So, about more than a year ago, I found this one 3D artist who goes by the name BlueBerry,
It was through this one post that I saw he was making a model of the character “Waltt”
and thought it was pretty cool, asked him if the model was functional, to which he said yes, thus getting my interest for a comm, I went ahead and DMed him asking for the prices, 50 for the model + 50 for the base, we agreed with a commission of two models for 200, with all and bases, I did this because I also wanted to get priority into the queue, but that was a horrible mistake.
After payment was made, he said he would start with a 2D reference before going for the actual model, but after a while of getting ghosted it turns out that the guy had a personal problem of which he didn’t talk about and that he was going to deactivate his Twitter, I uselessly attempted to cheer him, but to no avail.
I asked him for a refund, but there was no answer whatsoever.
Nevertheless, after some time passed (about a month or so) he recovered from his issue and said he was all ready to work again, giving me the 2D ref at the very last, it looked good enough.
After some time more he worked on the face/head and sent me the WIPs, all good, just needed to explain him that the character owner was ok with having models of his OC.
He also requested to post the work of the model, I said it was good, the WIPs were published after a while as some work went on private.
Time went by and he showed me the body, everything seemed to be going well, though the conversation was cut short after one point, he began publishing the updates in public without contacting me, but this was just good enough for me.
He even went as far as posting an animated video with my model.
After a while I decided to change accs to make a small project, the two models he was working on would be involved in it alongside some art I had planned, but oh oh.
The guy had another mental breakdown for another problem he had, and again I uselessly tried to get his self-esteem up, he claimed that he didn’t want to model anymore, but that he would give me a refund, and even though I claimed multiple times that I rather have the base, they ghosted me for several days, no refund nor model, just silence.
After almost losing my patience the guy finally answered, just saying “sorry” this was enough to get me back to my calm self as he had finally answered.
He then said that his PC was broken and that he couldn’t model, but he got a new one after a while.
Everything went normal for a while, and I received a couple more updates (the last ones I ever got).
But after some time without receiving anything relevant, I checked on his profile and saw that he was making a free art thing alongside some WIPs of other (free) models, this made me realize that he didn't really wanted to work on my comm and was leaving it for whenever he felt like it, so I finally asked him for his email as I wanted a refund and my hype for the model was gone, it was about to be a year since I paid for it.
He said he didn’t have the funds, he had already spent them.
I got ghosted for several other days as I tried contacting him, only to get ghosted, this went on for a while until the guy opened commissions claiming that he would refund me with them and that my models "brought him problems", when asked why, he didn't gave any context.
But, as it is obvious, I haven’t gotten a single penny back.
Any other attempt of contact was ignored, I even tried DMing his BF and some of his friends, only to get ignored, too. Most likely they were told by the guy not to answer me.
And whether I get my funds back or not, my experience with this artist has been utterly horrifying and I wouldn’t advise on giving money on his way. More than a year for a model is just WAY too much, specially if the commission didn't even got finished and you got ghosted for several days/weeks, let alone having your funds stolen.
Also, people, do not commit the same mistake as me and don’t give your money away so easily, nor let time pass by, if you’re getting ghosted and the deadline for a refund is getting close you should REALLY set on your red flags and take action on it, stay safe.
Mod note: Sent to us March 16th
In April 2020 i won one part of a collaboration commission between Theodrekr and Tierhund. The original description can be found here :
I requested updates via e-mail and sent the needed details in the note below. No updates were provided by e-mail so so everything still happened via notes or journals.
I also paid for the commission on paypal:
Due to medical and live circumstances commissions got delayed more than once. with updates to what commissions are up next in journals like this one:
after some more time the collab was sent to his partner:
Journal update 4 (note: my collab commission is not even mentioned here)
After almost a year of wait and still no concrete progress information i started asking for updates in different places.
Shout on Theodrekr's page:
A note to Theodrekr asking for an update back in august 2021 mainly because it made replying easy for him without having to search an old note.
Shortly after that i also sent a note to Tierhund ( since he is the collab partner) for an update on it:
which got a reply later:
I also put up a comment on the original commission listing:
And got two Notes from Theodrekr regarding the state of the commission:
____
To summarize that: Partner lost the file. and they had to figure out how to solve that.
After that exchange there was another update via journal which contained no further information on the state of the commission:
Since more time without an update passed i decided to write another note to Theodrekr asking for an update and a solution for how he intends to get the commission done with following content:
which is still unread as of writing this.
the last thing i did to try and resolve this issue is to contact Tierhund asking for an update:
as well as provided another note for an easy reply:
Please keep in mind that the first reply from Tierhund took months and only came in after Theodrekr spoke with him so i don't expect to get an answer on that one anytime soon.
