Somebody perhaps noticed that I disappeared for a couple of days... I went to my parents´ on Tuesday to discuss hotels in London. When I was leaving that night they said "it´s so late, we will take you home in the morning". So I stayed but in the morning I didn´t want to leave... I came back on Friday morning but just because I really had to continue working.
It was so nice in there. I started reading some old fantasy books which I had loved when I was younger... I remembered again why. I didn´t want to put the books away. I just lay on the living room floor and read. I didn´t even want to go to sleep because the books were so nice. The series in question is the Dragonlance saga. The first book I grabbed was The Soulforge, the very first Dragonlance book I ever read. Me and my bro both loved those books. We have both read them all. I haven´t laid a single thought on Dragonlance for years. I had totally forgotten how much I love the characters and all... When I was a teen those books had a big influence on me, perhaps a bit too big because they affected the way how I viewed the world.
Some background:
I have spent way too much time in the Internet lately. I realized that after I started to read Encyclopedia Dramatica. Let´s take
Seux/Zeriara and
Snapesnogger as examples. Both have had huge Internet wars against trolls and stuff. Both take Internet too seriously. In them I saw myself. I have taken Internet too seriously lately and stuff in the Internet have seriously bothered me. I realized this and tried to reduce the amount of time I spend in the Internet. I realized that I seriously need more IRL activity.
Then i went to my parents´. No Internet, no nothing. I just read books and had many IRL people around me all the time. It really made me feel better. I am not very good at socializing but there I wasn´t actually socializing. People were around me but I was doing my own stuff. I didn´t have to join their conversations or anything. But I could if I wanted. I didn´t have to be alone with my thoughts. That´s what I really enjoyed: just having people around me and no Internet. That´s why I didn´t want to go home. But I had to because I have fursuit commissions to finish. After the suits are finished I will go back and take my remaining commission works with me. I don´t want to be at home.
When I got home yesterday I opened IRC and immediately furry porn and misanthropia jumps to my face... I got really depressed and didn´t manage to do anything on the whole day. So I realized that I must reduce the time I spend on IRC. I probably won´t be hanging in there every day. I will keep MSN open because friends can reach me there. And of course I have a phone.
THOUGHTS ON COMMISSIONS:I will probably heavily reduce the amount of commissions I accept. I have been thinking about this for long and I have started to feel more and more confident about this. I will perhaps only accept 2-3 larger commissions per year. I won´t probably do small commissions at all. I don´t think that I will ever stop taking commissions because it´s really hard for me to say "no" to a customer who really is willing to pay for an expensive item. Again, I won´t open or close but I must be asked if I wanted to do a commission.
I will raise my prices after summer. Fullsuit prices must be at least doubled. I don´t feel nice about this because I think that my prices are already very high and a base price of 2000 euros ($2700) would make me a lot more expensive than many professionals, like One Fur All. But I have noticed that selling fullsuits under that price is not worth it. I am just doing damage to myself by selling stuff too cheap. I put hellish amounts of effort to details and my quality expectations are VERY high. I stress a lot about the quality of my suits. A price under 2000 euros is not worth the amount of all that stress. I know that I stress too much but I only want to sell the best. I want that the customer is 100% satisfied. If I charged very high prices I could afford to spend more time on details and I could also afford to offer refunds if the customer is unhappy about something. And I could also offer fixing of the suit for free. With my current prices that is not possible. But I would perhaps have commissioners every now and then even with high prices because I have spoken to people who say that they want their suit from the best builder and they are willing to pay for real quality.
(In Finland a tailor-made men´s suit costs 2000 euros at minimum. And that includes only a jacket and trousers, not a head and feet and tail and stuff... So when compared to that I should charge at least 3000 euros for a fullsuit...)
Why I want to reduce the amount of commissions? Because of the stress. I simply stress too much because I want to sell only the best. So I thought that I will make lots of premade stuff in the winter and travel around the country in summer selling that stuff. In Finland there are lots of happenings in summer. The customer can have a look at my products and decide if they like them. They cannot do that when they commission me.
Some time ago I wrote that I want to become a more specialized plushie-maker. My source of inspiration is
A Little Stranger. I already have ideas for series of premade plushies. I only want to make cats, arctic foxes and akita dogs. My cat series only has black, white and black-and-white cats and I already have a very unique name for them (not telling what it is because I´m afraid that the name is stolen before I launch the series). I made some doodles at my parents´ about the cats. My parents fell in love with this character:
My dad said that I should make a comic of that character. Perhaps I will. It could tell about my plushie cats. The plushies and the comic would go nicely together.
Perhaps I should make comics of akitas and arctic foxes as well. They will all be strip comics, drawn in very simple way.
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