Looking Forward to 2020: What I’ve Learned as a Fursuit Maker — Beetlecat Originals

I’ve been in the Fursuit Making Business for a Few Years Now… 14 To Be Exact!

Beetlecat ringing in the new year 2020

As a teen, I never had aspirations to be a fursuit maker (I had no idea such a thing existed) but after finishing college and getting some work experience; I dabbled in selling art online (sculptures, drawings) and then (after taking a small business course) I started professionally making fursuits for sale in 2006 (and taking commissions for completion in 2007).

From that, I went from an inexperienced and uncertain newbie, playing with techniques, making tutorials on them, and looking up to more experienced artists (and hoping to be them someday);

To today being an experienced and more confident artist (plus wife, mother-of-two, and several time convention Guest-of-Honour) who regularly gets approached to hear “Your fursuits/tutorials got me into furry/making fursuits.”

Vintage BeetlecatOriginals.com from 2006

Looking back at where I’ve come from, I’d like to share with you a few tips (that I maybe wish someone had shared with ME a decade ago). Please note these are only my own musings and I’m nobody unusual – just someone with a blog and a desire to write in it 🙂

I feel so lucky to be an artist that gets to WEAR her art 🙂

What I’ve Learned From The Past Decade Working as a Professional Fursuit Artist

My art studio/workroom

#1. Charge a Living Wage

Decide on an hourly/weekly/monthly wage that you can live on.

This number ($/hour) depends on your personal situation and personal needs (and the tax rates where you live). If you are younger and just starting out, you might want to start near minimum wage. But as you gain skill and experience (and demand), you can increase your wage to match.

Assuming your art is/you wish it to be your only job, then it needs to cover your day-to-day expenses—housing, food, etc—plus having something set aside for unexpected expenses (pet illness, car troubles, etc). I would also encourage you to begin thinking about your future (including your retirement).

PLEASE NOTE: You DO need to charge more than a ‘regular’ job gives because in a sole-proprietor situation (aka you work for yourself) YOU are the employer (as well as the employee) and the money you make STILL NEEDS TAXES PAID ON IT. Also, as an employee, you do not pay for materials or overhead or upkeep on the employer’s business.

In the USA, a very rough rule-of-thumb is to plan to pay 30% in taxes and 30% back into the business in materials and upkeep. Which means, of what you collect per hour, you can expect to only ’keep’ around half of it. Or less.

The average American makes $27/hour. To take that amount home, an equivalent ‘billable rate’ for a fursuit maker is around $40/hour. To take home just a minimum wage of $15/hour, you probably need to bill more than $22/hour.

So all this is just to say, PLEASE don’t feel awkward for charging what you need to to survive (and thrive)!

YOU are the ONLY PLACE a client can find what YOU DO. And if all they want is someone with the lowest price, they are probably not the right client for you. Do good, clean work in your personal style and cultivate a client community that loves the work that YOU do ^_^

#2. You are a Business Owner as Well as an Artist

You are a business as well as a professional artist. You have to competently wear all of the hats (or find someone who can help you with the aspects you lack).

This means you need to know all of the legalities for running a business in your area. You need to know how to record and file taxes (federal, regional, etc). You need to know how to talk to a customer clearly and competently and how to write a Terms of Service.

Think about where you want to spend your time. It is absolutely okay to hire out processes you do not care for (accounting. Tax software. Website design. Merchandise.) in favor of where your personal expertise is better utilized (Making the art. Innovating new designs.).

As well as being an artist, You need to market (and sell) your art. You could make the most amazing doodads but if no one knows that you make doodads then they won’t know to come to you when they need a doodad. You need an online center of business. Maybe a website. Maybe an online store. Maybe social media. Maybe all of those.

Word-of-mouth is gold in the fursuit business. Make things that customers love & want to wear. And then potential clients will ask your previous clients where they got that cool fursuit and then (I say again) you NEED to have a place for these potential clients to learn more about you/your work. AKA a website or a business-only social media page. NOT a Twitter page full of RTs of other people’s work and political statements. Don’t make potential clients search for examples of your work. Be proud of what you make and make the commission/purchase process clear and upfront.

