Art

Furry’s Greatest Strength

| Pulsar

The most important strength of the furry fandom is that it’s one of the few fandoms left today which is not owned by someone. I would argue that it is the most closely-knit group that is not based around someone else’s intellectual property. And by ‘intellectual property’ I don’t mean just movies, music, or video games, but to any group or club built around someone else’s stuff. Sports teams are all owned and tightly controlled by wealthy people and their companies. Even recreational sports are difficult to get into without spending a significant amount of money. Look at the membership fees of any country club. Car culture and motorcycle culture is similarly built around expensive products and brands that are owned by huge corporations. Likewise with gaming culture—so transient that if you’re not spending several hundred dollars a year on the latest releases, you’re out of the loop. 1

The furry fandom however, is built around an idea: the concept of anthropomorphization. Nobody owns it, and nobody can own it. It is fundamental and inalienable.

This fact is one of the greatest things we have as furries. We can point to the enormous amount of creative output and say we’re doing it for ourselves, not for the benefit or the advertisement of someone else’s IP.

I think it’s important to keep this in mind any time we start to talk about legitimacy in public contexts. There’s always a lot of worry the corporations will make in-roads into the furry fandom—for it to become so mainstream that it loses the spark which makes it special. But that is what makes it special. No company can own it. The best they can do is pander to it. Of course there will always be some people who will buy cheap furry-adjacent stuff from Walmart or whatever because that’s just how people are. But they’ll never be able to dilute what the fandom is fundamentally about: each person making their own characters, their own worlds, and their own IP.

With that said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting furry to become more recognized and accepted. It’s always been the joke that furries are the lowest of the already low geek hierarchy, but the longer I’ve been in the fandom the less true that is. Even just in the 12+ years that I’ve been involved, there’s been a major shift in furry culture. I can only imagine how much greater that shift is for people who’ve been participating for 20 or 30 years.

As a personal example, when I was in art school in the early 2000’s, there was nothing furry related whatsoever happening in art school. When I went to grad school ten years later, people were at least referencing furries. It was clear many artists knew what they were, even if they weren’t furries themselves. Five years after that, I was seeing art students who were openly furry, and incorporating furry themes into their work, and describing it as such. In 15 years it went from being completely unheard of to just another thing in the spectrum of things art students are.

This is an important development not just in the sense that furry is becoming more mainstream (whether we like it or not), but that it’s becoming mainstream in a particular way. It’s no longer solely a geeky pursuit, but it’s becoming more of an artistic pursuit as well. Long gone are the days where the majority of furries were sci fi geeks or computer nerds. Now we’re everything, from lawyers to mechanics to (in fairness still quite a lot of) computer nerds. But even so, saying that the furry fandom lies at the bottom of the geek hierarchy doesn’t really make as much sense today as it did in the 90’s.

Besides, if we are striving for a sense of legitimacy in the larger cultural sphere, well, we’re getting it. It’s all too common for us to look at where we are now and say, “but we’re not there yet”, pointing over to some other theoretically better position where we’d like to be. 2 But in so doing, it’s too easy to forget where we’ve come from, too. The furry fandom is at least recognized as a thing now, and the press that it has gotten is increasingly more positive—and importantly, more accurate. Take a look at what most articles get right now: they will explain how not everyone has a fursuit, that furry is a more diverse group than you’d expect, and most never even bother mentioning the sexual side anymore. Articles about the furry fandom have gone from shock to curiosity, which is legit a big step up.3

And throughout all of this, not only have we maintained our core value of collective independent creativity, but if anything, it’s gotten even stronger. We still dip our toes into corporate owned IP, but almost every one of us has our own characters, our own art, even our own brands. More and more furries are making their hobby their livelihood.

Furry will continue to become mainstream, and it’s going to have growing pains as it does so. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to lose what makes it special. If you ever feel overwhelmed by criticism or drama, just remember: this is your fandom and you helped build your little piece of it. No megacorp billionaire CEO can take that away from you.

