JiangShiArt
patreon
Important Commission Announcement
🕑 Added 2018-10-09 03:55:48 +0000 UTC Ok. This will be slightly on the longer side, but it's important that I clearly state what's up and shed some light on the inner workings of things while addressing commissions and such.I take/open commissions on occasion, usually when I'm trying to supplement income. Recently I've taken on quite a few of them, but alas, the bottleneck has happened once again.
Here is the reality:
I have a day job (or several). It's hard to get by with that. I wanna work on NSFW stuff, mostly because it's enjoyable and is a chance to escape the grind of survival. But, in recent times, I've opened up commissions thinking it could supplement financially in a significant way. Here are some points to I'd like to illuminate regarding the equilibrium that is being a freelance artist, especially of the NSFW variety.
Problem #1: Drawing to a high degree of quality (which I always aspire to) is a very time consuming endeavor, but people are only willing to pay so much for my time. If prices are too high, many people won't be able to agree to the commission terms. If the prices are too low, my time is devalued, and I'm losing money by not working on other things. So there is a delicate balance. One which I often fail at in my time vs. compensation calculations, as it is impossible to accurately judge the time cost for an image exactly.
Problem #2: Commissions eat up time and it takes away from what I could be making for this Patreon. This Patreon is still a bit new, and I haven't tried to really spread the word too much about it, because I'm still learning how to do do this effectively. The time it takes to prepare things for the Patreon is nothing to scoff at. The idea is that it's business as usual as far as my personal NSFW art and I'm just providing some buy in for patrons in a symbiotic relationship. Obviously, we ain't there yet. And I thank you for baring with me.
Problem #3: 90% of commissions I get are people's OCs from either WoW, Final Fantasy, etc... Although I appreciate that you've selected me to make your fantasy characters a reality, it's simply not that interesting for me to do, and it ends up taking longer to do the commissions, especially when they are filled with intricate armor sets with very specific refference, even down to the exact poses and backgrounds. And I hate to say it, but some of these characters are bland, cookie cutter, and ill conceived. It does nothing for me to grind out work I'm not passionate about and, in the long run, it doesn't really help me out to be making art of other people's WoW characters.
Problem #4: I'm also bound, for the time being, to an NSFW game project as well, in hopes it will take off and perhaps be a persistent option for supporting me doing more NSFW art as my main gig, but it too, is a slow burn. Not a bad project by any means. Just, the nature of a larger game is complicated and has many unknowns.
Ok.
With all of this out in the open, it is hopefully clear that something has to give. There are only so many hours in a day, and after being exhausted from the daily routines and jobs, I only have so much energy and time left in a day. Burnout is a huge problem that I'm trying to avoid. It's happened several times, which would result in me basically disappearing for an extended period of time.
It comes down to:
I either invest any extra time into this Patreon OR do commissions. Both is impossible, at least until there are more patrons.
After deliberating, I'll have to put commissions on hold for the time being. It's the only solution I can come up with.
If anybody has any thoughts or ideas to this tune, please, by all means, feel free to chime in. I'd like as open dialogue as possible with these things. I feel it's important everyone considers these realities.
