http://magicalondine.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] magicalondine.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] artistsbeware2_archive 2012-06-13 04:07 am (UTC)

This topic seemed pretty interesting, so I thought I would chime in! I haven't seen a whole lot of people on artists-beware dealing with the sort of niches I focus on, so perhaps my perspective might be useful.

I'm mostly in the "anime" niche. I do a lot of fanart commissions, but a fair bit of OCs as well. From a combination of heavy personal preference and high demand, almost all the work I do centers around women or girls, especially lesbian shipping and erotic artwork. I do fantasy lesbian work (elves, demons, human/animal hybrids) and fantasy OCs as subset of my main focus, and finally I do a little bit of cute furry art on top of it - mostly Pokemon and female anthro characters.

What sells: Color, absolutely, and pretty much exclusively - I've never had anyone approach me for a sketch, lineart or type of commission other than my full CGs, even though I offer other types of work and have suggested prices listed in my commission info. I tend to get compliments on my coloring, so that might be part of it, but overall I think the "anime" market really loves vibrant colors.

My price range has been slowly becoming more defined as I go along, since I haven't been doing this for very long, and it's still not an ideal representation of time/effort/demand. Since most of my work is two character pieces in full color, I usually make $22 to $35 per piece depending on what kind of background the commissioner wants (or if they want one at all). Single character pieces tend to be $15 to $22. I'll probably be gradually raising those prices, though, as I've found that I have a lot of people lining up to buy art and I'm spending a bit too much time working for the amount I make!

Sites to use/advertise on: DeviantArt, I've found, has been pretty slow for me, and I've only gotten about five people from there asking for commissions in the past year or so. Only one of those was taken so far; I can't remember how some of them worked out, but one commissioner seemed to have absolutely no idea what he wanted, and in the end I just had to let the offer die because he couldn't decide on an idea. @_@

Obviously, since I do a lot of lesbian porn, I couldn't post the works that I was putting so much effort into on DA, as I was doing commissions for friends and through word-of-mouth. Just a few months ago I decided to sign up and begin posting on Hentai Foundry (http://www.hentai-foundry.com/) (NSFW - warning applies to pretty much the whole site, as you can imagine). I've found that the reception there has been very good for me, and I've become quite busy with commissions coming through there. :) Not only that, but I've found that my works get more attention on HF than DA, despite HF not having any groups in which to post your works.

They accept a lot of different subjects on that site, as well as furry art. If you're someone who does porn and can cater to anime/video game/comic/etc fandoms, I would definitely recommend advertising on HF.

That about covers what I had to say - though there's one last thing that's worth mentioning. I've found that in the "anime" niche, especially when it comes to porn, I get a lot of people who seem to have never commissioned an artist before, or are simply unclear on what they want. The best solution to this that I know of is to be very upfront with people and work out as many details as possible before any money changes hands. Good advice in general I suppose, but especially if you do not want to do lots of edits. @_@

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