For privacy concerns, I have censored my username on these images.
Around October/November 2021, I had discovered Mayo1nomor1 while browsing for some artwork & had decided to message them on furAffinity first to ask if they were open for commissions. They said yes, and we agreed to move it to Discord afterwards.
Unfortunately, I no longer have proof of this as I have since then deleted the PMs from fA, but I had asked the artist on furAffinity how long they generally took to finish artwork. They replied saying no more than 8 days. (This will be important later)
I sent them my commission details for what I wanted—two flat-colored pin-ups of an OC of mine, of which I paid $100 in total. 1st pic was a thigh-up pin-up, and second pic was a bust-up pin-up.
Commission details were sent on 11/09/2021, and on that same day I paid for the commission—the artist later got back to me hours later with WIP sketches of the first pin-up, of which we were discussing what to change on it and whatnot.
The 1st pin-up was essentially finished on 11/10/2021, one day after I had paid for it—though it was finished, there were some slight coloring errors I noticed that I told them about on the same day the pin-up was sent and finished.
One of said errors was fixed in a new version that was sent on 11/13/2021, however I had noticed the other error was still unfixed so I let them know about it and provided them with a custom edit I made to demonstrate what & how exactly it should be fixed. Nothing unusual here.
This is where it begins...
Admittedly, I may have acted a bit impatient here, but it had been 8 days since I commissioned the artist and I hadn't received an update back on what I wanted to be fixed. So I asked if they had gotten the chance to fix that coloring error on the 1st pic, and if they had also been able to start on the 2nd pic.
11/22/2021. Still nothing. The artist had been posting lots of new artwork pics and adoptables on their Twitter profile since the last time I messaged them (11/13/2021), so I asked once again about the commission. Reminded them about what they told me in regards to how long it'd take to finish a commission, and also asked if there were any hold-ups preventing them from continuing further.
I finally got a reply back on 12/07/2021. Artist had finally fixed the coloring error I mentioned and apologized for the delay. They didn't answer my question about the "hold-ups", so I asked once again, to which they told me they had been struggling to get work going due to issues they were having with their laptop.
Anyways, the 2nd pin-up was all that was left, so this is what I was currently waiting for at this moment.
January had come by and I hadn't gotten back any more updates from the artist since 12/07/2021. As seen in the pic above, I messaged them on 1/12/2022 for more updates on the commission. Artist continues to post more artwork on their profile, so at the very least I was aware that they weren't inactive or anything.
Sent them another message on 2/08/2022. At this point it had practically almost been 3 months since I paid them the money for the commission. Still no response.
The pic above is the last message I sent to the artist, on 2/14/2022. Originally I had planned on waiting one more month before deciding to ask for a refund, but I dug through Twitter that day and found out that the artist seemingly had a history of ghosting their customers the same way I was being ghosted here. Having known that, I send a message to the artist stating that I no longer had any interest in the 2nd pin-up and wanted to request a refund for it.
The artist still hadn't replied back hours later, so at this point I decided to dispute it with PayPal and escalate the issue over to them. Thankfully I won the case and got a refund for that 2nd undelivered pin-up. I have since then unfriended the artist on Discord and ceased communications with them.
Although I got my refund, I still STRONGLY recommend you do not work with this person under any circumstances whatsoever. I would've been more than happy to continue supporting the artist via more commissions but I can't really justify that anymore, given how I had been treated here throughout the entire ordeal.
During October of 2021, I had noticed that this artist was selling a couple of YCHs that I enjoyed the style for. I've commissioned them once in the past and had some issues with them in delivery time. While I wasn't going to commission them again, I decided to give them a second chance. This time however, it's gone more than 4 months with very little communication and other issues that I felt I had to make a post here as I tried to give them a lot of chances.
On 10/28/21 I had seen that this artist had reduced the price of a YCH they were running from $175 "...TO $75 IF PURCHASED TODAY" on their twitter. So, I commented to claim it (Seen below (#1)). I followed their instructions and started a DM with them on twitter so that we may start the transaction process. (Seen below (#2)).
After I sent the message, they had supplied their PayPal link which I was then informed they were wanting the payment through CashApp or Venmo, which I thought was very strange. I told them that I couldn't do either as I didn't have the accounts for them (Seen below (#3)).
After a while, they told me it was okay to send, so I did. I sent them confirmation of the $75 they required sent over (seen below (#4)) and had then received nothing back until November when I sent them another message to check in with them. They told me that they had a family member pass, which I understood they needed some time to recover from (seen below (#5)). I figured that I'd give them some time to handle it before messaging again. That was on 11/5/21.
