Anime Art Commissions, a Renaissance of Our Time?

“Here, I attempt to use history to ‘vindicate’ the anime-style illustration market, motivated by a desire to demystify the creation and consumption of artworks.”

01 Art, At What Price​

Not long ago, an art-focused content creator discovered that a freshman exercise he had painted while studying at the Central Academy of Fine Arts had been signed with a famous painter's name and sold for 150,000 yuan.

Although this incident, which sparked a small wave of discussion, ultimately devolved into another round of internet spectacle, it also reflected just how opaque the so-called art market really is.

The look of old CAFA classroom exercises (in terms of color, brushwork, composition, and many other aspects) is, for anyone who has gone through art exam prep, “immediately recognizable” as distinct from the work of students admitted to art academies through the exam-prep paths of the new century — yet most “outsiders” find it hard to tell apart. This gives fraudsters considerable opportunity.

For a long time, the media's clickbait tradition of “so-and-so's painting sells for a sky-high price” headlines has fostered strange imaginings among the general public about artists as a group and about art prices. It has also fueled the excitement of investors who don't know the ropes.

While ordinary people marvel at the frightening prices fetched by works they “can't understand,” and while discernment-lacking wealthy buyers get carried away paying for a work that “me thinks has appreciation potential,” many students and parents still hold the view that “studying art probably won't put food on the table” — an odd contradiction, to say the least.

At the same time, as someone who also makes a living by “selling my drawing skills,” I have come to notice that in the so-called “commission circle,” the online anime-style illustration market operates in a relatively transparent way.

02 Anime Art At Least Has a Price Tag​

When we open Mihuashi, the first thing that appears is the “showcase.” Like opening a shop, artists display their works, clearly defined service types, clearly marked prices, and delivery times in their showcases. If you like a particular artist's style and know exactly what you need, you can place an order or start a conversation directly. The whole process is direct and fast, with transparent pricing.

If you have more complex or unique project needs, you can post a detailed brief through the platform's standardized templates to publicly recruit artists. Artists then apply or quote based on your requirements. In either mode, an escrow mechanism of “pay for one stage, then proceed to the next” ensures transaction security.

Finally, like all online shopping apps, client reviews (and even commission price ranges) are publicly displayed, forming part of the artist's reputation system.

Thus, through the operation and management of internet platforms, non-standardized art commission services become as transparent and controllable as possible. Although there is still room for opaque pricing practices (such as actual final prices differing from listed prices), and incidents like sky-high OC commission lists occasionally make the news, these are isolated cases rather than representative of the whole.

To add a disclaimer: like virtually any internet or popular cultural phenomenon, the anime commission circle itself is an ecosystem in chaotic flux and lively development. Its boundaries are hard to define and its venues impossible to exhaust (for example, the Qzone commission ecosystem that once opened my eyes yet felt impenetrable).

This is not an ecosystem unique to the Chinese internet, and Mihuashi is not the only commissioning channel or platform, let alone a perfect one (especially on issues like artist verification thresholds and community atmosphere). The reason this article chooses Mihuashi as its subject is that it appears in the public eye in the form of relatively formal, commercialized operation. (Subscription services like Patreon, I would argue, are closer to a product of the internet age's fan economy)

03 The Gallery Myth of Art​

Looking back at history, the operating systems of contemporary galleries and the so-called art trade, along with the accompanying “deification movement” of artists, only began in the late 19th century.

As late Impressionism gradually gained acceptance from critics, mass image printing spread, and modern art movements rose, the public, critics, and capital began to focus not just on the quality and style of a particular work, but on the artist and the artist's inner world.

The artist was no longer just “a master craftsman of superb skill,” but “a transcendent genius or a madman.”

Vincent van Gogh was gradually rediscovered in this process and became the archetypal narrative of the “lonely and suffering artistic genius.” And Marcel Duchamp, the father of modern art, who pointed at a urinal and called it art, became “the pioneer who led a revolution of ideas.”

After World War II, the center of the art market shifted from Paris in Europe to New York in America. The rise of Leo Castelli, the New York dealer and foundational figure of the contemporary gallery business, became the key turning point in the transformation of the gallerist into an “artist maker.”

Castelli abandoned the loose buy-and-sell relationship with artists, choosing instead to sign long-term contracts with them and to become deeply involved in their creative direction and exhibition planning, turning many then-unknown artists (especially Pop artists) into rising superstars of the art world.

Curators and the Museum of Modern Art thereby gained the power to define art history. In this “artist manufacturing” marketing, the artist's image (usually a passionate but inwardly suffering, alcoholic or depressed male figure) naturally became an important object of shaping and alienation. The artist's personal experiences, emotions, suffering, and even early death all became parts of the “genius myth” that could be consumed, packaged, sold, and branded.

