Set up a Patreon for a larger project. You know I'm a good writer. We could story board and pump out an awesome comic. Just a thought Gami. You know where to find me.

id donate for that

You don't have to stream to do a Patreon.

but everyone speects he do.

commissions, but take an actually decent price. as in, at LEAST $50 for your standard of quality, preferably $100+. $20 for your level of quality is completely ridiculous, and no client that you'd actually want would think thats what youre worth.

I have to agree!

pretty sure he is saying that the number who will pay enough are too few to bother with commissions, not that he should set a higher price.

*cocks an eyebrow.*

Twenty bucks. For your work. Right. I'd have better luck being a stripper in a bar, and the minute I would remove any part of my clothing, the entire establishment would be hit with blinding light.

I can't speak for anyone save myself. 150 is my max on any single image, and it doesn't matter to me if the person has skills that can only come from making a deal with some otherworldly entity or is just starting out at drawing simple designs. If someone can't work for me at that price? Fair sailing to both and move on.

In your case, you've gained much of your attention from your erotic works. Hell, the reason why I started following you were because of the clever and bizzare desgins you had for your LGDs. Might as well use it, but the clientelle you would hope to attract would likely not be here. And given it's the internet, anything like a CD or exclusive comic would quickly be bought, dumped and therefore be a fruitless effort. Nature of the beast.

Far as suggestions, hell, see what some of the paysites are looking for. You might be able to weave something together and then peddle it to them. It redacts to the above, but least using them as an outlet may hope to secure some money for yourself.

Just don't develop an attachment to any characters you create if you should. Nasty business trying to protect your babies once the system has them.

Something from you? Shit I'd price out a rough doodle for like 20, im talkin like YCH poses and something rough, in general. You put anything more than an 10-20min into it? That cost goes up significantly. I mean, a colored work from you? I'd easily shell out 85-120 a pop. I don't know really how you work, or how you think, either, but time is money, friend. You should be compensated for your time, with said money.

Know what Gami? I'm a shitlord for even throwing that out there.

You do what you think is right, and ignore comments people like me make. No one can put a price on what you've spent years learning, and honing as a skill. That's on you.

What I am trying to say though is, I would do business with you, if I knew how. I've followed your work for a long, long time. I love what comes out of your soul, and goes onto the canvas. The stuff you do with boschitt and gmod IdiotBox. I miss kitty0706.

I have absolutely nothing but and respect.

If you feel bad or guilty for the cheap prices you got offered, then donate more as a "tip"? Trust me, artists LOVE getting them, and they're so horribly rare when we typically charge less then minimum wage for the hours dumped into a custom piece. :/

Charge to much, and you'll scare away your customers :<

design tattoos?

fill out your commission page with different levels of detail and prices. I know for myself seeing "Price varies with complexity. Send Note and I'll respond within the day" is a huge turnoff. Showing me the level of detail I get within a certain price range makes it much easier to commission someone.

"And most everyone expects that commissions to run around 20 bucks."

What, for you?
I'd actually expect a full detail single character piece to have a one on the front of that price.
Or two characters to have a zero on the back end of it.

Night shift sucks. Get a different shift if you can :/

You could probably setup a patreon "per artwork"

This is often a good solution.

I did night shift science for two years, pay was great but your social life vanishes as a result.

The time and effort is a bit tricky, I don't know how long it takes you to put together an image; but I'm about 10,000% sure that people will pay quite a bit for a commission from you, as other people have pointed out at or over $100. (Most likely over, way over).

You can do it as a bit of an experiment though, set a goal of charging like $10 hour for an image (or whatever you need to get by) and see if people will take you up on that particular commission offer; and I'm pretty sure there will be those that do. Course this is on the assumption you can put together an image if you had a day to yourself to do it.

Gami's Gaming webcomic would be entertaining. Then you could have donations and weekly updates and ad views.

You could easily ask for over 100 quid per full commission, single character and your commish list would still overflow.

lol I always expected a single character to be around 50-60$ (which I would gladly pay or more)

For the art you do I'd suggest $50 as an absolute minimum $100 even.