I later (12/19/21) sent them a message as I had still heard nothing back and wanted to check in with them. However, I received no response and was ghosted for a while (seen below (6)). I don't usually worry about artists that take time as I feel they deserve the time to work. However, on 1/4/22 I had seen the exact YCH I had purchased being offered AGAIN on their page. Except this time the words "YCH" had been covered by a dog sticker (Seen below (7 & 8)).
I immediately sent them a message to check in as I didn't want to come off accusatory, even though I felt I had been ripped off at this point. They sent me a message saying that "...I am so sorry. Would you like me to just make you a brand new hypno icon? Please let me know what I can do, I'm so sorry for the silence" (Seen below (6)).
To give some context, the first ych I bought from them (the one I alluded to at the start) was that of a Hypno icon. I had gotten that one a little earlier in the year and really didn't want another one. I wanted what I paid for or my money back at this rate. I told them that I don't want a duplicate com and asked if the thing I paid for initially was no longer available (Seen below (9)). The artist rebuttled saying the icon was in their old style and never answered my question.
It seemed that what I had bought was no longer available to me and so I asked if they could make something similar for me as I wanted what I bought initially. They told me that they could create something for me like what was sold out from under me (Seen below (10)). They told me that they could make me something worth the price and I verified the idea I wanted. Eventually they said it was all good and that they'd get back to me. I had made one minor change to my character and had sent it over as I figured I may as well update what I have one my character at this point (Seen below (11)).
I later reached out on 1/8/22 as it seemed the artist was back to giving me silence. I sent them a message today (2/13/22) as I still have not heard nothing back about my commission (Seen below (12)). My next step is to ask for a refund of the $75 I had sent them as this is getting ridiculous.
I commissioned two pieces from Tankdragon (Furaffinity) back in August of last year. He also goes by Commanderblackfire (Commiss.io) and dragonboy238 (Twitter).
The pieces together totaled $130 dollars. I waited several months hoping for the pieces to be completed or at least worked on.
The artist has gone dark and has not posted anything since December of last year on any of the accounts that I am aware of. They did not respond to my attempts to contact them via Twitter or Commiss.io.
I am currently waiting for the Commiss.io staff to contact me back in regards of the refund due to the total noncompletion of the ordered projects.
Below are my attempts to contact the artist via Commiss and Twitter, as well as proof of the projects and invoices from the Commiss.io site.
Edit: 02.19.22
This beware is about Calima, aka. Storm Shy Arts. I initiated the commission transaction in October 2020 (see attachments; all edited for names, email addresses, or any personal/private information) for a 2-character commission. Details were worked out and payment was sent via Paypal. 2 months later in December 2020 I sent a message to the artist on Fur Affinity asking for an update, but did not receive a reply. I sent another message in January 2021 for an update and again received no reply. I again sent a message on FA in March asking for an update with a notification that I would be filing a complaint on Artists Beware, and received no reply. [Note: I was also sending a copy of the January and March messages to the email associated with the Paypal payment, but that turned out to be an address the artist only ever used for Paypal, not correspondence.]
In May 2021 I started the action of filing a complaint on Artists Beware. The moderator was able to find me a valid email address for the artist, so the complaint was put on hold as I reestablished contact. The artist did quickly reply to my email (see attachments), and we got the ball rolling to continue with the commission. Over the next several days and weeks we exchanged several emails that cleared up some details and some WIP updates were sent to me. The last WIP I received was 5-30-21. On 6-13-21 the artist said she was going to "play with the background a bit more" and said it would be ready by July 10th. On 7-23-21 I wrote again asking for an update. The artist replied on 7-31-21 that her laptop had died, and as the replacement was soon to arrive she would have my piece finished very quickly.
On 9-29-221 I wrote again asking for an update. The artist replied the same day with the excuse that there were technical problems and they were moving, but she would "aim to finish the five details of this background this week". I never received anything. On 12-30-21 I wrote again asking for an update. The artist replied the same day with health reasons as the excuse for no progress, and promised to send an updated version soon. I wrote back and said I was willing to work around complications and that I just wanted to know the commission hadn't been abandoned. Since then I have never received any update or any other contact from the artist. Calima finally returned to Fur Affinity a few days ago after being away for so long, but when I tried to reply to a journal I found I'd been blocked. That's when I knew it was time to post something here.
My beware is for the artist known as Superninfendo / Fen.
As a friend, I allowed our friendship to be used against me.
I'd tell her time and time again to take her time with my commissions; and that they were not top priority. Most of our conversation for updates and such happened in a discord server I am no longer apart of; so those conversations are lost to the void.
