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Description
art by mangapym This something I commissioned, posting with permission from the artist.

Here it is in his gallery (you should go comment on it):

I sent out two commissions on Deviant art on October 1, 2013. This was mostly in response to me not spending enough money at Ohio Comic Con 2013, and I felt that I'd shortchanged my birthday. I wanted to commission some art there, and I did (the Dan Parents in my gallery for one). But, it didn't seem like enough. I'd been lurking on DA for a bit, and I think started to collect artists, links, examples. I started to comment, to actually take part.

This is all relevant as on Oct 1 that day I had spend a bit thinking about things, and I send out to two wildly different artists a commission request that were very similar. Those were Didi-Esmeralda and MangaPym. (I'm not sure I've posted his, as I don't think I ever asked for permission to post it!). But you can find it here. For comparison, next to it is Didi's Commission:

I learned a lot about this. For some reason it took a bit to actually open up the note, and send off the first not to ask for what I wanted. It's not something I've ever done before. And I remember sitting around for the day or so to get the responses back, wondering if my request was just too weird (etc). I felt really self-conscious, and the process felt a bit uncomfortable. In order to commission, you need to say what you want, and to get a great commission you need to say what you REALLY want, and WHY you really want it, and what you want the feeling of the piece to be. And that was a bit hard for me to do.

But the experience was a blast. And both of them were fun to work with, and I just LOVED getting back the different versions of this. And that too was part of the experiment. The artist NEEDS to be a part of the image, they shouldn't be the same. And that too helped nestle into my brain, and helped me figure out this commissioning thing

I've written quite a few journals about commissioning, because I wanted to see if it would help anyone else. I was trying to write things that if I'd read them before, it would have made the process easier and made me more likely to start commissioning much earlier. And that's a side effect, I actually wrote several journals (more than I thought). A few were just experimental writing pieces. Things I told verbally but never written down. And I finally wrote short story I shared here. And I directly point all this back to starting at the screen, and that blank note and deciding to send them out for my first requests.

There are always so many artists, only so much budget, and so many things I'd like to see. It's sometimes hard to solve the equation of "What is next". What image to pick, what artist to pick. Gah. And for some reason this has been hard for me lately. OTH it's resulted in some fantastic images.

Here, I very much wanted to re-commission Didi and MangaPym, though this time I didn't use the same source input.

In the intervening year, Manapym has started to use fiverr.com, and is running his commissions through there. I was new to fiverr but it's easy to sign up. And all the work flow is there, laid out. It guides you through what you need to do (I didn't have to read any help, or anything, it's straightforward.)

Trying to talk to too many artists at once on DA via Notes is a nightmare. I much prefer shifting over to email. And then, well I have so much email that I can FIND the conversation. And my email client can dig it out for me too fairly easy (it remembers threads just fine).

Fiverr makes all communication happen over it's interface, but it sends you an email when you have something going -- so you can see what is going on without having to go to the site and log in. So it's like the best of email (quick, easy to get to and see what is going on, but a great workflow as it shows you all the communications for that project directly.)

Just in case people were wondering what it was like there.

The nightmare of the DA notes system might be one of the reasons I've slowed down in commissioning. I've spent minutes looking for a particular note that I'd have found instantly in email. And I loose track of things. It gets frustrating. (Plus the editor really does suck, tiny window, hard to see what you are quoting, ug.)

But back to the piece. As I said I wanted to get something of Korra for awhile. And then an idea hit. And then I was like "I need to commission MangaPym!". So this sort of worked out well. I had a subject, and idea, and an artist that I wanted to see do something on it. And there we go.

I'd asked for a side pose and the "uncovering of the biceps". As well, that seems really sexy to me, and with the various flexing Korra's around (that I really love naturally), I had not seen one, and I thought that it would work well.

mangapym then works his posing magic -- this is is his real super-power. Go through his images and you'll see some really nice inventive posting/framing. (At least I think so!).

Anyway, here we go. My first Korra commission.

He was quick too (just a few days). So, the only question is "do you like his artwork" (which the Gallery here will surely tell you). Other than that, the price is great, and working with him is quick and fast.

Some of my other commissions from him. MY favorite is Wonder Girl:

Korra (c) Nickelodeon Studios (at least I think this is correct.)
Art (c) mangapym

Description
art by mangapym This something I commissioned, posting with permission from the artist.