The Importance of a TOS

| Pulsar

A Terms of Service document is an important tool for any artist. Typically when we think about artists’ tools, we think of things like pencil and paper, computers or tablets, or other “tools of the trade”. A TOS is no less important and can save the artist a lot of headache in a variety of situations. Yet many artists either don’t have one, or may not even be sure what a TOS is. I’m going to talk a bit about what a TOS is (and isn’t), why you should have one, and how to set up your own.

Disclaimer: I’m certainly not a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. A TOS is also not a legal document. If you did end up in court, it’s probably better than nothing. But the chances of this happening in the context of furry art are pretty slim. 1 Nevertheless, it’s still helpful in resolving disputes since it outlines the process and removes ambiguity.

Before we get started, here’s a link to an example of my own TOS. I don’t claim a copyright on any of it, so feel free to borrow lines or paragraphs if they suit your own needs. You can also use it to follow along when I talk more about each section, below.

What is a TOS?

A TOS is a list of guidelines on how you conduct business. This may seem trivial. “How hard can it be? A friend gives me money and I draw a picture for them.” And while that may work just fine for close friends, the farther removed someone is from your personal social circle, the more chances there are for misunderstanding—or deliberate abuse.

Why should you have a TOS?

I believe so many artists work without a TOS because they do get their start by doing work for friends. Disagreements or misunderstandings can be worked out amicably. But this isn’t always possible once you start working for strangers, and the social dynamics always change once there’s money involved. It’s easy to make the transition from friends to soliciting business online from people who don’t know you personally. A TOS helps mediate this process.

Another way of looking at a TOS is that it establishes guidelines outside of yourself. It can be difficult to tell a client, “No, I don’t really want to do that”, especially if you’ve already agreed to take a commission.2 But if you have a document that says you won’t do something, it acts as an appeal to a higher authority—even if it’s a document you wrote yourself. People are much less likely to argue the point if it already exists in writing.

It also makes the process seem less arbitrary. Rather than “just deciding” you don’t want to do something, a TOS feels more like something you’ve thought about, and people are more likely to respect that. Much of my TOS exists because of people going, “well you didn’t say I can’t do it”. There’s always someone who will do anything they can think of to take advantage of you, just because you didn’t say they couldn’t.3

How to create your own TOS

I’ll model this section after my own. There’s no right or wrong way of doing it, and many templates exist online. Mostly it just comes down writing a list of guidelines or rules about how you do your work. My advice is to include each of these sections (if its relevant to your practice) and answer the questions in your own words. In a sense, a TOS is like a list of Frequently Asked Questions about your business, except you’re just telling people how things will be done, rather than waiting for them to ask about it.

Overview

Start with a broad overview of how the commissioning process works. How should they contact you (email, website, Google docs form, etc)? How will they pay? How will the art be delivered? This can also act as a sort of outline of things to expand on later in the document. I also find it useful to include the line “By purchasing a commission, you agree to the following:” before outlining the rest of the document. Again, it’s not necessarily a legal defense, but it helps manage expectations.

If you specialize in something, or don’t want to draw certain things, also list what are you willing to draw, or what subject matter you won’t draw. It may also be helpful to include a catch-all statement such as “I reserve the right to refuse a commission for any reason, or without stating a reason.” I’ve found some people feel they are owed an explanation as to why you won’t work for them. You don’t. Stating so explicitly in the TOS may save you the hassle of being pulled into an argument about it later.

Permissions

It’s common for someone to want to include someone else’s character, or to get a friend art as a birthday gift or for other occasions. How will you handle this?

It sometimes happens that someone claims to have permission to use a character when they don’t. If you don’t know the people involved, there may not be a good way to determine this. It can largely be a matter of using your own judgement. And unfortunately if you are caught in the middle of a transaction where proper permission wasn’t given, you don’t really have much recourse other than banning people from commissioning you again in the future.

Quotes and Payments

If you give a quote for the price of a work based on the complexity of the idea or the characters involved, how do you determine it? It’s not going to be a 100% scientific process, of course, but if you can give some insight to clients on how you determine prices, it can prevent misunderstandings later. Also don’t forget to include an expiration date on your quotes, or you will have people returning long after you’ve forgotten about them, expecting to pay a price you quoted a year ago.

How will payments be handled? What type of currency do you accept? Do you send the client an invoice, or provide a quote and expect them to pay it to you? What about more expensive projects? Will you take down payments, and if so, would the balance be paid in installments, and in what time frame?