What I do have/can provide are screenshots of certain commissions I never got the finished products of.
In the screenshots I will be providing; I will show evidence of me commissioning Fen, paying Fen; and then getting a few responses [if I was lucky enough] or no response for days/weeks/months.
I was naïve and thought our friendship meant that I wouldn't be ghosted/scammed, but I was very wrong with that assumption.
All in all, I was scammed out of $324.41.
In the screenshots provided I will show the back and forth I've had with the artist over the coarse of the year; where some commissions had been done; but a majority were paid for and then ghosted/ignored.
Even when requesting a refund, I was promptly ignored and overlooked.
Even now in present time; they claim they've refunded all commissions owed; but I have yet to see my refund.
Instead, I was swiftly blocked by their art management account run by SuperNinfendo and Corpsekiit.
At the very end I show 2 instances of contact for a refund; and the final one being only just a day or so ago; where I was promptly blocked after requesting either the art owed to me or a refund.
Original Agreement in chronological order:
Several Art pieces coursing over a year
- YCH of my sona holding money
- Animal Crossing Sign Edit + Tip
- 4 Twitch Emotes
- Fullbody Commission w/ BG [made in 3 payments]
- 2 Twitch Emotes
- Pride Art Piece
- Sona w/ Scarf
- Outfit Change for PNGTuber
- Leggy Keychain
- Poster for Mic_Feedback's 30th birthday big stream celebration
Proofs of payment:
Relevant Correspondence:
Explain: Won a YCH for $70 posted in their gallery.
I had been contacted and paid for the YCH on April 25th, 2021. Originally, Alisher had told me they couldn't send an invoice, and instead, they had sent me a paypal.me link to send the money to. I had sent the money right after they'd given me their paypal.me link.
Proof of Payment:
They did in fact send me the sketch as promised, and I had told them everything looked perfect, and this is when communication completely halted.
I try to give artists some time as I knew they had other commissions to work on as well, so I checked in about a month later to see if they were still working on mine.
Since then, I've received no further messages on any updates on my commission. I spent every couple of months trying to reach out before asking for a partial, then a full refund, and still, nothing.
I recently found out that they have a Twitter as well, and when I'd checked it, they were actively posting on it, and had been working on fanart the entire time I had been waiting for my commission to be finished. They still have yet to see my messages on Twitter, and are still posting as normal.
I am currently still out of $70 dollars, as I cannot file a claim with Paypal due to how long it's been. All i wish for is a refund or an explanation of why they've ghosted me.
I paid 40% upfront for a commission May 18th of 2021. The commission was originally agreed upon to be completed before MFF in November. Maker ran into some issues with creating so we pushed the date back to December. December comes along, still no head and very little progress. SCC informs me they are unable to work within my time frame and offers a partial refund + to send what they did have back to me. This sounded like a best case scenario so I accepted the offer. Here we are, 2 months later, in January, and still no base. I did receive the partial refund. However, now SCC is reaching back out to demand more money than we originally agreed upon for the head claiming they miscalculated costs.
This is not at the fault of the customer. They took on a commission you could not handle. Could not maintain a professional timeframe. Could not keep up their end of the refund agreement. And now want more money from me.
I have been friendly, understanding, and respectful this entire time. The time frame to submit a paypal dispute is LONG gone so I am just out $100 and the City Mutt Fursuits base I paid for covered in the quote. Please see screenshots for confirmation of everything here, I have captured every word. Do not do business here! This maker will string you along.
TLDR: Maker took on commission they couldn't handle, did not hold up their end of the partial refund agreement, and returns to my DMs to request more money after stringing me along for 8 months.
Foreword
The Beware is labelled NSFW since some attached external links contain NSFW material, but no NSFW pictures will be directly embedded in the post itself.
This Beware will be very long, so I decided to organize it into paragraphs to make it easier to understand what happened and how I uncovered the culprit since it's a crucial part of the required proof.
Summary
One of my Patrons has been re-uploading exclusive content from my Patreon page to the pirate site https://kemono.party/.
He didn't have my consent, ne never asked for it nor did he ever tell me. When confronted he declared his act was deliberate.
I am writing down this Beware to show, with all evidence I have, what happened to protect other artists like me from this user.
Background
I've been working with Castore93 for almost three years between Patreon rewards and commissions; I can say we've always been in good terms.
He began supporting me through Patreon in November 2019 and as far as I know we never had any issue.
(Proof screenshot below.)
Kemono.party
On January 13th, 2022 I came to know through a friend of mine the existance of kemono.party, an infamous pirate site collecting exclusive material from Patreon and other pay-to-view platforms like SubscribeStar.
