Nuki News #64 - Professionalism.

The Furry Community is filled with a lot of vibrant unique people with their own characters, interests, and styles! Individual creativity is rewarded greatly more than almost any other community I could think of.

There are a lot of ‘norms’ that are far less emphasized in the community too. Physical affection or sexuality, and appearance are treated less strictly, for instance, and when it comes to hiring furries to make you something, there’s often way more leniency. After all, when you commission a furry, it’s just them- there’s typically no team behind a product you’re getting, often it’s one-of-a-kind, too! On top of that, they likely aren’t working on things full time and have a ‘real world’ job to take care of things.

Suffice to say, there’s lots of trust as a community we’re willing to give each other, and ultimately it’s a good thing, it’s what binds us and makes it generally as strong as it is. But we’ve all either heard or experienced cases where we’ve gotten burned by our trust in an artist in the community to make us something not delivering, or taking ages to do so without communication. On today’s Nuki News, I’ll be going into what practices are good for being a professional furry artist- whether you’re hoping to do this part time and take on a commission here or there, or do it as a living, as I have been for the last 9 months.

It all starts with three things: Consistency, Communication, and Care

Consistency: How often do you post work? How often do you take on work?

As an artist, if you want to be hired by someone, you don’t need a degree, or fancy accolades- your art just needs to communicate something in a style that appeals to someone, to the point they decide “yknow what? I’d love to see them draw this/my character(s) doing XYZ” and bam.

Ok, I’m simplifying it. But the successful artists doing this for a living are regularly opening for commissions, and post somewhat regularly. Even just once a week helps a lot in furry social media for people to start taking notice of what you do, and wanting part of the action too. If you don’t post often, like once a month, and the art quality isn’t the same/isn’t improved, like you post a wip one month, and then a colored drawing another, then another wip 2 weeks from then… it doesn’t inspire confidence you do this regularly enough for someone to want to hire you to draw them something. I think a good number of us furs have commissioned an artist like this, and they either never complete it, or don’t get it done until months later.

While I was arting part time, I wasn’t perfectly consistent. Sometimes a month would go by and I didn’t open for commissions. Some weeks I could only post 1 thing! But, it was consistent enough that I grew an audience of very cool folks who trusted I could get their ideas out on digital paper. Now I am posting every other day, and opening commissions every month for 10 or more people at a time! It’s not easy, but I will say the effort has been paying off.

Communication: When and how to talk to clients!

You’ve probably commissioned an artist you like to draw you something, and maybe they didn’t get the details right- not only that, they didn’t tell you when you might expect this to be done, or if you’d get a Work-in-Progress image or not. That can leave you feeling confused and anxious about if they’d ever do it after some weeks go by. (I say if you haven’t heard back from the artist in some way about progress in 2 weeks, message them!!)

Since opening commissions in 2018, I have successfully been able to deliver on a guaranteed WiP image within 7 days of a client paying me. And, I tell this to commissioners up front- after they pay my invoice, they can expect an art WiP within 7 days. My average invoice-paid-to-finished-art time has actually gotten down to a 14 day average, too! The WiP sharing is important for clients to go over any changes too. Something else I’ve been learning to do is directly ask commissioners if they have a particular vision for how the image will look. Up until a few months ago, I had not been doing that before, and I realized, with how I offer commissions(first come first served), clients were rushing to get a slot that the ideas they had for the commission went unsaid! It’s not their fault, either- that’s one of the drawbacks to offering commissions this way. So I need to account for that and make sure as a professional artist I ask questions and confirm where I have artistic liberties with a prompt.

Care: Respecting people’s trust in you, and respecting yourself.

As a creative, your time and effort are valuable- I could write a whole post on pricing, which I probably will some day. But it’s important an artist cares about their work and who they are working with! That means pricing yourself that you’re being compensated for your time, and under no circumstances, talking down on a client or their idea. As the artist, it’s up to you to set your boundaries on what sort of art you’re interested in making. If you do find you can’t complete the work for a client after all, it’s good to let them know and if possible recommend another artist who may be up their alley! For example, I don’t draw humans anymore. It’s not that I can’t, they just don’t interest me to draw. So I have a preference list (like below) and I added it to the list. If I didn’t, and someone asked me to draw a human, I’d spend a lot of energy making it going “ugh I wish I didn’t have to draw this human” haha.

I’d also like to emphasize that a professional artist not talk down about their own work. I have seen peers of mine posting a commission and complaining about it; how their art “isn’t that good but here it is anyway” or blatantly saying their work sucks while posting a commission they made for someone who paid them to make it. It’s going to turn off folks from wanting art from you real fast no matter how “bad” you think your art is. How could someone want to hire you if you wouldn’t like what you’re making?

Honestly this advice is good for freelance creatives in general, it doesn’t specifically have to be in the fur community. And I’ll admit, it’s pompous of me to use myself as an example of what I consider ‘Professionalism’ - but I am very proud of my work and the space I’ve made for myself in the community. Without what I’ve listed here, I’d very much not be able to do this full time for a living.

I hope this helps, if you were hoping to pursue making art for the fur community! You'll notice there is a lot this doesn't cover,(like invoicing, scheduling, workload management, etc) but all of that is not super necessary to be a trusted artist in the community. If you're not an artist, or don't plan on opening for commission work, I hope it was interesting or informative to read. If you hire an artist, I think it’s fair to expect they are consistently showing the quality of their work, communicative on delivering work they make, and care about the work they make too.