October 2024 update
Just two slots left, a narrowing of focus, and a confession
In the past few months, I’ve been busy creating characters for a lot of new, kind, and passionate customers. Which means gears are finally starting to turn in the right direction here.
At the end of 2022 I came back to fantasy art and art commissions, but I’ve been struggling greatly since then. The market had changed, my niche had been flooded by crappy AI art, and most of my old clients had — rightly so — moved on since I wasn’t taking on commission work since 2020.
I thought it would’ve taken me a couple of months to get back at it, but instead it took me two years.
I had to spend a lot of time learning new marketing, doing admin work, and expanding my artistic range. I run discounts, I sketched out diagrams, I cold emailed all my past clients, I ended up in a spam list, I got banned from a few subreddits, and even ended up deleting, re-naming, and moving around some of my online presence.
I had to start back with rates that were way below my usual, had to take on debt with friends, and in the process my mental health broke, horrible things kept happening, I lost a brother, and messed up my accounting real bad.
I’m telling you all of this just now because I was afraid I would’ve scared you away. I was, and in some way still am, a mess. I was dead set on “fake it ‘till you make it”. But while I was struggling to deliver work, I was also battling depression, coping with the loss of my brother, and trying to fix everything I broke in the past years. Stuff kept piling up.
It’s not over, but I can finally see some light at the end of this. My rates are back up to where they were when I stopped working. My queue is full. New requests are coming almost every week, and I’m proud of the work that I’m doing.
And I have to thank a few friends I made along the way for this. Poeple that booked knowing I wouldn’t be able to deliver for months on end. People that booked without even knowing what they wanted and waited months to tell me. People that signed up for my Ko-fi memberships just to help me out, despite not getting anything in return — you just get sneak peeks in advance, that is.
These people keep showing up in my Discord server, despite there being only a handful of active members, and despite me not opening it for weeks.
Some customers returned. They trusted me again with their requests. They were as happy as they used to be with the results, and commissioned me again and again.
I don’t feel like I deserve this, but I learned that I need to shut up the imposter voice inside my head. If you are still here, it means that you value what I do, as I value your trust in my skills and output.
I know I could’ve tried with a day job, maybe it would’ve been easier. But I just didn’t want to give up, I’ve been at this for more than ten years now, and this is what I like to do for a living. I hope you won’t judge me too harshly on this, and won’t consider me some sort of spoiled kid. I feel anything but spoiled.
As of now, I’m accepting the last two bookings for 2024. After that, we’ll negotiate deliveries for January and February.
Starting January 2025, I am only accepting requests for standalone character portraits. I am making an exception to this rule for ongoing agreements and personal projects, so it’s possible you’ll see something else apart from characters in the upcoming months.
But for you, I only want to get you the best characters portraits money can buy, and I’m doubling down on that. You are investing in something premium, and that’s exactly what you’ll get.
If you’re ready to invest in a character commission, now’s the time. Moving forward, you will only be able to order through my website form or via my email, info@flygohr.com.
Prices, ToS, and FAQs are on my website as well.
In case you needed a little extra nudge, here’s what one recent client had to say:
This was my first time getting anything commissioned, and Flygohr was amazing to work with. I had been hesitant to commission any kind of art, as I'd heard so many horror stories of things not being delivered for years at a time, if anything at all few or no responses from the artists when the commissioners reached out. Flygohr set my mind at ease early on. He was quick with any responses or answers to my questions. Any change I asked for, though I didn't need many- he was pretty much spot on for what I had imagined the whole way through, were implemented swiftly and enthusiastically.
The end result, a simple portrait of my Dungeons and Dragons character, was better than I could have ever imagined. The pose, the colors, the background, everything was perfect. He made every step along the way easy to understand and was very professional and friendly. There were a couple of delays that made the process take a little longer than we had initially hoped, but these were clearly communicated and entirely understandable. If you need any kind of fantasy art done, I would highly reccomend Flygohr and I will be returning to him if I ever want anything else.
Until next time,
Flygohr