One thing to be wary of is split payments. Paypal offers this as a payment option. If two people are going in on a picture together, they may ask to each pay half (or some other arrangement). I have run into a situation in the past where one person suddenly wanted to back out of a project and asked for their half of the money back. Accepting split payments means you’re now negotiating a project between two (or more) people at once. I find having a single point of contact for payments makes it easier to manage the commission process.

Refunds and Cancellations

If a customer needs to cancel a project or wants a refund, how would you handle this? What if work has already been completed? I work on a system of stages, where art has a sketch stage, an inking stage, a color stage, and so on. As work progresses through the stages, less of the total is eligible for a refund, to cover the work that has already been done. Again, this can be a point of contention, and won’t necessarily hold up in court or—more likely—in a dispute with Paypal. But like everything else with the TOS, the point is to have something in writing that both parties can agree to ahead of time, so it doesn’t feel like a capricious dictum from the artist later.

The Commissions Process

What sort of styles do you offer (e.g. sketch, flat colors, cel shaded, etc), and what can the client expect from each style? Will they have the ability to make revisions, and if so, how will that be handled?

It’s especially important to consider here what happens if a client makes a particularly demanding or outright unreasonable revision request. For instance, perhaps you’ve drawn a pose they described but after seeing the sketch they decide they want the pose from the back instead of the front. Obviously this necessitates redrawing the pose. Would there be a charge for that, and if so, how much? What about a client who returns time and time again with additional small changes even after you’ve addressed the previous changes they’ve asked for? Do you have a way of addressing this, or a limit to the number of changes that can be requested? 4

A lot of what goes in to the commissions process might not be something you think about until you end up dealing with an edge case—a commission that does’t really break any rules, but isn’t really what you intended your commissions to be, either. If that happens, this is where you’d want to address that in your TOS to help make the expectations more clear for the next time.

Deadlines

This could be an article all on its own, and I’ll likely end up covering it more later. But if you’re accepting money for work, you should also be establishing specific deadlines for when that work will be completed.

Deliverables

It’s important to be specific on what will (or will not) be included with the final project. If it’s a digital project, is it just a flat file like a JPG or PNG? Are you also okay with sending out PSD files? If it’s a printed media piece, would you also include digital files used in its creation? If it’s a 3D model is the client getting the actual 3D model data, or just a turntable or other series of renders? 5

Auctions / YCHs / Drives

Although an auction or an art drive is probably not going to be an artist’s main source of income, they happen often enough that you may want to have a section addressing things specific to them. This should cover info like how do you administer the auction itself? How quickly do you expect payment from the winners of an auction? How do you handle it if someone drops out? For YCHs, how far are you willing to modify a pose (if at all) to accommodate other characters? For art drives, it may be helpful to explicitly state that high donations don’t afford any special privileges or entitle the donor to special consideration in other projects like commissions.6

Privacy

It’s a good idea to have a formal privacy policy, and that would probably make for another good article sometime too. I just have a shorter statement saying I won’t misuse peoples’ personal information and only collect it for the purpose of doing business with them. Some places like Europe have much more stringent privacy regulations, so you’ll want to adapt your privacy policy to be in accordance with local laws.

Copyright and Usage

This section could have entire books written about it, and certainly deserves a more detailed look by someone who isn’t me. But basically you want to be as clear as possible about who can do what with the image. If you plan to use an image in your own advertising, it’s a good idea to mention that here. United States copyright law holds that the creator of an image has the copyright to that image, even if the image itself was a commission of another character that they don’t own the copyright to. I don’t have a source for this, so don’t take my word for it, but it’s what I’ve always understood to be the case from my reading on the subject. In any case, to avoid ambiguity, I specifically state that I own the copyright to the images themselves.

Final Thoughts

I hope this provided a useful overview about Terms of Service documents and how they can benefit your own business. Anyone who takes commissions should have one. They clarify the responsibilities of both the artist and the client, and help to manage the client’s expectations. Although a TOS is not necessarily a document that will protect you in court or in arbitration, it will still help you avoid many headaches and makes the process smoother for both you and your clients.