Regarding commissions, health issues and the future!

 Yeap, it's one of those posts already. but I do find it important I stay as open as I can about this. This might be long post but I will try to be as brief as possible.

TL;DR VERSION

• I've vastly underestimated the work required to do commission work which in my ignorance, resulted in me accepting way too many commissions.
• The possibility of having carpel tunnel in my right arm has now also led to a burnout.
• The current commission system is flawed and an overhaul might be needed if I were to continue doing commission work.
• I want to focus more on my own work and less on commissions.
  
  

THE LONG WINDED VERSION

Some of you might've already noticed that I've been absent for the past few days and that's because I've decided to take a small break, as I've been suffering from a lingering pain in my right wrist which moved to the lower half of my arm up to my elbow. Which is one of the reasons I've taken this break. The pain is now gone but there's still that lingering feeling and I fear it might resurface, in case that happens I'll have to go see a doctor for that.

"A bit overwhelmed"

Another reason ofcourse is that I've been in vacation for two weeks now and most of that time was spent on commissions.
While I genuinely enjoy doing commission work, it now has gotten to the point where it's dangerously getting close to becoming more of a job rather than a hobby and that's a big no-no.
Currently, it's not that big a deal, however, in the long run this will only result in failure and will make me miserable. 

Ofcourse, this is mainly my own fault, but unfortunately this has also highlighted some major issues with my current commission "system".

The original idea of my commission work (and regular work for that matter) was that it could be made quickly and cheap. Which is why my early commissions were very restricted as I only did texture/assets swaps.
Over time, I started opening up to swapping character models as I figured out ways to make it work and with that came changing backgrounds, etc... all of which is fine and has definitely helped me improve in alot of ways. But unfortunately that came at the price of efficiency.
The biggest problem with swapping character models and custom models is that alot of my old animations were never made with the intend of swapping models and some animations have proven to be very difficult and annoying to work with, to say the least.
Things like facial animations also have to be completely redone everytime as they cannot be simply "transfered" over.
Then there's also things like backgrounds, which again, is not hard to do but it IS time consuming.

And last but not least, sadly, there's also been some abuse of the "honor" system. Partly my fault again for being naïeve enough to think it wouldn't get abused.
For those who're wondering what I mean by this: when you commission something, once I agree on doing it, I will work together with the commissioner by showing previews of the animation and stills of what the final result will look like. At the very end, when the animation is ready to be rendered out, is the moment for the commissioner to pay as a sign to say "Yes, I'm happy with the result". Unfortunately, there's already been several cases where the commissioners at the very last part become silent. Which results in me wasting alot of my time and other commissioners have to wait longer. Obviously, this will have to change now.
Once again, I realise it's my own fault for trusting a flawed system like that, but in my defence, I think I'm being very reasonable with my prices when the MAX cost of a single animation is €12,50.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE FUTURE OF COMMISSIONS?

"Open wide for some future!"

For now, I will finish the remaining commissions I currently have. Once those are done, it'll probably be a long while (I'm thinking weeks, maybe months here) before I decide to reopen commissions.
As my vacation will soon be over, that means I won't have as much free time and to prevent complete burnout, I simply cannot make commission work my priority anymore.

Instead I will start focusing more on my own work. And when I do finally decide to reopen commissions, there will have to be some changes. I will give it some thought in the meanwhile.

Thank you for those who've taken the time to read all this, I hope you understand!