I sadly discovered my Patreon material was uploaded there too.
I was determined to uncover who re-uploaded the material, but to do so I first needed to understand how kemono.party works and how they were able to get it in the first place.
Kemono.party works by using a scraper, a piece of software which automatically parses webpages to collect data from them. In order to access protected content, the scraper needs some kind of access key. In the case of kemono.party, the scraper uses the session key from a Patreon account. This means that the user either volountarely gives the scraper access to their account's session key or the account is compromised. The upload happens automatically.
Thus, the person responsible must have a Patreon account with access to my exclusive posts; either my account has been hacked or one of my Patrons has, volountarily or not, shared their session key.
Finding the culprit
My account couldn't have been hacked since I was able to see posts which weren't uploaded to kemono.party.
I was fortunate enough to have exaclty three Patrons, all belonging to different tiers.
The only way to identify the culprit would be posting a series of artworks limiting access to some specific tiers and seeing which of them would get reposted on kemono.party.
I have three different tiers called "A precious gift", "Treasure" and "Jewel's waterfall".
When posting a content on Patreon you can choose between some visibility options:
You can make your post public so everyone can see it.
You can make your post visible to "All patrons" regardless of their tier.
You can make a post visible to one or more specific tiers. Selecting a lower tier only does not make the post visible to higher tiers.
My three Patrons are Patron 1, Castore93 (Castore Devon on Patreon) and Patron 2.
Patron 1 didn't join any tier, so they can only see "Public" and "All patrons" posts.
Castore93 (Castore Devon) would be able to see "Public", "All patrons" and "Treasure" tier's posts.
Patron 2 can see "Public", "All Patrons" and "Jewel's Waterfall" posts.
After uploading each bait post I waited until I saw some of them appear on kemono.party.
I made four bait posts:
All Patron: it was a check to see if my content was stil being stolen.
Selecting "A precious gift", "Treasure" and "Jewel's waterfall" tiers altogether.
"Treasure" tier.
"Jewel's waterfall" tier.
Since nobody was part of the "A precious gift" tier it was no use testing it separately.
Test no.1: all Patrons. It has been re-posted.
My content was indeed still being stolen.
Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/60897241
Test no.2: All tiers altogether. It has been re-posted.
This excludes Patron 1 since they weren't part of any tier, thus unable to see the post.
Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/61104826
Doublecheck.
Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/61286834
3. Selected tiers only: "Treasure" tier. It has been reposted.
Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/61287322
Doublecheck.
Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/61287443
4. Selected tiers only: "Jewel's waterfall". It hasn't been reposted. Check & doublecheck.
This excludes Patron 2.
Notice how the posts from the "Jewel's waterfall" tier were shared in between "Treasure" posts in order to exclude any time factor.
The confrontation
It was clear from all the data collected the culprit was the Patron from the "Treasure" tier, Catore93 aka Castore Devon. It was still possible his account had been hacked and he wasn't aware of the situation.
So I opted for a neutral approach and he himself confirmed this wasn't the case...
On January 20th, 2022 I confronted him.
Translation from Italian:
Me: Do you know this site? https://kemono.party/
Castore93: I go there sometimes.
Me: You do realize this material comes from your account, right?
Castore93: But theoretically I think the site uploads content only when you add it, not by itself. I did add some stuff in the past.
Me: Do you knwo this is copyright infringment and illegal, right?
Castore93: I am curious to understand how it shows it has taken the material without me uploading it. About uploading stuff from Patreon (when I did it some time ago) about that I would have a certain personal point of view, you're not wrong obviously. (SIC)
Me: The site connects to your account's session cookie, uploading does not depend from you. In any case you can keep whatever point of view you want as long as my pay-to-view material remains visible only to those who paid for it.
Castore93: Ok so one time is all it takes.
Later that day I posted a public Patreon journal explaining the situation and how I will be sharing my contents from now on to avoid similar theft. This post too appeared on kemono.party (as you can see from the previous screenshots), meaning Castore93's session cookie was still active on kemono.party.
Taking down the material
I wish to add this part to show what kind of assholes arise from such events.
After contacting Patreon to ask for advice, they suggested me to send a DMCA takedown request to the site which is the typical course of action.
However, the criminals running the site ever so smugly responded with... excuses... even if the site has a "DMCA" page with instructios on how to send a DMCA takedown notice.
I don't feel like letting them win.
I am now in the process of researching my options to deal with the situation. I will try to give updates in the comments about this if I find anything which might be useful to everyone.
Conclusion
I lost a considerable amout of time dealing with the whole situation, which is amounted to a lot of frustration not to mention the damage of having copyrighted material posted around without authorization.
Please be aware of this user.
