Controversal YCH opinion

[Neververy4]

Been thinking about this one fora bit, posting about it here as well as on TUMBLR and COHOST.

So, furry YCH's. Your Character Here. An artist draws a sketch of some vague characters, and you pay that artist to make those vague character shapes into your character. A simple concept.

Why are seemingly most of the (digital) YCH's single use ones? One person pays, gets the art, and the artist never uses the base again? Like.. You have this premade base. Part of the work, posing refs and viewing angles and basic body atonomy, is already done. All you need to do is shape the rough outline into a specific character and you have both an artpiece and a satisfied customer. Look, as an aspiring artist, I would like to have a few YCH's that are always-avaiable asides from the normal commissions for many reasons:

- As already mentioned, part of the work is done. I can sell a YCH for less than a normal commissiom because of that. Customer gets cheaper art, I get an easier piece to do. In fact, the more I do a specific YCH the easier it gets. Getting accustomed to drawing the same posing and angles, with minor character variances.
- I can have cool extra things, such as a detailed pre-drawn background. Detailed backgrounds usually cost a good chunk more to add, and for good reason. But if the YCH already has one specifuc detailed background? Well I've already made it, no need to draw it again. And the customer doesn't have to pay extra for it either; add it on at a big discount, spread the price of the one detailed background over multiple commissions

Me and a friend got a YCH like this awhile back. Consisted of a headshot of one character, and a full body of another. The artist had already done about 40 of this YCH already, and for us? both characters were a total of $40USD. Artist got it done within 5 hours after payment. $40USD and a 5 hour turnaround is SUCH an impressive feat, I'm still pleased. Would love to do that again.

Anyways, I don't understand the point of single use (digital) YCH's. That, and for the real controversal take, I think Single-Use YCH Auctions are borderline scamish. You have this partially made image that you make people fight over, and only the highest bidder can get it before the base is never seen again. Anyways what are other people's thoughts on this?

[pheelthemoment]

Hmm..I'm not sure I have too much I can add to the convo since I rarely get YCHs since I pretty much never see ones that fit my characters anyway xD;

but I think from an artist's point of view, one reason to make them limited (aside from just..exclusivity to drive up price/interest) is it often just isn't fun to draw the same piece over and over. And if I look at someone's gallery and just see like. essentially 2 or 3 drawings posted like 20 times each it is not going to make me interested in following someone fdgsfg even if that is a more extreme example (which i HAVE seen happen several times), it can definitely get overwhelming with sameyness quickly on both sides imo.

and with single use ones..i think usually its more a case of an artist just had an idea they wanted to get out, but didn't have a character they already wanted to use so they just figured they could offer it to someone else as one time thing and then had no plans to touch the piece again, which I think is understandable. Though I guess my perspective is already someone who prefers unique art over re-used art so dfgsdf really just depends on preference i guess?

[IgneousCroc]

I both agree with Pheel here and, honestly, I also get it from an artificially induced rarity viewpoint.

Say an artist who doesn't take commissions or requests is auctioning one YCH commission slot. How rare, how unique! Who's going to be the lucky person to get it? And everyone likes their art, so this is something attractive to a lot of people. Whether they participate or not is really up to them. But it'll probably drive up the price.

Now say another artist who regularly does requests and commissions is opening YCH comms with no limit. Well, that's... You know. A bit less exciting. Surely they'll have clients, but there's really none of the perceived rarity and henceforth value that was attributed to the first case.

I honestly don't think it's a scam. Like Pheel said, if I had to draw a slew of similar looking characters all in the same pose for the price of a DS game (back in the day, I guess) I'd start feeling like an assembly machine rather than a sapient animal. It's part of the reason why I quit making comics, too.

Even if I had the assets premade, poses sketched out, and the work was seemingly easy, honestly, it just took the joy of drawing out of me. Started being a frustrating chore rather than a pleasant hobby and it's my opinion that it shows in the drawing.

Heavens knows it's hard to price art as it is. It's usual a drawing takes me a full day to render, but I can't exactly charge it at minimum wage and expect a lot of people to be interested. If an individual artist uses fabricated scarcity to be paid Top Dollar (cha-ching! sound effect) and still feel like a person and not an art printer at the end of it, hey, power to them.

I get what you're saying, though, and I never was a big fan of YCH's nor adoptables. Never really saw a point for them either way (nevermind my character's are so off-standard-furry-model that they'd never fit...) but I understand it from the viewpoint of a dragon who likes money and Having money and Getting Money prefferably through legal, moral and not unpleasant ways.

[SapphireRaeburn]

I agree with Pheel and Igneous with the artist standpoint. For all those reasons, I'd do limited use backgrounds.
- But, now I am a disabled artist and need to cut corners with work as much as I can. So if I were to do YCH, I may recycle backgrounds. I may also photobash from my previous backgrounds or copy some of the layers to help me create the new one without having to redo all the work. (I have made assets before like trees and things and reused those. Saves soooo much time and work if I need it, but I do have to still draw something original, like an original tree over the asset, to blend it in and not look like I copy-pasted from another art piece of mine if people went looking.)

From a collector's standpoint, I absolutely love the idea of the limited use on the backgrounds. It's like I managed to snag something awesome and special, something that no one else will have. It's true that adding my character will personalize it for me if I used a recycled background, but then it feels like one of those coffee mugs that somebody slapped your name on and mass produced for everyone that shared the same name.