Art Shops Boards Rules & Info

{What is an art shop?}An art shop is a thread in which you offer commissions! In it, you explain what you're offering and what your commission guidelines are. Then interested people can respond to the thread (or your otherwise preferred method of contact) with their commission requests.

The benefit of an art shop thread is that they easily allow you to keep all information relevant to commissioners in one place (such as past work, examples, queue). Another benefit is that running an active, long-going art shop thread means it advertises itself through activity bumping it, and it becomes a testament to your reliability and art quality over time.

{How do I set up an art shop?}If you want to make a multi-post thread (because you want to have different information divided into different posts), then label your thread as CLOSED, and make a few replies to it, reserved to be edited with information later. If you want to put everything in a single post, you could OPEN it immediately once you've written out all the information.

It's up to you what you want to put in your art shop, but here's a checklist of what they usually include:

• A fun name for your shop!
  
  
• The different types of commissions you offer, with examples.
  Don't make your thread too load-heavy; many and big images can slow it down. If you have lots of examples, link to them instead of embedding them.
  You can use cropped previews to link to your examples, to preserve space but still show something.
  
  
• Your commission guidelines & rules:
  
  • When and how you take payment.
    
  • What you will or won't draw.
  • How people should contact you
    (for example through e-mail, direct message, or the thread).
    
  • What people are allowed to do with the commissioned artwork.
  • How you prefer to be credited for your work.
    
    
• Your commission slots and queue.
  You could optionally include the progress on the commissions you're working on, too.
  
  
• A list of finished past commissions, with links to the art or posts.
  Makes you look popular and competent!
  
  
• A response form.
  If you want to make sure people include references and tell you exactly what they want, or otherwise information you need to know, you can make them fill out a form with all that information on it, to send to you. If you want people to tell you their favorite song, you can also add that to the form and they will answer it even though it has nothing to do with your commissions.
  

Once you have everything you want in your thread and you're ready for business, label it as OPEN. You can advertise your thread by linking it from your signature, sharing it off-forum, or bumping it back to the top of the art shops board - but don't spam bumps.

If your slots are full, or if you're taking a break from commissions, you can change its label to CLOSED so people know you're not taking on more commissions right now.