What Is A Furry?
In its most basic form, a furry is a person who is simply interested in cartoon anthropomorphic creatures. This means cartoon animals that bear physical similarities to humans such as the ability to speak, walk on two legs, wear clothes, etc. You’ve probably seen characters like this in mainstream media all the time, whether it be Nick Wilde in Zootopia or Lola Bunny in Space Jam, furry characters are all over the place. While there is a stigma surrounding the furry fandom, there isn’t actually anything inherently wrong or sexual about being a furry, at its core they are just people with an interest in a certain type of art/entertainment.
What Is Furry Art?
Okay so what’s so special about furry art, why isn’t this just art? Well, furries typically have what are known as fursonas. These are cartoon, animal depictions of themselves. Fursonas are just people reimagined as anthropomorphic animals. Furry art is an art that, more often than not, depicts these fursonas for furries. It comes in many different shapes and forms, and while you could argue that there isn’t really anything that special about it and that it’s just art, furry art is usually more about what it means to its owner, creating a new persona and acting as an escape. This isn’t to suggest that there isn’t any good furry art, of course, there are amazing pieces of furry art, but it is art just like any other that happens to contain animal characters.
Different Types Of Furry Art
As mentioned before, furry art comes in many different styles and these each typically have their own purpose and functionality. So let’s skim through a few of these before we get into the benefits of being a furry artist.
Reference Sheets: These are illustrations of a fursona that dissect what makes the fursona the way it is. It usually contains two full-body pictures of the fursona, one of the front and one of the back as well as little details such as the fursona’s paws or pieces of text that describe the fursona’s personality or what is happening in the illustrations. These are also useful for furries looking to get a fursuit made as it gives the fursuit maker a reference of what the suit should look like.
Profile Pictures: Another thing that a lot of furries want to do is to share their fursonas through their profile pictures on whatever platform whether it be Discord, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever. Therefore, furry profile pictures are usually an illustration of the fursona from the neck up that can fit in a relatively small circle.
Portraits: These are probably the most self-explanatory on the list, but these are designs for people who just want a full-body picture of their fursona just to share I imagine.
Badges: While this technically isn’t a style of art there is a very particular way that furry badges are made. They are usually an illustration of the fursona from the chest up and beneath them in bold letters is the name of the fursona. These are more often than not reserved to print and wear to furry conventions.
Of course, there are thousands more different types of furry art but these are among the most popular
Why Should I Make It My Side Hustle?
Now, you may be wondering what’s so special about furry art that you should make it your side hustle, and the answer is very simple: saturation. It should go without saying that a prerequisite for making this your side hustle is that you need to be objectively good at art but once you have that, being a freelance artist is extremely saturated. Trying to get a gig on Fiverr or a commission anywhere can take ages, because there are just so many other people doing the same thing, and the harsh reality is, they are probably doing it better.
But one competitive edge you can get over them is how you market yourself. Rather than just being a freelance artist, market yourself under a niche, in this case, a furry artist.
Another advantage of being a furry artist is that most if not all furries want to draw their fursona, but not all furries are great at art, so your service is almost necessitated by and for the furry community.
How Can I Make Money As A Furry Artist?
So you’ve decided you want to be a furry artist. How do you make money?
There are a few ways you can go about it, some more battle-tested than others, so let’s explore some of your options.
Building a Fiverr Account: The important word here is building as the number of gigs you get on Fiverr will exponentially increase with the more time you spend on Fiverr completing people’s services. The longer you spend on Fiverr, the more gigs you get, the more you have to add to your portfolio, the more reviews you get, and the more good impressions you leave meaning the more money you potentially get. Of course, you should be building a professional-looking profile, to begin with, to get your account started but you cannot expect immediate success.
Building An Etsy Account: Very similar to building a Fiverr account, building a great profile on Etsy can definitely bring you a secondary stream of income and while it may not be as reliable as Fiverr it certainly is still a valid method. Just like with Fiverr you should build up an appealing portfolio as that is the first thing people are going to see when they look at your profile.
Twitter/Instagram Commissions: While it’s definitely a much less official way of going about getting commissions it definitely works. Hundreds of furry artists advertise their art on social media and announce when their commissions are open. This allows the customer to build a much more personal relationship with the artist and they aren’t susceptible to pesky delivery fees and such.
How Much Do Furry Artists Make?
Now all this talk about becoming a furry artist is pointless without the question of how much furry artists can actually make being answered. A full-time furry artist that is getting relatively consistent orders can expect to make upwards of $50,000 a year. However, if this is a side hustle and you don’t have time to spend the day drawing fursonas you can still make around $20,000 a year in addition to whatever you make full-time.
