Ysera

The list of potential upcoming resources has me kind of excited. And a plan for exactly how the donations would work out puts me at ease regarding donating.

It stuns me that they rant at length about how they have a[n unenforceable] no refund policy, and how dare OP request a refund over $10 on artwork that was never even started. I just... wow. For me, the phrase "emergency commission" is a MAJOR red flag in the first place. I've seen entirely too many cases of artists who are either in a perpetual state of emergency, or they cut and run with the money, sometimes without meaning to do so. When folks chime in with "Don't spend the commission money until you've finished the work," it's legit the best policy, and emergency commissions generally work counter to that thought.

Regarding fursuit care instructions, I can offer up a few things: Washing/Cleaning -Faux fur is safe to put in the wash, but I would turn the suit inside-out first. This will give you access to the digitigrade padding, which may allow you to remove it (If you do remove it, take notes/pictures of what you removed from where, and maybe also mark the pieces with a fabric marker so that you can put them back together in the right place). -Always wash your suit in cold water. -A delicate detergent is generally ideal, but your mileage may vary. (Sometimes, carpet cleaner is the only thing that works.) Some detergents, delicate or not, don't interact well with some furs. If you have concerns and have some of the fur available fur repairs, test it on a scrap piece before using it on your suit. -If you use a washing machine, use a delicate cycle. Also put your suit into a laundry bag to prevent it from getting caught on anything. Put your paws, hand and foot, into pillow cases to keep them from getting any weird stains onto anything else. -If you're hand-washing, your tub is your friend and you can use it for soaking. Drying -Fans are helpful. Very helpful. -Do not use heat for drying. It will melt the fur. -While a lot of folks will hang up their suits to dry, the weight of the damp fur can cause stretching at the shoulders. At Con Care -Dryer sheets are super useful for quickly drying out your head and paws. Scented ones can also help combat odors. -Disinfecting sprays (water and rubbing alcohol) are your friend and will help keep your suit fresh between wears. Keep the spray away from anything airbrushed or electronic on your suit. You may also need to keep it away from the eyes, depending on how they've been made. -If you haven't, invest in some UnderArmor and a balaclava to help keep moisture away from the suit whenever possible. -Take frequent breaks and put your health at a priority over anyone else's idea of magic. Travel -Have some kind of tote for travel. Some folks have things like footlockers. Others have plastic totes. I use a hard-shell suitcase. Hope that helps with some of the confusion around fursuit care. Sorry I can't help with any of the other issues!

The thing that immediately jumps out to me is that they're saying that their state's internet provider is the problem. No state in the US has a single service provider, and even the most remote states (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, etc) can provide you with at least five options between local and national service providers, on broadband and satellite services. Additionally, a VPN is usually an easy way to bypass problems of "this service has been banned," so even if there is a problem with their ISP and Telegram, they have ways around it. I agree with Bornes about reaching out via their Paypal email. Since they're ignoring your Telegram messages, using that means of communication seems to be best. In the mean time, make sure that you're collecting screenshots of everything, especially on Telegram.

It's hard, as a customer, to try and judge the value of an artist's work. It could totally be that they don't know the value of their own work and haven't taken commissions before. I think Rikki hits it on the head about the question being loaded, and there also being some concerns about professionalism and completion regarding a commission from such an artist. That being said, pricing a piece outright may be hard, but you could take a look at the quality of their work and ask yourself "What would I pay an hour for this work of this caliber?" Then, based on the piece that you're referencing, you could possibly get an idea from the artist of how long, time wise, it would take them to complete the work, and you could get a ballpark answer from there. It's not an ideal method for coming to a value, but it should be a relatively okay starting point for bartering.

If her commissions are purely done in digital medium, then there should be no actual need for client addresses, as far as I know. The client's state may be necessary to ensure proper payment of sales taxes due to some specific state laws (PA requires you to pay taxes on pretty much all online purchases now), but that's really the entirety of the relevance. Payment information should be as simple as your Paypal address. If she's demanding credit card or bank info via email or other online communication, that's a definite red flag. Regardless, I'm not sure she should be trying to preemptively collect "information necessary to comply with a legal obligation or court order." To me, that's kind of a major turn off. It suggests the very real possibility of legal problems in her past that may have required the courts to be involved in order to reach any kind of resolution. Personally, I would run far far away from this artist and never look back.

