Creative Commons license icon

For furry creators who do commission work, is the early 2025 North American economy affecting that income?

No votes yet
Tags:

Comments

Your rating: None

Poll inspired by this Bluesky post.

Your rating: None Average: 4 (2 votes)

While I'm a smaller artist, I have a smaller commission price so that might lead to more commissions. That being said, while the start of the year was strong, now that spring is here, leading into summer (which I've found to always be a dry spell), my commissions have dwindled significantly. If I was a bigger artist, I'd probably see the same thing, and I imagine for them this whole year will be, unfortunately, a dry spell.

Sincerely,

Gregg Gorey (Bbear Artist)

Your rating: None Average: 4 (1 vote)

I actually haven't taken a commission in years. I never really advertised myself much, but would still get offers every so often; more so on DeviantArt than FA. I'm actually trying to get back into the art game and frankly, it's hard to even get more than a dozen or so hits these days unless you drop a real banger. Might have to start thinking outside the box about how to self-promote and give my work the "it" factor, or the "nostalgia" factor, or just a general "cool" factor. But I look around at a lot of artists' accounts who I followed over the years, and many of them have seemingly abandoned ship, or aren't getting quite the views they used to.

I'm not saying this to brag, but just to demonstrate what I'm talking about: Goldenwolf is (or at least was) something of a legend in the were community (before it was the therian/otherkin community) and her art made me mildly jealous sometimes. I'd never have admitted it at the time, but I was taking pointers from her since I was like 14. I'm 42 now. To be honest, I still ain't half as good, IMO. Her art still gets far more views than mine overall, but she had an ad for her book which is supposed to be like a best-of collection, specifically her icon werewolves IIRC. I think it got like 740-something views, and I was like, no way, that ought to get way more. It's Goldie, we're talking about!

I wasn't paying attention to her at the time, but around that same time, a few pieces of Robin Hood fan art I did were getting added to groups and everything. Scored a few commissions that way, and they got more views than the preview of her book. That felt weird, you know? Even her ad, coming from someone with a graphic design background here, was better than most of the stuff I used to do for an actual living. But it's just, raw talent isn't the be all end all on the web now, if it ever really was.

She's probably doing better than me right now, at least!

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <img> <b> <i> <s> <blockquote> <ul> <ol> <li> <table> <tr> <td> <th> <sub> <sup> <object> <embed> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <dl> <dt> <dd> <param> <center> <strong> <q> <cite> <code> <em>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This test is to prevent automated spam submissions.
Leave empty.