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There seems to be a lot of Djubre-bashing around as of late, which I find.. bemusing.

From what I see, it seems to originate from two places.

The first of which, are silly comments I uttered when fooling around with friends and people who know that I'm kidding (this is why post stalking is bad, kids). Funnily enough, nobody picks up on the mean/ridiculous things I say when I really mean it, which is sad, because I have been both those things on several occasions, in all seriousness as well.

The second one is from the guide I wrote. That sarcastic one, you may have heard of it? Of course you have, too many people have heard of it and you probably have too. They've taken the rantings of a whiny 16-year-old, and applied it to me as though I am still the same person. I used to cyber when I was 16. I mean come on!

Though, in favor of the people who really enjoy reading the guide or any silly fans I may have picked up because of it, I leave it up there. It helps some people, what can I say, even a fool can speak the truth. It may not help all people, but... Eh, not the point.

I've also acquired an entire thread on another website, as though I wasn't popular enough! If you haven't read it, I'll fill you in on the details, there's not much to fill in really. It's the usual complaint. Ego. How that word haunts me already, it's been used so many times in reference to me. It may be because I'm foreign, but I don't really know what people are shitting themselves over with that part.

Here's the deal with my art. I like my art. I have pride in my art. I think I am a decent artist. I work hard on my artwork. I spend countless hours perfecting artwork (when a customer is involved anyways).

I don't do art a lot, but when I do scrape up motivation to do so, the only thing keeping me going is me telling myself that no, it does not look like crap, and "yes--you should keep going; don't stop now or you'll never finish it and customers are waiting for you, you dumb b*****d!" So considering that I'm starved for attention, flattery, and proper bum patting from my parents in the art department (their consensus was that it was a waste of time and everything I drew was perverted and dumb-looking anyways--these are commissions we're talking about by the way, haha!), what I would do is comment, out loud, on how nice the art I'm doing is turning out.

Little did I know is that most artists around here--they don't do that. What they do, is tell people that their artwork is shitty, and in retrospect, this is probably what I should have done, because when I compliment my artwork, I get one, maybe two, doing the same as well. When artists adamantly complain about their artwork, and continue to do that over the course of a few couple of pages, they can get as many as half a dozen people doing that.

I have a thing for honesty though (could you tell?) and to tell people that my artwork turned out s**t when I've spent hours upon hours upon days upon hours upon weeks upon months etc etc drawing it seems to hurt myself more than I benefit from people telling me how great it is. Not to mention how insulted I'd feel if I was the customer and the artist confesses that they think the commission turned out terrible.

People are paying a lot of gold for my artwork! I don't pretend it's not a lot of gold, my prices require an extraordinary amount of gold to purchase, and this has also been an area of great debate. Unfortunately. Regardless of whether it's their business or not, but hey, I have always been a great fan of free speech, so there's not much I can do in that regard. What I have tried to do, is explain, many many times, how I price artwork (not just my own).

I try to always use three factors to price artwork: Quality (obviously), delivery time, and popularity. If quality is high, the price is raised. If the delivery is fast, the price goes down (I'll explain how this works in a second, hold on). If popularity is high, price also gets a raise. If the quality is low, the price is low. If the delivery time is slow, the price gets a raise. If popularity is low, price is lower too.

With every system of evaluation (i.e. guesswork, which is what pricing is, basically, hit and miss, hit and miss...), these figures don't always work out. For example, even if you're unpopular and nobody's heard of you, it doesn't necessarily mean that your worth will plummet. though you'd have to be quite good for popularity to not affect you either way (like my friend Yodo, who is a newbie to the R&C and yet the art pwns any other factor to this equation).

For my artwork, what I figured was that any fool could see that the quality was decent, if not "good". Eyeroll here, bastards and their semantics. Anyways. Quality is decent. Next factor in the equation--my rate of production. I am a slow artist. I haven't been able to draw a full artwork within a couple of days since I got my tablet, are you kidding me? Adding to this factor, I draw for the business aspect of it. I draw for gold, pure and simple. I don't take any enjoyment in art anymore since I haven't drawn a personal project in what, three years; I'm worked to the bone on commissions whenever I do have free time, and as I'm writing this, I actually wonder why I even bother, this website doesn't really do it anymore for me (post stalkers will see how infrequently I post here anymore, now I just hang around the GCD--much less drama, ********!), and the haters are getting real irritating! But I do go on.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, my delivery time is slow, really slow. It's slow, and I only need one, maybe two customers a month. At most. I raised the prices a lot just because of this factor. I'm a businessman, I strive for maximum efficiency, so if I'm gonna get instantly filled slots at.. say 5mil a fullbody whenever slots open, there's no point in working my a** off, because by the time I've finished, inflation will have probably kicked it and 5mil would become worthless. Slots get instantly filled that way, I take about a month to finish the artwork, and by the time I do finish, school is due to be back on pretty soon and I can't take orders. So as a businessman, it makes more sense for me to charge 15mil a fb and wait a week or two for someone to fill my slots. This is the primary reason my prices are high.

The last factor is popularity. Like it or lump it, the guide has made me famous. Well, infamous, really. For reasons that are beyond me, my artwork might have contributed to making me famous, though I'm not sure how that really happened, considering that there are better artists and I've never really been considered part of the "elite" group of artists that have been established on Gaia, with their monthly gold-sucking auctions. If there are people who should be called greedy and "overpriced", well.. yeah. I don't do auctions because of that reason. I hold a yearly auction, because I'd rather have a shop, it's fun! My friends can hang out there, and there's not much traffic either, so less opportunities for idiots to take something I say completely and utterly out of context and repeat it to others on some bitchy website made by kids who haven't found the close button on their browser yet ... For example. Cough.

Anyways, yeah, I'm pretty popular, I guess?

So to summarize, my price is made up of:
40% quality.
40% delivery time.
20% popularity.

In fact it's probably more accurately 30% quality and 50% delivery time, because as I said before, and repeated it a million times to various people who think they have the right to complain about how much I charge for my time.. I'm a slow artist and I don't need any more customers by having lower prices. The amount of customers I have now (which is basically a very small, minute amount) is the way I want it, and that's that.

So yeah. Dear Diary. Eyerolls for dinner.

If you're reading this and you still think I'm an egotistical a*****e, well.. I can't help you with that. I do encourage you to try and get to know me from a personal point of view before you pass judgment though, 'cause there are always two sides to every story.