Here it is in his gallery (you should go comment on it):

I sent out two commissions on Deviant art on October 1, 2013. This was mostly in response to me not spending enough money at Ohio Comic Con 2013, and I felt that I'd shortchanged my birthday. I wanted to commission some art there, and I did (the Dan Parents in my gallery for one). But, it didn't seem like enough. I'd been lurking on DA for a bit, and I think started to collect artists, links, examples. I started to comment, to actually take part.

This is all relevant as on Oct 1 that day I had spend a bit thinking about things, and I send out to two wildly different artists a commission request that were very similar. Those were Didi-Esmeralda and MangaPym. (I'm not sure I've posted his, as I don't think I ever asked for permission to post it!). But you can find it here. For comparison, next to it is Didi's Commission:

I learned a lot about this. For some reason it took a bit to actually open up the note, and send off the first not to ask for what I wanted. It's not something I've ever done before. And I remember sitting around for the day or so to get the responses back, wondering if my request was just too weird (etc). I felt really self-conscious, and the process felt a bit uncomfortable. In order to commission, you need to say what you want, and to get a great commission you need to say what you REALLY want, and WHY you really want it, and what you want the feeling of the piece to be. And that was a bit hard for me to do.

But the experience was a blast. And both of them were fun to work with, and I just LOVED getting back the different versions of this. And that too was part of the experiment. The artist NEEDS to be a part of the image, they shouldn't be the same. And that too helped nestle into my brain, and helped me figure out this commissioning thing

I've written quite a few journals about commissioning, because I wanted to see if it would help anyone else. I was trying to write things that if I'd read them before, it would have made the process easier and made me more likely to start commissioning much earlier. And that's a side effect, I actually wrote several journals (more than I thought). A few were just experimental writing pieces. Things I told verbally but never written down. And I finally wrote short story I shared here. And I directly point all this back to starting at the screen, and that blank note and deciding to send them out for my first requests.

There are always so many artists, only so much budget, and so many things I'd like to see. It's sometimes hard to solve the equation of "What is next". What image to pick, what artist to pick. Gah. And for some reason this has been hard for me lately. OTH it's resulted in some fantastic images.

Here, I very much wanted to re-commission Didi and MangaPym, though this time I didn't use the same source input.

In the intervening year, Manapym has started to use fiverr.com, and is running his commissions through there. I was new to fiverr but it's easy to sign up. And all the work flow is there, laid out. It guides you through what you need to do (I didn't have to read any help, or anything, it's straightforward.)

Trying to talk to too many artists at once on DA via Notes is a nightmare. I much prefer shifting over to email. And then, well I have so much email that I can FIND the conversation. And my email client can dig it out for me too fairly easy (it remembers threads just fine).

Fiverr makes all communication happen over it's interface, but it sends you an email when you have something going -- so you can see what is going on without having to go to the site and log in. So it's like the best of email (quick, easy to get to and see what is going on, but a great workflow as it shows you all the communications for that project directly.)

Just in case people were wondering what it was like there.

The nightmare of the DA notes system might be one of the reasons I've slowed down in commissioning. I've spent minutes looking for a particular note that I'd have found instantly in email. And I loose track of things. It gets frustrating. (Plus the editor really does suck, tiny window, hard to see what you are quoting, ug.)

But back to the piece. As I said I wanted to get something of Korra for awhile. And then an idea hit. And then I was like "I need to commission MangaPym!". So this sort of worked out well. I had a subject, and idea, and an artist that I wanted to see do something on it. And there we go.

I'd asked for a side pose and the "uncovering of the biceps". As well, that seems really sexy to me, and with the various flexing Korra's around (that I really love naturally), I had not seen one, and I thought that it would work well.

mangapym then works his posing magic -- this is is his real super-power. Go through his images and you'll see some really nice inventive posting/framing. (At least I think so!).

Anyway, here we go. My first Korra commission.

He was quick too (just a few days). So, the only question is "do you like his artwork" (which the Gallery here will surely tell you). Other than that, the price is great, and working with him is quick and fast.

Some of my other commissions from him. MY favorite is Wonder Girl:

Korra (c) Nickelodeon Studios (at least I think this is correct.)
Art (c) mangapym