Slyphur

As an artist myself, I question the need for a website like this.

I've never had an issue with obtaining my clients reference sheets. It's pretty standard fare to have that information ready before you ask for a commission, and if it's not readily available, it usually can be found within a few minutes from either their hard drive, associated art hosting accounts, or social media accounts.

Why would anyone want to host their reference sheets on another platform when they already have plenty of platforms to host their reference sheets.

Just because it's named Refsheet.net?

The idea of a client giving me a handy link to access their reference sheet when time is pressing does sound good on the surface.

They use one of my business cards to write down their Ref.st link, or simply say their character name followed by Ref.st

However, I also need their contact information to finalize and give them their commissioned piece, rendering this handy link obsulete.

Telegram, Discord, Twitter make up around 90% of my clients preferred method of contact, and they can give me that information just as easily as a Ref.st link.

A reference sheet is used by artists to draw characters for others. Preferably this reference sheet is a flat color picture with a character in front, 3/4, and side views with some text added in for more detailed features of the character, possibly with expressions and preferred clothing styles.

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It's called Refsheet.net, one assumes it is a depository for clean well done reference sheets and not just a bunch of random images with loose text.

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Artists are busy... very, very busy and anything to speed up the information process ( Gathering of information on the character ) is vital. We can't spend half an hour trying to sum up a character with multiple images and text fields on a confusing to use website when a single transfer of a well-done reference sheet works far better.

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It's solving a problem for others while making a problem for artists, the people who use reference sheets the most.

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This isn't pointless argument, this is taking a stand against the bastardization of a time honored tradition of having a reference sheet good and ready for your commission, and not just being lazy and sending a link to Refsheet.net and having your artist work even harder then they already are.

A sea of sta.sh, dropbox, imgur, flickr, FurAffinity, DeviantArt and now Refsheets.net...

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Nobody is going to ditch their current platforms for Refsheets.net to centralize their reference sheets / OC's no matter how amazing of an idea it is, that's a fallacy. Everyone will continue to use all of these platforms as well as yours to cast the widest nets to other artists and viewers. That is how it has worked, and it will be how it continues to work.

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I'm in the industry, I've been doing commissions for over ten years, I remember VCL, that then spawned FurAffinity, that then spawned Weasyl, InkBunny, SoFurry, and now we have spawned Refsheets.net

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Why am I so passionate about telling you all this?

Because I actually care about you.

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You're losing money on a failing business with little hope to ever revolutionize a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and at this point I do not see any feature that can save it within enough time to make any profit.

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It's been two years in development, and you have a base of 89k users, a majority of them FREE users who are going to eat up your server costs like it was nothing because hosting images is costly.

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You said yourself, on June 11, 2019:

"Last month had a *lot* of image traffic, and while I finally got everything moved over to the new image servers, we incurred some expensive server costs last month. In all, we need ~$400 to catch up."

89k users on Refsheets.net, and not a single comment on Twitter, 25 retweets, 21 likes.

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You are just another platform to them.

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What's the solution then? Charge people to use the service? Oh... This is from your Patreon Perks...

$10 or more per month

If I make some sort of paid account feature, you get it free

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It's been two years, the mobile site is a buggy mess, the site itself is confusing to use, it looks like a generic word press site with the only feature being you can add an image with some text fields and now you have a feedback idea of adding in "Artwork Delivery?" TWO YEARS LATER?! You expect professional artists to create an account on your website just to deliver a finished work? That's a feature?!

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No.

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You state, "if this doesn't fit your flow then don't use it!", but you're wrong. If someone solely uses Refsheet.net, I am forced to use it, or lose a possible commission, thus...

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You are just another platform to me.

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I would highly suggest planning future features with a professional artist if you wish to continue this endeavor.

^{It's good to have a dream, but don't let it ruin you.}

Not selling anything... yet...

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Patreon Tiers

$10 or more per month

If I make some sort of paid account feature, you get it free