The news: Of not so pleasant news

I'd be kidding if I said the last week has been easy.
Work, as with most of the month, has been a rush to get urgent projects out of the door for our clients due to our office and welding workshop moving the next month. As a result clients have had us work at full capacity and the only reason they haven' us work even harder(at least in the welder's case) was because there just wasn't enough room to get anything more onto the workshop floor.

However, in that rush to get everything ready ASAP, it means us in the offices had to make sure the plans and drafts for -every- projects at hand had to be completed as soon as possible.

Which lead me to one of the unpleasant new I got this friday. Namely, with everything we had to rush out the door as fast as possible.... unless our clients come next week to my employers with completely new projects they can then assign to me to produces assembly plans and drafts for.... I'll be basically finding myself unemployed come this next friday. The workshop is full... but it's so because we got out all the plans and assembly schematic that we could. And though the workshop now have more work than they can handle even if they started doing night shifts... we ourselves in the offices are finding ourselves with pretty much nothing to do that would require keeping two drafters(one with 15 years of experience) on the floor.

Originally I was hired to help them with the glut of production of drafts and plans they needed to get done due to current projects. This was originally though and envisioned to be, loosely speaking, a "contract" of 3 months. However, come next friday unless miraculous new projects land on our lap, I'm finding myself after only one month and a half of work. Even bosses didn't expect they may have to lay me off so soon.

It's been... I don't want to get into it at length, but it's been mildly frustrating. Perhaps more than mildly. to say that such was not in my plans would be an understatement. And with other plans I had to cancel because of the job originally... this adds a bit to the frustration.

I'm not despairing though. I've still got some notable amount of commissions to go through right now with an almost full queue. But it does add a lot of layers of uncertainty as I don't know what to expect at all next week. I was (sort of) getting on track again with commissions before accepting the temporary job offer. Now I find myself facing that job offer being even much more temporary than expected.

The ironic part in all this, is I might find myself very likely laid off on almost the very same date that they had to lay me off last year, for the very same reasons as last year was when the office ran out of projects to keep two drafters occupied rather than just one.

I don't like to asks for help, because I've always been one who felt I should find and work my own ways out of things. This said, until I find a new drafting job(thankfully, apparently there's been quite a lot of demand in the newspaper for drafters lately and I live close to a couple of industrial sectors), I'll need everything I can to make sure things don't go from "uncertain" to "going down" proper.

I've heard someone say in the past that the best thing you can do for an artist is not to tell them how good of an artist you think they are.... but to tell everybody else how good you think that artist is.

So, for those who've often told me you liked my art... I'll admit I would be very thankful if you could spread the word.

In the meanwhile, I'll be trying to complete as many of the commissions in my current queue during my free time before the end of my work week(and probably time at my job). I'll also be making more of a concerted effort to keep all my galleries up to date on content and commission offers(like the pre-posed werewolves designs references) to try to spread my commission business as much as I can on my own until I hopefully find a new job. A lot of this might not be proper seen until the next week(as I will still need to work it through) but it's certainly in the plans.

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Commissions Queue, pricing and rules

Maybe prone to be revamped and modified slightly in the coming weeks. This said, for now this is still the chart which applies.

Current state of my queue. There's still an openings left for the interested. If there are still some left to complete once I resume streaming, commissions in my queue will be prioritized at the start of every streams.

Current Queue:
1: Caturnalia
2: Onom
3: just-a-username
4: shaytalis
5: OPEN

First, you can see a copy of all these rules as well as a visual pricelist and up to date Commissions queue on this link: https://www.weasyl.com/submission/660311/commissions-open
Up to date Queue will also be included in every wedneday and sunday updates journals.

I also now offer discounted preposed commissions. More informations here: https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61943/it-s-on-preposed-discounted-commissions

Process and communications:
First and foremost, offline commissions will be handled through notes for the time being. If you are interested in a commissions, just leave me a note on the gallery of your choice(https://www.weasyl.com/~ludocrow http://ludomercier.deviantart.com/ http://www.furaffinity.net/user/fringedog/) and I will reply to you as possible.

Once a commission and price(based on my pricelist) is approved, I will first start on the line sketch and then send this for initial approval. If lines are approved, then work will continue up to either shaded/toned or colors level depending on what was commissioned(or considered complete .

I allow for two revisions at each stages, to keep my work pace brisk. Normally I don't really expect to ever need more than one if any based on past livestream experiences.
Work-in-progress images and completed commissions will be communicated as dropbox links to the commissioners via private notes.

Commissions will be handled on a first-come/first served basis and I will add commissioners to a five-slots queue from which they will be removed as their commissions are handled.
Note that multiple-pictures commissions will see every pictures count as a single slot so a single commissions asking for a 3-stage sequences would be taking three slots by himself.

Payments and Pricelists:
Payments will always be handled via a paypal adress given during communication and is to be paid for upon the completion of work only. All commissions are to be paid in Canadian dollars, and payment IS to be paid for as "good and services".

The pricelist is as follow:
Line Sketches: 15$
Shaded/toned sketches: 25$
Colors: 50$

Separate pricelists will be coming for Digital Paintings and traditional works in the future.

Also, the prices are prone to adjustments as follow:

Additional characters: +50$ of BASE price
Backgrounds: +75% of BASE price
Extra Details(complex suit of armor or clothes, complex anatomy, etc):
+50$ of BASE price

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Livestream Schedule

Current livestream rate: 25$CAD/hours

Week's Schedule: Resuming potentially around the 30th of Auguts-1st of September. More information on that in the next weekend before I resume.