As a ghost with no marketable skills to speak of, I envy this admirable work!

With such choices as we have here, how do you choose which artist to hire?

A good question with a terrible answer! Much of this will probably look familiar to you if you can bear to read it.

Somebody needs to be able to well-draw non-animal faces, lean, non-male bodies, and inanimate objects. TG is very good with machinery and environment details. While I do not require either of those things, it indicates a general ability to draw THINGS, which my characters are often decorated with. I have said it before but a LOT of people on this site have no clue how to draw shoes (in fact I contracted tundraghost through the deviant-art zone, possibly before locating the account here). Many also cannot manage the hat. The hat is not terribly important but if it looks really bad (most commonly it will be incredibly flat and small-looking) that is distracting. Now and then somebody doesn't even know how shirts work. Because they learned to draw by watching cartoons so they have very stereotyped ideas of what things look like.

Also, if they refuse to take pose suggestions I stay away from them. Of course some people appear to and then just do what they want anyway, and refuse the change it, or do TERRIBLE jobs changing it. It has also FREQUENTLY been the case that somebody agrees to send a layout preview before finishing and then just doesn't. So I can't control that. But these days I will press them on it afterward. And they STILL might get away with it because eventually I hate myself for having such a problem.

At some point I realized that good english is important, since I cannot speak anything else. Imprecise communication gives another layer of excuse for an artist to blatantly not do what i asked for and then not acknowledge the topic further.

An artist needs also not be fixated on stuff that I think is gross. Many people thrive on it and it shows in everything they do, even if a particular thing is not supposed to be gross.

Frequently, people who meet my criteria (and often the ones who do not but that is another story) charge more than I can afford If they are within my range, it is a safe assumption that before long they will not be! And they deserve it. Therefore these days I have very few options, which is probably for the best because I have bought way too many of these stupid things. This is a bad, bad, bad, bad habit.

Gosh a few times I HAVE inched above what I am comfortable paying, and artists still pull the same rubbish with regard to poses.

Interesting! I know that poses and gender particular s are important to you but I did not realize the importance of objects like hats and shoes until this comment of yours here. But now that you mention it in do look back and realize how precisely designed and important those items are, especially the carrot.

That said, when I hire artists, I used to be focused on whether or not they do some certain gross things well. But that turned out to be unimportant.

More and more, I find that my very favorite art that I've received , and that was best received by others when I go out and do furry role playing , comes from artists who an ability to, for lack of a better blurb- "channel vivacity". They grok the concept or what makes the character lovable.

Incidentally that's what I've always loved about your art too

Thank you! I can only hope it is true.
The carrot is actually the least important component! I have consistently forgotten to draw it the past few years, and never once when buying from somebody else have I asked them to include the carrot. But yes, the shoes need to not just be computer mouse-shaped lumps with random criss-cross lines scribbled over them.

If I did what anyone else would best receive, I would put trousers on this creature and ask for shots like http://www.furaffinity.net/view/20101627/ (which I have also never once done). The unfortunate truth is that I have to work against other people's preferences to get what I want. Although I have never played role either and have no idea how that would even work. The one person who tried to role-play at me was an absolute stranger out of nowhere, obsessed with its character being really tiny and getting stepped on, which I had no interest in flushing my time and thoughts into. Not for free, certainly.

I find that life in general can be a challenge to confidently, clearly and calmly express that one's preferences deserve just as much deference as others' preferences, and all this is a challenge equally here too.

I agree with you that it's very hard to get what you want, even with hired art. Around half of the hired art I buy, I simply discard. It may be technically good but...eh. It just doesn't work half the time. And I accept that.

Regarding roleplay, be aware that 90% of roleplayers are terrible, and that to even begin to find the 10% takes a massive journey to even find the right small group of like-minded group of compatriots where your prefernces are generally shared in some far flung corner of the internet. I feel extremely lucky to have found a place where my strange creatures can have strange, yet reasonable and happy, conversations with other strange creatures and only do strange things if it suits me. Compared to that, I find that being approached by strangers out of nowhere gives 100% guaranteed terrible results. (RP is a very deep topic and I could expound on the subtleties for ages but let's put it back on the shelf for now.)

Regarding obsessions, we are all obsessed with one thing or another, what counts is in expressing it only at appropriate times and places and to apporpriate people an in polite and cautious ways.