Evening Folks, A lot of people always wonder what it takes to be successful at being their own boss in the furry art world. Today, we talk to Ratcha, a successful artist known for his NSFW furry comics.  We sat down to ask him some advice for aspiring artists.  ( For context of the interview (S)= Seeksie and [R]= Ratcha.)

(S) So for those who don’t know, tell us a little about yourself?

[R] I’m an artist from Moscow, Russia who draws lewd comics.

(S) Cool, how long have you been doing that for?

[R] I’ve been drawing comics since 2018 and drawing furries since 2016.

(S) Awesome, could you tell us a little about your comic?

[R] Haha, I have a series about Rick and Rina. That one was my first experiment in making comics, which ended up about 180 pages long. Most of it is me having fun, joking about different things, memeing and some brother/sister smut. I have several other comic series– one about a family brothel in space another comic about twin mice who have a lot of sex.

Dunno, I’ve started drawing incest porn and a lot of people subscribed to my patreon and wanted more and more so it just kinda became a theme. Sometimes it’s hard to change themes when a lot of people who pay you a lot of money want you to draw that specific thing. But, it’s still huge fun. 

(S) It’s great that you enjoy what you do. At what point were you like, “Hey, I can make a living off of this?”

[R] Hmm, off comics?

(S) Off artwork in general?

[R] When my Patreon was somewhere around $500 from artwork. I always loved drawing and used to scribble in my notebooks in school. But being red-green colorblind I never thought of drawing for living, so up until 24 I lived a regular life– school, university, one year of military service, office job. Then after several years working an office job I decided that I only live once (that was 2014 and YOLO was a thing), and signed up for an art school for Concept design.

Concept design ended up being boring and drawing furries was fun so I switched to that. 

So it was really more of a purposeful approach to art to making a living of it.

I’m 34 now, and it was 8 years ago. I was 26 back then. I feel like I’ve started way older than most people in the fandom start their art career.

(S) Being how popular you are, how did you build your audience?

[R] I don’t really think I’m that popular, though. But most of my building the audience was doing freebie livestreams and art raffles on furaffinity and twitter. Like, share, subscribe, send references, one of the participants gets a drawing, I get 50-100 new watchers. Freebie streams bring way less new watchers but most of them are way more loyal. Usually a single free sketch stream ends up in me drawing about 10 sketches and those people come back for more art.

When I’ve stopped streaming and focused on comics, most of the new watchers have been coming naturally. Comics are great for gaining watchers because they go way beyond your FurAffinity gallery and Twitter. People take them to hentai galleries, share at comic dedicated forums and collections. If you write a link to your Patreon at the bottom of your pages, sometimes, you know when your comic has been uploaded to a large gallery because there might be an influx of new subscribers overnight even though you haven’t been posting for a week.

(S) Do you follow any sort of schedule for uploading and streaming?

[R] No, I’ve tried to, but my schedule never aligned with my mood, rhythms, daily tasks and everything else so, I always ended up having to draw when I can’t, or Having to do other things when I want to draw. Nowadays I draw when I feel like and I do other things when I don’t want to draw. Sometimes it means I don’t draw for weeks or months, sometimes I draw every day for 10+ hours without weekends.

I also used to schedule posts to make them more evenly distributed in time, but I hated that I have to post something that I’ve drawn weeks ago and having to put a new thing on a shelf till the time comes. I love to finish a drawing, upload it and then read comments while it is still fresh. 

(S) What tips would you have for a fellow artist that is trying to build their audience?

[R] Post a lot of drawings. The best situation is drawing a day. Another one is to bring something of value to the people who watch you. Something of value is it being funny, sexy, cute or relatable or topical. If you hit several of those marks, people will like your work and share it with others. No one likes boring pinups with characters just standing, even if it is really nicely drawn. A crude drawing of something fun will be shared way more.

You must almost think of it as making memes or shitposting online, but you have the benefit of being an artist. You also have to have a clear goal in mind why you are building an audience. If you want to draw really beautiful artworks and you need an audience to get commissioned, then you can draw fanarts of popular characters in your style. But I don’t know much about it since I barely ever did any  fanarts, though it seems to work for other artists. 

(S) Any other advice for artists who are starting out?  What is a good use of their time? What wastes it?

[R] I’d say treat it like a job or a business from the beginning. But that does not mean that you should draw 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Drawing muscle is a muscle. If it is not trained, you’ll overwork and fail and will feel miserable. It is perfectly fine if you draw for 30 minutes and after that feel like a dried sponge. You’ve used all your resources for the day and you have to respect your limitations.

Respecting your limitations also means that your art will suck, and it will suck for a year or more. You have to recognize your lack of artistic ability and approach it stoically. “I did another drawing and sent it to the world; my job on this one is done; I will start the next one tomorrow.” It will save you from the misery of comparing yourself to others or even to yourself.

Another advice is to apply for an art school and go there. People praise self taught artists because it has this vibe of being amazing on your own, but if you want your art career to be a successful business, you don’t have time for that stuff. Art school will teach you in 2 years stuff that you’ll be learning on your own in 5. The benefit of art school is not knowledge but the creative atmosphere there. Also competing fellow students, doing collaborative projects, etc.

If you don’t have an option to go to the art school, you may look for figure drawing classes in your town. Sometimes local artists organize a club where they all pay together for a model to pose for several hours and then draw.  It will hugely improve your drawings. If you don’t have those, drawing from photos online works too but it is way more beneficial to see the model in real life in 3D, being able to walk around, sketch from different angles, etc.

Those sessions are usually very affordable. I’ve been going to the art studio in Moscow and the entrance fee was something like $5 and Moscow is not the cheapest city out there.Good or bad use of time really depends on what you want to draw.

For example, for me, when my son got born, I barely had time to draw, not mentioning everything else. And after some time I’ve realized that my brain is empty and I can’t write stories or make jokes because I haven’t been watching cartoons or movies for years. So now I try to find time to watch long format media because it boosts my creativity.

Poor usage of time is social media but it also depends on what you do on social media. Replying to comments on Twitter or FA is okay, binge watching YouTube all day is mostly a waste of time, especially considering YouTube will never surprise you with something thought provoking and will only show you thousands of variations of something you’ve already watched.

That’s its idea of “interesting”. I guess most people know that. I have this addiction, and I’ve only been able to beat it by swapping my phone to an ancient Nokia with buttons. I still have a large Android tablet with LTE for all the modern stuff like online banking, maps, etc. But it’s really inconvenient to use it for distractions (you have to open the backpack, take the tablet, close the backpack, login, etc. etc.). Good use of time is watching and reading online courses and art tips and advice, but everybody knows that already.

Another piece of advice, if you are a student and never had working experience and you want to draw for a living, you should learn the management side of things. It really helps if you understand how people make decisions when they want to buy something and how to make a product that people will be willing to pay for. People don’t just look for someone to commission. They look for something to fulfill a need. It may be an artwork of a specific fetish, it may be a drawing that conveys a certain feeling.

Sometimes, people might not know what they want, but they want it when they see it. That’s why you will have trouble selling pin-up commissions, but you might be successful selling movie posters with characters replaced to clients, phone lock screens, desktop wallpapers, credit card designs or t-shirts, or anything you can really come up with. You won’t believe how many furries just want to have friends and will be happy to join your livestream and pay you for an hour or two of doodling their character while you talk to them in the chat, and you both have fun. 

We really appreciate your time, Ratcha. We also hope that your words will help aspiring artists to follow their dreams.  If you wish to see Ratcha’s amazing work or support him, please check out these links: 

 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ratcha

Artconomy: https://artconomy.com/profile/Ratcha/about

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ratcha_art