Not to be confused with an artist selling the rights to one of their established characters. I am referring to characters made exclusively to be sold.

I kind of pride myself in my ability to understand the psychology behind the behavior of people around me, but these "adoptable" characters are just completely beyond me. Sometimes they come with additional artwork that make them more reasonable, and every once in a while someone has a loot-box-esque lure to them with "eggdoptables." But the mass produced, ultra-generic characters that have no associated background story or art? I don't get it. Every once in a while an artist will use a generic template, make three virtually identical characters with "fill" colorization that I could do in MS Paint, that may or may not even have a name, and they sell for forty bucks each? Who is buying these and why?

I've seen an artist post the template, then sell adoptables with that template within the span of hours. How?! I can literally color these templates myself within five minutes, and they're indistinguishable! I mean, it's great for an artist to be able to fill a template and make a quick buck, but...why would anyone buy their generic non-character made up on the fly? Is this exclusively a support thing? Why not just donate to their Patreon? At forty bucks I'm sure the artist would be willing to at least put your character's colors in that template!

Why?! WHYYYYYY?!

While what kicked off these journals was fondly remembering working with artists, not all of my experiences have been entirely positive.

Originally when I started commissioning, I had ideas assigned to artists. I wanted to see X artist draw Y scene. The problem I kept running into was... X artist wasn't open for commissions. I lived in Korea at the time, so I was also outside of their time zone by 12-15 hours. They would open commissions for five slots, at 3:30am. They would obviously be filled before I even had a chance to throw my name and idea in the pot. Then, I made pitches to a couple artists that refused them. So I had a list of ideas that were, quite frankly, never going to get drawn. My fix for this was to give my list to every artist and let them choose which of my ideas they wanted to draw. Literally a google spreadsheet, all filterable and searchable. An artist could open my spreadsheet, set the filter to only what they are willing to draw (e.g. No cubs, no humans, males only, 2 characters or less, etc.), and have everything they need. First few artists that I approached, absolutely loved it. A couple were really excited by some of the ideas I presented and offered to draw several of them. Then I had a string of artists that absolutely hated it.
One of said artists was so angry he apparently took leave of his senses and started claiming that some of the things I wanted were "literally impossible to draw." I wanted to say the pose's reference picture was drawn, you boosted Kappa-chino, but decided against it. I doubted they'd get the reference.

Another artist reprimanded me for being "indecisive" and demanded that I pick. So I did, she told me the price and gave me her payment info. She then took my money without a word of acknowledgement. Ninety days later I noticed that her furaffinity account was closed, so I emailed her to ask about the status of my commission. She insisted that I had never paid her, what she agreed to draw was something she would hate to draw and she would never have agreed to, and said I had been "creepy" from my first contact, and that if I ever contacted her again she would report me to the police. I was a little surprised, as my first contact is a copy-pasted business offer I give to everyone, and I very clearly had the payment transaction record. She tried to run off with my money, and bully me into not reporting it! So I just sent my dispute to Paypal, with a polite "Sorry our deal didn't work out." I didn't contact her again, but got my money back.

So I'm going to recommend to anyone who wants to commission, keep tabs on the dates that you pay. Some artists are, quite frankly, scam artists. Requesting a refund through Paypal is only possible for 120 days, so if you've been waiting three months without progress, demand your work be expedited, and if you don't get it by day 115: Demand your money back. If they say no, go above them. Otherwise, you might end up without your art, or your money.

I've been going through my notes and remembering fondly some of the great artists who have worked with me over the two years that I was a functioning adult who made spending money. Rather than an unemployed neckbeard spouting political opinions from his mother's basement. I have no new commissioned content to post, but still want to show I exist. So I want to post some stories about my experience commissioning.

