On art requests

Haha. >:

As an artist, I am always looking for new projects and ways to stretch my "creative muscles," as it were. However, there are just a few things that have always sort of bothered me about the most common types of requests I get....

1: Cutesy stuff.
When you review my portfolio and see that 99% of the things that I draw are armored warriors, soldiers, machinery, and abstract conceptual works; please do no task me to draw things that are the polar opposite of the things I do. I'm not going to draw Disney characters, nor am I going to draw drama masks or ballerina shoes (these are all requests I've gotten in the past week). Just no. Simply because I can draw, don't assume that I will be willing to draw everything.

2: Working for free.
While I do regularly create art for fun, it is usually practice or groundwork for the greater goal of what I eventually want to be able to sell in my own series. As a professional, I do this for a business. As most people should understand, the main rule of business is that people do not do something for nothing. Not to be a dick or anything, but it's just good business to offer something in return for services given, such as money or trade of equal value.

3: Design works which must be based on existing things, and in absolutely correct detail.
This one makes me a hypocrite in regards to #2. There was an art trade a while back with one of my friends, for which my part was to be a drafted design sketch for a certain heavily detailed giant mech for the purpose of having a sculpt made out of it. Well... the design was very obscure and lacking in resources, and plus the original animation tended to be very inconsistent in terms of the proportions and panel placement. Needless to say, since the original source material had no reliable depiction of the machine, I was unable to produce any satisfactory schematic from it.
Hey Kyle, if you're reading this, let me know if there's something else you want instead... I really hate to leave an art trade unfulfilled, as it makes me an ingrateful douchebag. :P

I'll post more as I think of them...