Simply put, the operating mechanism of the contemporary gallery system is to invest in the “artist” themselves rather than in commissioning single works. That is, it usually takes the form of signing a representation contract with an artist (generally lasting several years), investing in the artist's entire career, giving the artist considerable freedom, and acquiring the right of first refusal or exclusive sales rights over the artist's works.

In other words, the function of the contemporary gallery is actually to “discover” and “manufacture” artists, not to serve as some offline equivalent of Mihuashi matching supply and demand.

04 Rembrandt's Pain Is My Pain​

But in earlier times, from the Renaissance onward, paid commissioning — where institutions or patrons placed orders with painters — was long the way painters made their living.

Let us take the immortal masterpiece of art history, the Dutch Golden Age Baroque painter Rembrandt and his The Night Watch as an example: The Night Watch is a large oil painting created by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn in 1642, originally titled The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq. It is not only a masterpiece but also a revolutionary milestone in Western art history.

With commercial prosperity and the rise of the burgher class, the Netherlands gradually broke away from the traditional patronage system of nobility and church. Wealthy merchants, the emerging citizenry, and municipal institutions became the clients commissioning works. The Night Watch was a group portrait oil painting collectively funded and ordered by the Amsterdam civic militia company.

Moreover, Dutch commercial rules at the time were already very mature and flexible. Although The Night Watch was a group order, the amounts paid by the dozen-plus militiamen were supposed to “more or less determine their placement in the painting” — that is, the more one paid, the more prominent and clear one's position in the picture should be.

Thus, such a collective portrait should have balanced the visual weight of each member of the militia company. But Rembrandt chose to dramatize and dynamize the painting completely (or, in a phrase very popular in today's commission circle: “full of storytelling”), structuring the entire picture with strong contrasts of light and shadow, pulling apart the primary and secondary, the solid and the vague.

However, the very revolutionary quality of The Night Watch is why it was unpopular with its commissioners at the time. The militiamen who had paid equal sums were dissatisfied at being placed in dark shadows, leading to a lawsuit that sent Rembrandt's reputation into a sharp decline.

After being seen as a painter who “didn't follow the rules,” Rembrandt's portrait commissions from the powerful and wealthy dropped dramatically, and he sank deep into financial and debt crises.

Come to think of it, we can describe Rembrandt's troubles back then entirely in today's internet-speak: “Why was our XXX (character name) shoved into a corner? Teacher, are you an XXX hater?”

Of course, times are different after all. The artist friends I interviewed who take commissions on internet platforms basically all said that the platform-mandated process, with multiple review stages covering composition, sketch, line art, coloring, and final artwork, plus the fact that most artists state the number of allowed revisions upfront, basically prevents major disputes between the two sides over the final result.

Many artists also said that clients commissioning anime-style illustrations through platforms generally respect the artist's personal style, and usually write their requirements fairly clearly — sometimes even too elaborately.

There are still things to worry about: begging posts (being repeatedly begged to take on an order), refunds after multiple rounds of rework, fearing the client will think the final piece deviates too much from the sample and the price is too high, wondering whether one's set price is too high or too low, worrying about drawing the client's original character wrong, fearing bad reviews or being publicly called out… and the most unpredictable of all (mainly commercial work related to existing games and franchises): fan reactions after the client publishes the illustration.

Especially in large multi-character promotional illustrations from anime-style game companies, characters' poses, outfits, and placements are often flashpoints for fan arguments in the comments — especially when the artwork may be used for printed merchandise.

To some extent, the troubles and difficulties Rembrandt faced as a “craftsman” living by painting in commission disputes still share a strikingly similar flavor to those faced by small-time artists in today's commission circle.

05 Patrons of a New Era​

The anime commission circle is called “anime-style” precisely because it imposes constraints on style, characters, and visual language that must fit the context of anime culture. In other words, from creators to consumers, everyone willingly accepts, obeys, and even loves this set of stylistic conventions.

It is constrained, it is insular — it's “we've always drawn like this,” it's “if you don't draw like this, you get no traction in the circle.” We must admit that anime and fan creation have a powerful set of established conventions, ones that creators and audiences jointly love and actively uphold and obey, rather than subvert.

But just as the wealthy church, as Michelangelo's patron, necessarily required the Sistine Chapel's ceiling to conform to religious narrative norms, the commissions of the Renaissance were born of strict religious-theological iconographic standards. And well-funded anime game companies are likewise happy to become illustrators' “patrons of a new era,” setting broad commission themes (say, a specific version event) to produce more content for their game communities.

