Damn, I'm sorry this happened to you! Payment rules is so hard in the commission business, on the one hand theres a chance the buyer scams the artist by just grabbing the finished piece and run if you dont take payment up front.
Then on the other hand, the list of artists that took my money in full prepayment and now I wait for months (or even years) for them to draw my stuff is much bigger than I'd like to as well <_<

Maybe you could work with (partial) prepayment for new customers you know know yet, and keep your old practises with people who already bought from you and were reliable? Even though I wouldn't mind prepaymetn with you as well as you are one of the artists who always finished their work within a reasonable amount of time. :)

Yeah, I was mostly worried about the waiting time. I try to work fast and finish all the commissions/YCHs within 1-3 weeks after they were claimed but still.
But it seems that I will be taking prepayment now with new people ;w;

If you don't know people, it's more than fair to be cautious and take prepayment. For as long as you fulfil your part of the deal, there's nothing wrong with it! ^-^

With the average pricing of your commissions and ych’s being beneath 100 dollars I don’t think it would be a problem to take full prepayment, I think it’s very generous that you take payment after sketches HOWEVER will the amount of traction you’ve gained and with how many scenes your selling I think prepayment might be better to keep track of them, maybe you should also start a TRELLO

Yeah, I think I will start using TRELLO soon, it might be easier for people to keep track then! ;w;

Really sorry to read this, speaking as someone who's commissioned you before, I'd have felt comfortable paying prior, as I have many other people I commissioned. :3

That’s so sweet ;w; I usually just worry about the waiting time for people who commissioned be, though I try to work as fast as I can

Maybe take payment closer to the time you're ready to do their piece, or alternatively, after you've done the sketch? ^^ Either way, I hope this doesn't happen to you again in future, or that the people who've missed payments contact you back. It's very sad to read that people would treat artists as such.

It would be nice to know who they are as it would save other artists in the future too but "callouts" aren't allowed on this site (which I think is good as majority are BS) but not when someone is scamming or a real threat to safety (different opinions aren't threats btw)

I thought about publishing but I try to wait, maybe they have some issues and they need time, but I will see to it in the future ;w;

They could tell you instead of leaving you like this, that's the decent thing to do- but yes, it would better to make sure for certain beforehand.

Wicked sad to read that, :(

Check out https://artistsbeware.info/
It's a good resource for the future and might help.

*Patpat* im so sorry to hear. It sucks when people do things like that. Taking payment up front is a good way to help solve this...also a good way to note a bad account is if they have no pics in their profile and/or empty galleries. I hope this doesn't happen again. Btw, cute art, Sad subject matter.
Don't let other people stop you from being awesome!!