The Art of Blokfort

The start of the month was pretty good. I tried out my new stream/drawing schedule, but after only 2 days I dropped it, and now aim for much more relaxed times. September has been the month of “I’m tired.” and while I did get an ‘adequate’ amount of work done, it could have been more. I had a lot of days where I struggled to even focus on anything, with my head in a sort of warm foggy daze. Odd to explain, but there it is.

Of the work completed this month, I’ve changed a few of my commission form terms / wording, such as saying, “Clean Lin-Art” instead of just “Line-art,” because technically anything that has lines is a line-art piece. So, I’m now using Rough Line-Art and Clean Line-Art for the different line-art styles I can offer, since one is rough and the other is clean. I decided not to go with “Sketch” for the rough line-art terming, because what people determine to be a “sketch” varies incredibly wildly.

The other thing I’ve changed in my commissioning process is changing which commissions I will work on. I actually had to sit-down and think about it for a few hours and I’m pretty happy with this new system for myself. Ultimately, nothing changes for the commissioner! This system is all just for me, and it takes a load off of my mind.

Old Commissioning Format: People who have stated interest in getting a commission ‘in the future’ (While my commissions are currently Closed) would get put on a “call-back” list of sorts, and I generally accept all of them, while also still keeping commissions closed to everyone else.
What people would commission, in terms of “difficulty level” were kind of random, but usually on the Larger end. I use the terms Small, Medium, Large, Turbo and Titan to help quantify the commission for myself.
This system makes it hard to accept commissions from newer sources, and it’s a little awkward to accept new commissions from people while I have the “Commissions Closed” banner posted.

New Commissioning Format: Bracket Commissioning! A Commission Bracket is sort of like a Slot, but instead of a fixed number of slots, it based on the Difficulty Level of the commission. I have assigned a value number to each Difficulty Level and I’m currently trying out a Bracket limit of 15, with three Brackets that can be filled.

• • Small – 1
  • Medium – 2
  • Large – 3
  • Turbo – 4
  • Titan – 6
  • [Bracket 1] [Bracket 2] [Bracket 3]

What this means is that a Bracket could look like this: [Large, Large, Large, Medium, Turbo]. This means that there are 5 commissions to do in that bracket. Bracket 1 commissions will get their invoices sent and worked on right away, whereas brackets 2 and 3 will have to wait a bit until the prior bracket is cleared. If all three brackets are filled, then I will close commissions entirely until all three brackets are completed. Asking / Accepting a commission is still by a first-come-first-served sort of way, since I’ve yet to actually be overloaded with commissions, heh.

I know, how wonderfully complicated.

A newer thought that occurs to me while writing this, is that if commissions fill up frequently enough for me to close them, then I may look into dropping bracket 3 entirely in favor of trying out YCH (Your Character Here) type commissions/auctions. I don’t want to make YCH a main thing though.