braindeaddork:
hanmonsterart:
painted-bees:
ikrutt:
wakor:
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 It was full of old, outdated bullshit and still had my “Taco pancakes!!!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.
Can confirm! Even if you don’t draw porn or animals, there is almost certainly market for your art over at FurAffinity. I’ve seen a big rise in non-anthro art during the past few years as well, with people generally being very positive towards it.
The clunky old coding and sketchy admins are bothersome, but not enough to drive me away from the business and the handful of people I enjoy interacting with. If your only concern is to earn money off your art, I think FA is one of the online art galleries where it’s easiest to build a good rep and get returning customers.
In addition, there are a lot of really good artists of all stripes there, some of which I suspect are professionals doing furry stuff or porn on the side. I’ve collected a couple of hundreds of notable ones in my journals, see links at the bottom for previous entries.
PS. I know a lot of people have issues with the site, and if you do, know that I’m not interested in hearing your opinion. Keep it to yourself.
P. much all of this, yeh.
Usually I stay my hand on reblogging stuff like this, but I just couldn’t hold back the impulse.
If you’d told me a few years ago that I would wind up accidentally falling into a freelance career in the fandom, I would’ve laughed it off as completely absurd– and yet here I am. In all seriousness, the furry fandom has been one of the most supportive, helpful, and positive influences in my life since I stumbled into it, and it’s because of them that I have a job where I am both A.) respected B.) treated with nothing but kindness and C.) paid a wage more comfortable than just about any otherwise “inexperienced” post-grad college student could hope for.
Some of the sweetest, most incredible, most wonderful artists I’ve ever known dwell there with me, and it’s been a real honor to get to know them.
TL;DR: of course every fandom will have its shitty minorities and I will never defend uncouth behavior of any kind, furry or not, but the fandom has been so, so good to me, and I now consider it an odd sort of pride thing to be a part of it.
Going to add to the positive furry fandom train. Before learning about FA I was never able to really get commissions from any other site out there. The only thing I really could get was trades for Gaia gold or Second Life money. As soon as a friend pointed me to FA when registration opened in April of 2010 I quickly signed up, and started putting my tablet to use.
Over the almost 6 years now that I’ve been drawing for the fandom, I’ve supported my family, paid urgent bills, gotten much needed relief for dentist visits, food, you name it. I was at a great high point one year I was easily able to support my family of four. I quickly made amazing friends, loyal clients and connections I couldn’t of dreamed of. I never intended to join the fandom but I’m thankful I did. They’ve saved my ass more times than I wish I would of needed in times that I severely needed it.
Sure, there are bad apples, but that’s literally everywhere, not just the furry fandom. And in a freelance art community, the furry fandom is hands down the best for artists wanting to start a shop, get it going and start to make a client base. I don’t regret a second of joining and am happy to continue to work for the fandom for years to come.