an animated, 100x100, animated icon with a detailed background increases the difficulty (and thus the time taken) by much more than their cost.

I will put up a notice before I raise any prices, possibly a week or so beforehand. For now there aren't any exact price differences or dates set in stone.


--

<3

(Let's get that other journal out of the way, shall we?)

The first milestone of (hopefully) many! Thank you, everyone, for the support and--Wow, I feel like a youtube sellout right now.

Let's see, what can I do to commemorate this...uhm...

...OH! People like painting their milestones on stuff, right?

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/22305627/

...Yeah, that'll work.