My original characters: I am not a furry, I am an art geek. I have no interest in the community beyond how pretty their art is. But I love furry art. So for the first year that I was commissioning, I didn't have any original furry characters. I had never even considered making a fursona or anything, because I just cannot relate. So I started commissioning people for characters that I enjoy seeing from artists I really like. That's why you see a bunch of Digimon in my early gallery. Unfortunately there are quite a few artists who will not draw copyrighted characters. I convinced a couple artists to bend their rules for me once or twice, such as the wonderful Monds drawing some Renamon for me. He said however that he didn't want to do it too often, because a lot of artists end up in a loop where they end up only drawing rule 34. That made sense, so I decided that I would make up some original characters so that I could get some art from these fantastic artists who don't like doing parody. Problem is, I don't have any particular animal that I... identify as? I don't know. So I came up with my characters basically by asking "What are things that I want to see more of?" So I built my furries like I build my DnD characters: character concept > justification of that concept > details on how that concept formed. So Oreo came first, Nero was made to explain why Oreo was a micro BDSM sub, and Diamond brings them together. Ironically, my choice of fetishes have turned out quite shunned, probably more so than the copyright thing. A lot of those artists that I made my characters for, won't draw micros, or "vore". I had never thought about that before I made the characters, so I didn't think about that when I made my characters. Removing those concepts from my characters would make them really, really boring. So I want to differentiate unbirthing/living-insertion from vore, because I don't like anything that would hurt or kill my mouse, but just because I separate vore from living-insertion doesn't mean that the artists make that distinction.

So I created these original characters so that artists will draw them for me, but artists don't want to draw the characters I created. Sad face.

I have returned. The last two years have been a downward spiral of depression and watching my life implode. Chances of recovery are low, and I'm probably unemployed. So, I'm posting again, but... without an income, I obviously can't commission much. So have what little I can give.

Good morning all you beautiful (half?) animals/mythical creatures/ponies/goo monsters/et ceteras!

I've noticed that someone put a couple of my pics on e621, and this has lead to a rash of watches and favorites. That's great! I feel I should warn you about two things though: First, Furaffinity has pretty severe restrictions on image resolution. Some of these have been reduced in size, by a lot. The full size images can typically be found on either rule34.paheal.net/post/list/user_id=215168 or Inkbunny.net/mehfoo, depending on their content (paheal for parody work, inkbunny for my original characters).
Secondly, I'm not commissioning new content right now. I still have a couple items in the works from some backlogged artists, so I may still upload one or two in the next few months. The problem is that I have hit a severe financial snag recently, and my future is a bit unpredictable right now. I hope everything will be back to normal by April.

So I'm sorry, but I won't be spamming your notifications with oodles of Digimon porn. At least not for a while.

I suppose I should introduce myself. Why not do it though meme?

Name: Let's just stick to pseudonyms for now.
Nickname: Mehfoo, though I may call myself anything from Mehfooaqua to Mehfoozilla.
Location: Songtan, South Korea... for two and a half years now.
Age: 28
Height: 5'11"
Zodiac sign: I don't know. The Zodiac is silly.
Pets: 2 cats, both in different countries, sadly.
Favorite thing about yourself: I like who I am.
Worst habit: Probably the porn addiction.
Fun fact: I once slept through a hurricane.

Identity, Sexuality & Personality
Gender identity: I do not "identify" as anything, though society would classify my behavior as "male."
Sexual preference: Bisexual, vers
Romantic preference: Female
"Kinsey Scale" score: Don't know what that is.
Relationship status: Available
Myers/Briggs type: I would assume INTJ, but I've never actually bothered to take the test.
Hogwarts house: Don't know what that is.

Routine

"Early Bird" or "Night Owl": Early bird due to job, insomniac by nature.
First thought in the morning: It varies.
Last thought before falling asleep at night: *shrug*

School/Work

Do you work or are you a student: Work
What do you do well: Fixing problems. I'm not great at maintaining things, but give me an issue that needs to be fixed or a function that needs to be created and I will build you a magnificent, detailed program, complete with step-by-step instructions.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years: Hopefully somewhere in Europe.


Habits (Do you…?)

Drink: Yes, a wide variety, but my favorites are soju and whiskey.
Smoke: No.
Do Drugs: No.
Exercise: Running. About a mile and a half a day.
Have a go-to comfort food: Steak.
Have a nervous habit: Flipping coins, pens, lighter, keys, water-bottles. Basically anything I can idly toy with.

What is your favorite…?

Physical quality (in yourself): Eyes.
In Others: Ass.
Mental/emotional quality (in yourself): Positive mindset.
Food: Seafood, pretty much any kind.
Drink: Mountain Dew.
Animal: Big cats of all kinds
Colors: Red
Artist/Band/Group: ...Yoko Kanno?
Author/Poet: Don't really have one.
Actor/Actress: Probably Denzel Washington.
Blogger: Don't really ready them.