There's tons of broke-ass furries who can't afford a ton of commissions. There's also a lot of furries with tech jobs who have more money than they know what to do with, and are willing to pay artists fees that approach a significant percentage of what the techie's hourly wage works out to.

Furry art is a significant part of my income and trust me: furry commissions are crazy cheap. Yes, even that one guy charging in the low four figures - he does some pretty complex work that I'd charge four figures for too, if I was willing to work that long on a client's piece.

I could be making a lot more money if I'd stayed in the animation industry, or if I was hunting corporate illustration work. But then I'd have to deal with much tighter deadlines, restrictive style guides, clients who really have no idea what they want and no idea how to articulate how what I just spent a while working on fails to capture what they want, figuring out how to make the lucrative but incredibly boring world of, say, standardized shipping pallets visually interesting, and a whole bunch of office politics. Drawing happy animal-headed people having a good time is a lot more fun. It's nice when a corporate gig comes my way now and then because it can pay a few months rent, but it definitely takes its toll in the amount of tedious bullshit I have to deal with.

I'd also maybe have things like "health insurance" and "a retirement fund" but, hey. It's a tradeoff.