I will defend furries to my fucking grave. When I was in the hole and needed money for college, not a SINGLE person from tumblr or deviantART ordered a commission. Sometimes people would ask about prices and reply, “Oh, nevermind, that’s too expensive.” I felt miserable.
In a fit of desperation, I brushed off my old Furaffinity account and revamped it. It was full of old, outdated bullshit and still had my “Taco pancakes!!! XDDD” aesthetic embedded in the info box. I had a lot of work to do.
When I was done, I started following and talking to people, I made an art shop, I started posting things and providing commission info.
Within a few weeks, I had my first customer. After a month, I had a full queue of commissions lined up to go. I have $250 in my PayPal wallet left after paying for my textbooks and part of my tuition – and I’m still getting more business!
And you know what my most common comment was? “Your art really should cost more.” These were often followed by $10-20 tips. I was fucking flabbergasted.
So yeah, go ahead and make fun of furries. Undermine the hours of work that goes into their art and fursuits. But they are more willing to pay for art than the tumblr and deviantART community COMBINED, despite all the pro-artist uwu bullshit I see every other page on this damned site.
Is there some kind of demographic explanation for this? Because over the years everything I’ve heard has indicated that furry art is where the money is at.
Apparently a LOT of furries are in programming and IT, for whatever reason.
Heads up on the second day I opened an fa account I got a message about someone wanting a commission. I had the account for 2 days. 2 days
Furries do pay artists more and I respect that.
This is kind of an interesting topic, and i’ll only touch on it briefly because I think the discussion is more interesting than me blabbering but:
Most fandoms have souce material created by non-fandom members which perpetuate the fandom, its commissioned material, “the thing that attracts people to the fandom” etc.
Furry, while influenced by stuff like Robin Hood or Zootopia or Digimon or Bloody Roar, thrives on the creations of the fandom in and of itself.
Now, other fandoms have OC’s, whether they be ponies, or crystal gems or what-have-you, but I wholeheartedly believe there is not another fandom on this planet whose predominant source of media -in all formats- is created by members of the fandom, FOR members of the fandom, and in which external materials are secondary.
Honestly, t kinda boils down to a “well i can’t go to the store and buy a DVD or download the DLC, or stream it on netflix, so where do I get content I want to see?”
And the answer lies in commissions. Commissioned (…or more generally, original, not everything is commissioned) artwork is the lifeblood of this fandom – and I don’t limit that to visual arts at all! Furries make some of the most badass & technically impressive costumes (fursuits), have hundreds of talented musicians, gamers, athletes, professionals, entertainers and businessfolk in their fandom, and most fandom members contribute to the fandom in SOME way – wether it be by creating or by commissioning. It’s an awesome symbiosis between creative types. Lots of people have ideas & are willing to team up with one of thousands of eager & willing artists to have their ideas manifested.
So yeah. As a professional artist in the furry fandom for like, 8 years now, this fandom is quite literally the best for independent artists, financially speaking. It’s nothing short of a phenomenon and one hell of a case study waiting to happen. (tho tbh several have been done and the data is pretty incredible).
Mathee's Blog 