This practice isn't limited to illustration: game companies officially commissioning illustrations and even paying to support fan animation has long been a mainstay marketing tactic for anime-style game companies.

Commissions from large organizations provide artists with a relatively steady stream of orders, and the artists themselves are happy to use these to boost their reputations, listing the projects they've participated in on their profiles. Whether Renaissance altarpieces or avatars and illustrations on internet platforms, it's all a service purchase of payment for delivery. And the subject matter of paintings is constrained by “that's what's popular these days.” In this commercial mode of survival, the professional anxiety, workflow, and survival strategies of painting craftsmen have essentially never fundamentally changed.

So, my hot take here is: the anime commission market is simply what the art market (centuries ago) originally looked like.

Painters never needed to reject “commercial orders.” The painters of the Renaissance and surrounding eras, now enshrined as masters, likewise wove the popular elements of their day and newly developed techniques into their work, pursuing their own explorations under commercial constraints — creating the classic masterpieces now displayed in museums.

In other words, meeting the client's requirements and various external constraints while creating, yet still (perhaps within limits) carrying through one's own artistic convictions, infusing one's own style and thought without going OOC, and finally selling at a fair labor price — this is actually one of the original forms of creation, and the most legitimate, unimpeachable way for artists to make a living since ancient times.

Whether the commission comes from the Medici family, a mysterious and wealthy OC owner, the Catholic Church, or a large anime game company.

06 Nameless Nobodies?​

Of course, some may object that this analogy overstates the formal similarity of the commission transaction, while blurring the Renaissance — a leap of the human spirit — with the consumerist essence of the commission circle.

I don't actually object to that rebuttal. But as I see it, history has rewarded the contract-breakers — or rather, it has rewarded the Renaissance spirit that the gallery system, so sarcastically discussed earlier, abandoned in commercial form but inherited in philosophical terms: protecting the artist's creative freedom (from direct interference by the client).

Breaking a contract is breaking a contract; from the standpoint of completing an order, it is a professional-ethics flaw. Whoever pays holds the right to decide — that is only natural and right. From the client's perspective, supporting an artist's creation with one's hard-earned money is no small thing, and naturally one's aesthetic needs must be met too.

Yet what makes Michelangelo and Rembrandt remembered and written into history is that, even as their technical skill approached perfection, their works also harbored rebellion against the old world.

However, although it was precisely from the Renaissance onward that artists finally began to have names in history, the vast majority of us who paint still have no chance of being favored by history today. The other majority of painters in these masters' time still had to solve the problem of eating, diligently taking commissions to earn a living, and they possess the same historical legitimacy. Moreover, if you look closely enough, you can see the same artistic radiance shining in these forebears' works.

In 1885, when Vincent van Gogh bought a ticket to the newly opened Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands to see The Night Watch, he saw a painting hanging next to it. Van Gogh wrote an enthusiastic letter to his brother Theo about it:

Almost everyone who has had an art education knows The Night Watch, but I doubt many readers know this painting.

And this painting, which caught van Gogh's eyes that had come for The Night Watch, is the very work I used earlier as a comparison to The Night Watch: Frans Hals's “by-the-book” commissioned piece, The Meagre Company.

07 Talking About Price Is a Kind of Demystification​

“A freshman exercise should be worth five hundred to three thousand; in most cases it just hangs in an exam-prep class as a sample” — so responded the blogger at the center of the incident where a freshman exercise sold for 150,000, addressing that painting's price.

Also: in 1949, Jackson Pollock's paintings averaged around $400 per square meter. Even accounting for inflation, if one appeared today looking like an unknown student graduation piece, I think it would still be a price that would tempt a middle-class person who genuinely loves and appreciates abstract art into buying.

Without discussing whether the content is refined or what investment value it holds, but starting from how artworks are needed, produced, and consumed — here I attempt to use history to “vindicate” the anime-style illustration market, motivated by a desire to demystify the creation and consumption of artworks.

Artworks should have reasonable prices — not either hammering down at sky-high sums or being worth nothing at all. Creators who trade skill for fair compensation deserve a proper material life, just like any honest laborer.

And I have no doubt that within this circle of “taking commissions online,” which seems so highly commercialized and intensely subcultural, authors who seek to reflect on the system can emerge (though rebelling against capitalism may indeed be a bit harder than rebelling against feudal theocracy), masters belonging to this era can be nurtured, and one day be identified and crowned by later generations and by history.

I think it looks good, so I painted it; I think it looks good, so I bought it. To me, this is the origin of artistic creation, and the way artists were always meant to live.

​Notes: 1. Frans Hals: an important 17th-century Dutch portrait painter, whose achievement and influence are considered second only to Rembrandt's