Lastly, you are the face of your business so be thankful to your clients and supporters and patient with your potential clients and peers. It costs you nothing to be kindly, reflects well upon your business, and is, in general, just a nicer way to go through life.

#3. Separate Personal and Business.

Keep separate bank accounts between your business and your personal savings.

Don’t pay yourself until after the job is done. Always have the ability to refund every single person in your queue. If a client is not working out due to lack of payment/harassment/inability to make what they ask/etc, it’s a VERY nice option to go “I’m sorry but this just isn’t working due to [reason]. I am going to refund you in full and I wish you well in the future.”

Get a credit card for your business. Aside from being a great way to separate personal/business spending (important when it comes time for taxes), using credit is a good way to track purchases + build credit for large purchases in the future (such as for a mortgage). Eventually, better credit means access to better credit cards with better rewards (which is essentially free money for spending you already do).

HAVE a bank account! Paypal is not a bank account – it does not protect you or your money.

Separate friends & business

Customers can become friends and friends can become customers but keep a very clear separation between the two aspects of your life. Friends who demand a lower rate are not very good friends and customers who flatter and wheedle their way into your life just for a lower rate are not very good customers.

Figure out what your friend/business boundaries are (ie personal chats/home visits/gifts and favours/etc) and then ENFORCE THEM. Don’t feel bad for doing so. It is healthy and necessary ESPECIALLY for an artist working from home (where the lines between work and home can be already blurred).

Trust your intuition and it’s okay at any point to stop to say “no actually.. this situation isn’t feeling right anymore and we need to have a talk.” If you are ever unclear about a situation, post on Twitter or Telegram or heck even just email me and you’ll receive an unbiased view on the situation and possible suggestions for moving forward.

#4. Track Your Time

Time is the biggest limiting factor for a sole artist and it is well worth it to use your time effectively. And my preferred way to do this is through time tracking.

Some people like to use time blocking (setting up blocks of time for certain tasks) and some prefer time logs (writing down what you did and how long it took), I personally prefer a personalized type of pomodoro (logging work in 45 minute blocks).

I use a combination of daily journal/planner (I’m currently using the Lion Planner) and app (Focus To-Do) but there are a million different ways to time track. Try them out and find one that works for you.

After you decide on your price per hour AND track your time AND then you find that something is taking too long to make (the material/labour cost is too high for what you can sell it for) you have three choices. You can try to find a way to make it quicker (building in batches? Limited customization?), to make it cost less to build (buy in bulk? Use different materials?) or to discontinue it.

As a hidden fourth choice, If you REALLY enjoy making something that you cannot sell for what it’s worth, then by all means go for it! But I bet *somewhere* there is a market for it (or something similar to it). Find it!

I used to think I did not need to track my time since what did it matter when I was selling my items based on the current market rate/what I needed to make per year. Eventually, I realized it does matter because, even if it’s not the main influence on pricing, it keeps you accountable to what you are spending your time on.

After reliably tracking my own time, It turns out that my own mental estimation was pretty far off on some things that I worked on – some things took longer and some quicker than I expected. And I was able to see how much time I spent on administration tasks vs extra research vs physical construction. With all of that additional data, I am able to streamline my process and knowledgeably decide what I would prefer to spend my time on.

#5. Invest! In yourself, your Tools, and your Education

Invest in your Physical wellness

Take care of yourself first and think about the art second. Yes the art is IMPORTANT and yes it PAYS THE BILLS but SO ARE YOU and SO DO YOU.

If you don’t clean your airbrush, eventually it will stop working and you will have to fix it or replace it or do without. Well you are your most important tool and if you are burned out or sick or otherwise not working then NOTHING is getting done.