Give it a few more days before messaging them again. When you check in with them, try to make it come off like a check-in, low pressure. Based on the fact that they're subtweeting commissioners (even if it's just one), there may be an underlying issue with their queue. I'm not saying that you would be the issue, but they're likely to get defensive when messaged, regardless, so trying to stay lowkey will probably go a long way toward getting a response. One thing to note, an artist doing things like free or personal artwork around commissions is generally a thing that's going to happen. Artists are not machines, and different kinds of artwork, especially personal interest artwork, serves as kind of a palette cleanser that helps keep creativity flowing. It's especially helpful when stuck on a piece that might be particularly hard to work with for whatever reason.

A commission is a business transaction for services rendered. If a commissioner cancels the transaction, they're entitled to receive their money back, less the value of any already completed work, and possibly material costs (but discuss that because some fursuit makers have a lot of materials stock on hand and will turn around and profit off that "non-refundable materials deposit"). A commissioner doesn't owe their artist a reason for cancelling the transaction. Ever. We don't pour our life stories out to the mechanic when we take our car in for one issue and he comes up with five more.

Some legal advice articles could be skirted with a little bit of research and possibly referencing the work of Boozy Badger/Boozy Barrister. He does kind of a legal "I'm giving you advice, but it's not advice from a lawyer and you can't take it to the bank" website. He's blunt, sometimes a bit offensive in language, and not to everyone's tastes, but he knows the law (and legal terminology). Sometimes, though, people just need a place that's already done half of the legwork and can point them in the right direction because they really just don't know how to get started. So if getting a lawyer to help pro-bono is out, and paying one is also out, coming up with a list of resources to work with may be a good alternative.

Echoing Celestina, your style is very lovely. Regarding your prices, I think I agree - you're on target, possibly low. I can see that you put a lot of detail into your work, and that tells me that your pieces take time, even at the portrait level. You're offering full color work here, too, with backgrounds, simple but present. All of that adds up to the values that you've laid out.

I get that some people use tracing as a crutch to get themselves started, but it's not a helpful crutch. There are some very glaring and painful anatomy issues there that carry over into the traced piece, underscoring the fact that in tracing artwork from others, the tracing artist really only learns bad habits. I'm sorry that you came to find out after the fact that the artist you commissioned traced the piece that you purchased from them.

Generally speaking, when you commission someone, it's a good idea to keep records of what you commission somewhere, just in case something like this happens. Responsible artists don't typically lose track of what they owe people, but responsible artists also don't typically end up taking on so many commissions that they can owe a single commissioner $1k+ in art spanning multiple pieces of work. When it comes to emergency commissions, and especially emergency commissions with friends, I approach the situation as if the money is a loss from the outright because I see too many people in a constant state of emergency to fully trust that I'll actually see artwork out of my payment. In your case, compile your list of artwork owed and give your friend a reasonable timeline to stick to in getting it done. And stay in communication with them about the progress.

It's rough when things come up that impact your ability to get your work done, but I'm a little confused as how to how your cat getting sick affected your organization of your commissions? These two things should not be connected in any meaningful way, other than in that taking care of your cat put a delay on your commissions. If your organizational process is somehow tied up in your cat, you need to disconnect that ASAP so that this doesn't happen again. You owe it to yourself and your commissioners.

I think this would be fair in the case of commissioners who are doing this to be harmful to others, like Iceyfur who has been intentionally commissioning artwork of ace fursonas in explicit situations. I don't think it would be a bad thing to be able to warn others about this kind of problematic behavior. Even though they may be a decent customer when it comes to communication and payment, they're being dishonest in their commissioning of artwork. I'd see it as a Caution.

If you're working off a Google Form, the associated Sheet has a version history which you can use to find deleted/changed data. In regards to the commission, it's not solely the commissioner's responsibility to reach out to an artist regarding a commission. The artist should be keeping open lines of communication, especially if there are issues and delays. Yes, three months isn't a heinous amount of time to wait on art, but if a commissioner says "No rush" in a conversation, that's not blanket permission to deprioritize their work. The excuse of "You told me 'no rush'!" is a hollow one, and putting all of the blame on the commissioner for why this turned out wrong, when you didn't contact them regarding an issue you noticed that caused a delay, is not the way to go about things.