Commissions ought to be based on 1.) The cost of your time, and 2.) What you can get away with. You can probably get away with quite a bit because, at least it seems to me, that name-recognition alone increases commission demand. You can probably start at $100 for a full-color image.

Didn't you have an auction commission that sold for like...thousands of dollars?

YCHs tend to bring in good money. although im not sure why you think you need to have a stream to do patreon. im pretty sure thats not in their rules.

It isn't, it's an odd thing to see?

Find some kind of a sitting work, where you be able to draw commissions. Work will give you not big but stable money. And commissions - the rest of it ( just as an offer ). :p

You could try posting a few YCHs to test the water? At the very least it'll give you some idea of what people would be happy to pay for your work.

Some have probbaly already said this, but streams and commissions aren't necessarily the only thing you could do on Patreon. Some artists use Patreon as their own personal paywall, but it was originally intended as a sort of 'tip jar' for just this sort of time. Generous people donate money, allowing you to continue drawing and delivering great content without the need to rely heavily on commissions. Streams and major commissions don't necessarily need to be a reward. Personally, I find the smaller rewards, like WIP sketches, discarded ideas and/or random doodles are a nice little "thank you for donating" without turning the thing into a "give me money so you can see my art" thing. Even 'early viewing' can be a nice appeal, getting to see completed works a week or more before stuff is posted to other places such as FA. Just 50 people donated $5 a month is still $250 a month... or, well, probably somewhere in the $175 range? I'm not sure how the Patreon payment thing works exactly. You'd have to ask someone who actually runs one. lol

TL;DR Patreon doesn't need to be a major, time consuming project to generate a large income. It only needs to be a tip jar for a little extra pocket money.

Expand yourself outside the furry fandom. That's what I did. Sure I hide myself doing it but it gives me more income than this squabble of a hobby ever will.

Nothing wrong in asking for prices for commissions that actually cover your expenses. Especially with your fanbase and skill, I think you could totally ask for prices that would be more sustainable!

Just name a price! I would be honored to be able to commission you. ^.^

I agree there is nothing wrong with setting proper pricing. Hell, I have been trying to contact about a commission, and I expect not to pay less than $60...
Which seems a fairly reasonable start of negotiations.

Seriously, as a consumer, sure I love low loooow prices. But you should never undervalue yourself and go below at least minimum wage per hour for your efforts.

I could teach you how to game Dave & Buster's for profit. Not sure how much $300 extra a week could help but it's about what I pull down there playing the games. Not sure if you have one or more of those near you.

Details, please. :O I'm facing possible eviction, and $300/week for a couple weeks would dig me outta this hole.

$20 is good for like...no-input b&w sketches (like, they say what they want to see--nothing complex--and give money, and they get something in exchange, with no options to alter it after), but not for full-color commissions, not at your level.

But on the other hand you don't want to go the other route and charge $200 (or more) for single-character color commissions...even if it was your sole method of income (which I doubt) it is beyond the means of most people.

yea just set up proper prices that you value yaself

For your Skill you should crank up the prices up to atleast 50-70 bucks per piece, Also mybe try some other stuff like Icons Cover Pictures, etc

yea.. graveyard/swing shift really kills social time.. i've been doing it for almost 10 years now and it works okay for ME... but thats cause my friends are either overseas or nonexistent.

I really think you should be charging more for your art if you are selling for only $20. I know a lot of people have already said it but really, that would be a good price for a sketch. Cleaned up a bit if you have time. I've often been told to price my work (and its no where near as good as yours) based on how much time i spend on it, in hour increments. a simple sketch could be half an hour to and hour. $20. I don't know how long your color works take but something that takes you 3 or 4 hours should go for at least $60. A trained skill is worth much more than minimum wage even if you just do it in your off time.

I am looking for comic and scenery artists still able/daring to draw stuff like city scapes landscapes etc. Not many dare that. Might be a very back and forth communication too. Price wouldnt matter if it isnt like 2k per landscape. Highest "detailed" character amount would be around 5.

Imagine like a crowd at school but everyone beside the main characters are "generic" people fitting situation.

The landscapes would be more or an art-design thing i guess where the sceneries are the major impression and not the people in it.