For a year after the arrival of my 2nd child, I put off going back to the gym. I didn’t have time because I ‘needed’ to work instead. I didn’t go bike riding. I didn’t even want to go to the doctor or hang out with friends because it would take time out of my workday (time already stretched through caring for my daughter and feeling I had to make up for my prior maternity leave). I usually just felt tired and ineffective.

Well now, a year later, I go to the gym twice a week. I hang out with friends (I make new friends even). I’ve started brand new weekly activities and I’m most recently considering taking up yoga on my non-gym days. And all of these activities DO fit into my day because I schedule them in (and make them a priority) and overall I feel MORE energized to work not less. And I feel like a human again.

I firmly believe that people cannot to work work work hour-after-hour day-after-day and remain effective. Put in your effective working hours and leave some time to decompress through other physical activities and mental hobbies. Wear your Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), take breaks, take holidays and even mental health days as needed.

Be kind to yourself and your body.

Invest in your Tools and your Education

Research and try out new ways and new materials. Even if you are happy with the materials you’re using, you might be happier with new ones.

For a long long looong time I used pottery clay for my head sculptures. I had no real issues with it – I had used it forever and knew exactly how it worked. So why invest in the oil-based clay that everyone else was using? This was MY WAY.

Eventually, I did decide to try the new clay and.. yeah it’s way better. Even with having to learn a new way of working with it, the pros (more detail. No cracking. No sagging. No drying out.) highly outweigh the cons and I wonder if my work could have been better sooner if I had just tried it earlier.

Maybe for you, it’s the first time you pick up a sewing machine instead of hand sewing. Yes it’s scary and you’ll have to learn a new way. Maybe you’ll like it. Maybe you won’t. But there is really only one way that you’ll know and that is to give it a shot.

Support materials, programs, people and learn what they have to offer. Take a course. Pay for a tutorial. Not everything works for you, but when something does work, it often leads to a great step forward in your art. And that’s worth the occasional attempt at trying something different.

#6. It’s Okay (encouraged even) to Say NO

Trust your intuition and, if a potential client is setting off alarm bells, then say no and move on. It is not worth it.

I’ll say it again, not every client is a match for every artist and stressing over working with a disreputable/disagreeable/clingy/micromanaging/etc client is NOT WORTH IT. Refund them (minus the work you have completed) and move on.

Keep your promises but you don’t need to keep unrealistic promises – ask someone experienced that you trust to know the difference. It’s okay to make mistakes. Own up to them and work out a new agreement together.

If you misquote someone, you don’t have to suck it up and do work you hate/do work for lower than you’re worth.

You can say “Look.. I made a mistake and I just can’t do the work in the way you want it done. Here is an alternate option that I feel more confident with/I’ll give you a partial refund for that aspect of the job so you can find someone else to do it for you/I underqoted for the job and here is what it will cost to get that part of the job done/I can offer you a full refund so you can find someone else that will do it for you.”

Try to be pleasant. Artists (and customers) are only human and we make mistakes and have off days but when you are frustrated just take some time to cool down before you write up your reply email. Customers might be rude but don’t take it personally. Keep your correspondence clear and professional and leave petty grievances off social media.

#7. Turn Inspiration into Action

Continuous learning is an essential part of being an evolving artist but you need be able to convert your research into action or it becomes wasted time and effort.

Do more than just read inspiring words or watch online tutorials or listen to motivational podcasts. You need to apply the information and turn it into action.

Dont get caught in information overload

Rather than watching YouTube video after YouTube video until the wee hours and you can’t focus anymore on what you saw, pick one and really pull it apart and think about it. Get everything that you can from it before moving on.

Read one thing and take notes. Think about what you’ve read and how it applies to your work. Highlight passages that you really connect with

You have limited time to spend on learning so DO something with what you learn. don‘t let It Be wasted.

I’m going to leave it there for now! I do have more to discuss but it’s a long topic so I want to give it it’s own spotlight.

Coming up soon…

Maximize the ART and Minimize the WORK

There is a better way!