Typing this on mobile so i can add refs what i imagine actually but you are free to ask if it hit your potential interest.

Typos i am sorry for. I try my best on the phone.

Ugh, healthcare still needs a good, hearty overhaul. Do some digging into the law in your area, but a lot of medical bills can be pretty much ignored if you can't reasonably pay them and live too. One of my relatives had to spend a few days in the hospital...they weren't life threateningly ill or anything, just in a rough patch and the doctor wanted to keep an eye on them. When they got out, they had a bill over $400k. This was before the whole healthcare thing went in, so it was ALL on them. They ended up paying what they could and telling the hospital they were crazy about the rest. I mean, honestly...something like 75% of the bill was for the room. A normal, plain room with no fancy equipment and it ran 300K or so for three or four days. O_o

Raise your prices, and you'll attract customers who don't expect to pay bargain basement rates. Your name recognition and level of output quality can command significant prices, I bet. I know I'm willing to pay for it, and I'm positive I'm not alone.

Really? 20$? My price range?

Honestly, you have a firm grasp of anatomy and a defined style, you could be going for double that price and still be considered cheap.
Hell, your final product rivals that of most high-end artists here that ask for 60 to 80 bucks a piece.

My unprofessional suggestion: Experiment with higher prices, maybe you could ease them up with a promotion or something. You know what they say? "Hit 'em with a gimmick" since your adult artwork is the most popular I'd start with there, i dunno: "Leather month, all commissions involving leather this month have a 10% discount", just a simple example. You know, getting customers is not just about product and price, involving a little bit of marketing would do you wonders. Then, If you want to get out of erotic artwork or promote your SFW pieces you could start offering discounts for them.

Of course, promotions and discounts wont work if your prices are already insanely cheap, so taking them up a notch would be necessary.


Just my two cents tho!

TBH, if I was going to commission you, I wouldn't think about it with any less than $100 in hand. Your artwork is worth $20 for a sketch, probably $40 for ink, and easily $100 for full color, shaded, especially for something complex like an LGD like I'd want. Like someone said above, fill your commission info page with prices and examples of quality for the price and you'll get more customers for sure when you open slots.

I recommend commissions, especially at higher prices. I'd hire you in a heartbeat.

...$20? yeah okay. I'd probably pay like $100-$150 for a piece of your art if I could or something, aka, if i weren't broke.

But regardless, good luck with your medical bills man, I wish you luck with everything. Maybe you could talk to someone at a game dev company or something and talk about being a concept artist or something? That'd be cool I dunno.

What you should charge is what price point you think would get a good amount of offers while being worth your time and effort.

It's probably more than $20. If people complain that it's over $20, then they're probably not going to be your client. Not all furries are broke.

You're selling yourself short. You're work could viably go for anywhere between $80 and $200 dollars if not more. You should test the waters. Perhaps offer commissions in that range, to gage demand. Set your bar high then ease back.

Or better yet do a YCH auction and see how high people go to gage demand.

Boob tree. http://www.dirtybutton.com/media/db.....-boob-tree.jpg

Google: "tips how to save money"

It helped me. It might help you.

You're work is worth way more then a 20 spot, as others have stated.
There are those who wouldn't want to pay alot for a commission but you have a large enough following of people who support and admire your work that you could easily charge a minimum of 150 for a simple piece. The people who don't want to pay more to support an artist who is making a living can look for someone else to commission :/

You pay for quality, and your work is high quality. I honestly have wanted to commission you for ages and never expected to pay under 200-300 for your work.

Experiment with your work flow. Draw a piece and time it. Stop at each phase and judge how long it took you with how much effort it took you to achieve. Sketch, check the time, there's your low end. Inks > flats > the max. Do that for a character, then do a set for an environment same thing. Quality would be additive price, extra characters, environments, complex characters are multipliers.

Just don't sell yourself short, no one who has responded yet expects you to work for peanuts, people like your work and want your work. Art might not be the most reliable income source but it can't hurt your bottom line.

As for other suggestions, I come from a editing and Photoshop background as well, a little considered option for that skill set is working for your local newspaper. Light work, good pay and normally a really relaxed work environment you would however need to put together some sort of portfolio or fake ads you made and page layouts.

PS: if you're looking to make a quick buck I'll commission you NOW and I will compensate generously

if theres one thing i hate, it's commissions...not because there expensive, but because i hate online transactions! fuck you evil hackers stealing all my money! but, if i COULD pay for commissions, i'd probably say....hmmmm i'm abit cheap, so i'd say thirty, but it doesnt seem fair, hmmmmm man, i'm bad with guessing prices.

You might try Auctions for detailed commissions to see what the interest and willingness to pay is. Otherwise, try timed commissions? What quality of work can you reasonably deliver in 1 hour vs 2 or 3? Set your pricing based on that.

maybe attempt freelancing for a little while as a graphic artist. See if it's something that you can maintain in your off time?

Do you own a car? Uber.

Completely unrelated xD

since yourea skilled artist you should try to make a scify sketch portafolio and goto seek fortune in the indies companies, they are always looking for designers :D

if i had the money anyways (why you though i started drawing by myself XD)

Oh you're worth WAY more than $20 Gami. My price range might be limited, but I've seen furry artists around your quality regularly sell commissions for $80-100 a pop.

Work offline dude. Sense you work nightshift like I do, most people are asleep when your awake. So less distractions. Crank some tunes, do what you love to do, and upload WIP's with a message to the customers. When they get back to you, and your feeling up to it, get back to them. Your making it a passive job that wrings in money that way :)

May be a good time to make a proper portfolio to showcase your professional skills. Put it together from simple character/logo concept type designs to fully colored and detailed pieces to the best of your ability. Just a nice medley that can show your range as an artist and push yourself out as a freelance illustrator. Break the niche binds of sticking to a single fandom (and porn) and see where it goes. Sci-fi writers need cover and book/story illustrations to draw attention to their writing, advertising has plenty of opportunity, small gaming studios are always on the lookout for attention grabbing artwork and conceptual pieces (as 1x1x1x1x said). May be worth a shot making your own more professionally aimed website and basically whore yourself out so you can start landing some gigs and hopefully lock in a more long term one and be able to relax and be more social.

To make money selling art, one way to command higher prices is to make physical artwork people can hang in their living room with their mom and preacher visiting. Dark Natasha and Goldenwolf make a lot of money doing it.

This comment made me giggle. XD

Possibly take commissions but increase your prices, or find a style that you can bang out quickly that will give people a great level of quality as a sort of win-win (pseudo-sketches, flat colours, w/e).

If you end up selling digital goods you'll likely end up selling porn since that's kinda in high demand but with your level of quality you could easily market it as a 'premium' product and produce jaw-dropping stuff at high prices.

A bunch of other folks have already covered this but I'll do so too.

1) you don't need to stream for patreon. You don't even need to do commissions for it. A lot of folks do their own comic project or work on what they really want, and folks will pay to see progress shots and all that. Do what YOU want with it. Folks will come. I'd buy in right now. Patreon specials on commish art would be an awesome perk for higher pay levels though.

2) $20 is WAY too low for your work. There should be basically nothing less than $75 and your finished works are easily worth $200-300 (For ref, single commishes from Strype are $250, and he always fills up)

Also there's also a few artists (Angrboda, Blackshirtboy, etc) who are doing pay comics. They'll make up a 10-12 page comic, and stick it up on a pay site for $5-$6 a copy, and they tend to sell really well too. Some folks might complain of course that you're "putting your work behind a paywall" but exposure alone is not compensation for the years of work you've put into your skillset. At least take home minimum wage.

Not that it really matters, but most, including myself have expected you to go behind a paywall leaving future works unavailable until reposed elsewhere by others. Do what ya want really, no one can stop you, and will not be majorly effected by any of your actions, or care that much at all as I have learned that you are only as important as the dicks/tits/pussy you post at that time. The rest is pander. You are putting more thought into this than needed expecting the usual list of kissass responses from your horde of popularity, as no one can do anything but you. Personally I do not care, maybe a tiny bit of disappointment to the go-to paywall that any decent artist is flocking to like sheep, oh well~

I like trees :3 I'm not that big of a fan of sex pics but I watched you cause of your EQ2 art. You could always get started with your own furry comic or such as many have, just get someone to help you.

So just make a basic patreon without a bunch of bells and whistles. Use it for its intended purpose of "I love this person's stuff, here is money to support them making shit that I love". The basic $1 a month 'thanks for your support' tier with, what, like $5 a month meaning you'll post your stuff on patreon somewhere between a couple days to a month before it gets posted publicly, or giving them links to the full resolution/art program files/whatever. Do commissions the normal way.

Just remember not to use it like a paywall service. Not what that shit's for.

I really hope we don't lose you here. You're such an amazing artist, and it would be terrible if you stopped posting

Agreed with others here.

Clientelle can help you find good prices, but shouldn't be the ones who set your prices! Made that mistake once, stopped taking commissions for years because the very thought of them depressed me so ( was doing between 8 -13 HOURS of work on a picture that I was getting paid only 8 dollars for lol.. regularly. and these were all hyper picky people as well that wanted constant revisions. )
It's best to start at a liveable hourly rate and go from there. For sake of simple numbers let's pretend you can live off five dollars an hour because this is the early 1900s and dollars are worth a lot ( lol ), and let's say your average painted character image takes about three hours. Start at a 15 dollar flat rate for a painted character, maybe if you get in a creativity rut, can offer discounts if people commission you for something you want to draw ( "I really want to draw a dragon breathing fire, I'll do that for 10$! ) which will help garner interest ( and as commissions tend to have a stacking effect, you may get more commissions of that topic if they see the one you did at a discount for the first dude, and thus you'll earn money off of it ). Once you start to feel like you're getting waaaay too many commissions for you to handle, up the prices just a tiny bit -- not significantly because you don't want to scare away new clients, but definitely make the price increase public because scaring old clients is just as bad. Again on the mythological number of 15 dollars for a three hour piece, let's say you up it to 18 dollars, and then 21 dollars, and so on until you're getting steady clientelle at a price that's fair to them but way more importantly fair to you.

If it helps, it takes me about 2.5 hours for a flat color sketch of a medium-level of detail character, I found my price bracket would be fair to customers and myself at 25 dollars for this ( single character, no backround, flat color ) HOWEVER to prevent customers getting way more than they are paying for ( as in the past I'd get into multi-hour ruts of doing edits on the same low price picture, as previously stated ) I do NOT offer edits or revisions, unless they're an obvious flaw on my part, at that price. Thus, this forces people who are particular about what exactly they want into the higher price bracket -- money for the effort from me, happy customer getting exactly what they want. Woo!

Not sure if you needed help with pricing but this is what I've learned from years of doing commissions.

Also I very rarely follow friends on here -- my watch list is almost strictly people whose art I absolutely respect, admire, strive to be better than. I love your art, and I think you could definitely get some pretty pennies for it. c:

Yeah, if people think they can commission you for $20, they're delusional. I believe at one point you even had an auction for three commissions and got like $850 for it, right? So you could probably easily sell a single character color commission for $150 minimum. Try offering themes you're interested in that could give discounts, or ways to add on to the full price for more complex ideas and backgrounds, etc. Trust me, if you opened for regular commissions you'd probably never have to worry about finding the right customers again! Just ignore the people who want you to work for slave wages!

Ok.

Gonna do something I might regret but... gonna go against the stream a little here.

You say you need money, but can't draw $20 art? Bullshit. You need money. You do great work... but so do a lot of the people who do small, simple commissions. So try scaling down on detail and complexity a little. I can't believe someone who has reached "a great height" in their artistic skill is now unable to do a simple sketch or linework for $20. Hell, even Gideon was doing little scribbles at one con for $5 or $10 that took him 2 minutes, and got lots of customers.

Don't let people boost your ego so high you find yourself in possession of a skill you feel you can never be paid enough to actually USE for something, when it could be applied carefully to help you deal with your expenses. Does it kinda suck to have to slog through a bunch of scribbles? Probably. Hello real world, and the problems it lays down for you. You at least have a skill you can apply to wriggle out from under your debt, if only a little. And maybe those smaller commissions will draw larger ones as people see you being more active.

Another way to look at it is this. People are saying "$150 minimum for a picture". 7 sketches at $20 apiece would be about the same; you could pass up on a considerable amount of detail and still have a happy customer. Look at the very people making these comments; half of them would saw off a leg for something from you, to read their comments. I'm sure they'd part with a twenty for some line art, and there's a decent number of them here.

I wanted to play devil's advocate here, because basically a lot of people are essentially encouraging you to do nothing because "you're too good to do small stuff". It DOES kinda sound like you don't WANT to do small stuff either, but that's more your own decision.

The only other suggestion I can make is to leave the fandom entirely and look for a more professional artist's job with an advertising firm or other company that needs someone with your skills. You'd get paid a fair wage on everything you did and though it woouldn't likely be porn, you would have some income that could (maybe) free you from your debt in time.

Just don't lay there letting people hugbox you to death, instead of doing something with what you have.

I really don't understand the "20 bucks for a commission" mentality. I regularly pay more than that.

You should try doing an auction for a full color two character commission. See what kind of prices you fetch.

Considering he did an auction for three commissions that got over $800, and that was several years ago? Yeah, I honestly don't know why he doesn't think people would pay a lot for commissions when they clearly have in the past. He could probably charge $250 at least for a full color image.

1. Take commissions
2. Actually finish them.
Bonus Objective: Finish them in a reasonable deadline.

It's really that. People will a lot of money from art from you All that needs to be done is deliver.

Heh.

It's rare to do what you love and get paid nicely for it. Very rare.

Your comment about trees had me instantly think of Bob Ross and where his popularity would have been had he done artwork of your category vs trees and mountains :D

Oh and $20 is a waste of time for commissions. Aim higher. Much higher. Your skills are enough to warrant it, you just need to find the right audience.

Up your prices.

As an artist, you're downright phenomenal (pr0n notwithstanding), and frankly I would expect to pay closer to $100 for your work.

I have to agree your prices are way to low at $20

Obvious solution is to draw a tree with a couple of tits in it :D

Really though, I don't know how quickly you doodle but If you can do a decent sketch in 20 minutes and charge $20 for it you'd have a pretty decent hourly pay. For anything more complex I think an artist of your skill could easily up that price by a lot. Just the fact that you don't do commissions often probably means you can charge more because people with lots of disposable income can't risk missing the opportunity to get art from you.

Just don't make the mistake a lot of artists seem to make and overload yourself, taking on too much at once.

"I mean I can do other types of artwork and photoshop stuff, it's just that adult content is the only thing that gets attention, yanno? Ooh a lovely tree. yawn. OOH TITS. Anyway--"

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/16963/

I'll pay lots of money to get more LGDs out of you, really!

> medical bills still something no sane person can pay off in a lifetime

Have you talked to a debt counseling service? There are non-profit ones all over the US. Provided you live in the US. Chapter 7 might actually be a good option, depending on how deep you're into it.

You're too talented to be having money troubles, dude.

The funny thing is, when you raise your prices out of the reach of the people who expect to get custom quality artwork in the $20 range, those people will bitch, loudly, and then when they see you aren't being swayed, they go the fuck away and bother someone else.

A full color commission from you should be in the hundreds at least.

You don't have to be doing streams OR commissions to have a patreon, either. Start one, just put it out there, tell people you're just wanting to see what it can do, and how much of a dent it can make in your debt, as well as how much it can enable you to do more art. Even if you completely expect it to fail, you have nothing to lose by TRYING. If you're worried about more debt, don't set yourself up to owe a fuckload of art for nickels and dimes. People will understand if your rewards are as simple as early access (it doesn't even have to be exclusive or paywall-y, just getting to see stuff first, or at a higher res makes people happy).

If you have a story to tell or an idea you want to try out, you can make the patreon about seeing that happen. People also like rewards that are about access to the artist they like, or any kind of interaction. A chat, a skype call, patron-only polls to help you pick from a number of ideas you're thinking about for your next picture, there's plenty of things you can do to engage your audience and give them something they value for their support without adding to your debt to others.

I'd be happy to talk to you more on the subject if you'd be interested, but seriously, you should not have a great deal of difficulty making a patreon work.

Sent you a note!