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Artists Beware
The namesake database. Submissions are categorized by "Bewares" and "Cautions".
In July of 2017 I attempted to purchase a fursuit from Lucky Gum Fursuits (see originalpurchase1edited.png and originalpurchase2edited.png). After a few years of waiting I asked for the refund that was promised in their terms of service. The buyer agreed to the refund and promised to pay me back every month until I got $1515 promised to me (see promisedrefund1edited.png and promisedrefund2edited.png). However I have not received any of the payments. I have made several attempts to contact the buyer again to work with them personally on how to best resolve the issue (see twittercommunication.png and attemptedfurthercommunicationyahooedited.png) but they have yet to contact me back.
Back in August of 2019, My partner Lainebrary and I purchased this set of adoptables for their ABs; $125 each. The transaction went incredibly smoothly, and Pepapen was very quick and professional to deliver files; even going so far as creating additional files for us when asked for separate .pngs for the fullbodies / portraits.
April 3rd, 2021; I was browsing Pinterest and I came across an art piece that feels oddly similar to my character, Blessing; and when I overlaid them, it became incredibly clear that this wasn’t just a reference, there was a direct trace.
I spent the next hour and a half, in tears, tearing through the internet with image searches to try to find which image came first; the adoptable, or this bust piece I found on Pinterest. Spoiler; it was the portrait I’d found, which pre-dates these two adoptables by two years. You can find it here, time-stamped December 26, 2017; two years before the adoptables were created. https://monappy.jp/picture_places/view/22490
I reached out to Pepapen immediately seeking recourse. The emails are as follows;
In the emails, my demands to fix the problem where as follows;
A public post on your art and social media accounts admitting that you traced. With this, I would like to see you come clean on every piece that was traced or 'heavily referenced'. Track down the people who paid you for these works or adopts, and offer them a full refund or a redraw. Reach out to the artists whose works you've stolen. A full refund on these designs. Within a day, all of my demands were met.
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Hello everyone, I would like to comment on the incident that I had a few days ago with a client.
not more than 4 weeks ago a user in discord (and inkbunny, himself) asked me for a commission for a cartoon fight (characters hitting each other in a cloud of smoke) with some tv characters and 2 of my ocs, one sfw and nsfw. he sent me a reference from another artist (censored too
however my commission list was full at the time, I did tell him it was full but I could put him on a pending waiting list.
so the user accepted. then the days passed into weeks, honestly I am very sorry to make my clients wait, and it is my fault that things can be forgotten on me, so I quickly asked for my sincere apologies, the user was somewhat angry and I understand it perfectly even that I feel sad, my art is slow...
The user was very kind so it motivated me to draw on a better way.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not usually ask the money first because I like that the clients are satisfied with the sketch and then I receive the payment. so there is no image of the payment.
I sent the first sketch, the user did not like it but I did not hate it either.
naturally the user tells me what changes he wants, but not minor changes if not a total change. I personally understand that there are clients who ask for perfection, so in that aspect it does not make me unhappy. but a total change I really did not feel that I could do it, I felt a little nervous since I promised to send several sketches in a single day, and it usually takes 3 hours per sketch and more than this size.
how I still thought that he felt angry, I preferred to give up and say that I could not do it and I would not complain at all because he is in all his right, but while the conversation was flowing the client told me things like "I thought you knew what that I wanted "(I want to clarify that English is not my main language so I usually have to make mistakes and misunderstand things) I understand this. another thing he told me "You're hurting your chances" then I felt that the sutuiacion was feeling "heavy" bad
so I decided to explain to him why I feel that I cannot make a big change and why it takes me a long time, with the hope NOT that he would accept the sketch, if not that he understood and did not get angry with me.
I don't think the user understood at all, maybe it's because of my English or I don't know.
until he told me that he could pay me 200 USD which was not very sensible because I felt like a very poor girl. it was like an insult to my person. after that he decided to cancel everything and not talk to me again. What I would have liked is maybe to receive an apology or at least a small payment for the sketch, even though I understand that he is not obliged, i dont will lair i trying ask him a payment, he told me no, then i decided stoped.
What can I say is that I be careful with some clients
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Beware: UtikaBu
By Founntain, in Artist Bewares,
I was part of an auction of UtikaBu the auction is still here and his comment on winning.
I won the auction on 25. Oct 2020
After this we exchanged our discord tags to talk about details there.
We agreed to add some clothes to the picture wich would increase the price by 20 $
The artist was active and was slowly getting trough his queue all fine from this point so far.
After some time he stopped posting stuff on FA and/or Twitter. This is where the silence began.
After roughly 4 months I asked him for an update on his queue on 06. Feb. 2021. Sadly no response
I waited and another month pasted and I sended him a note on FA on 15. Mar. 2021
Wich is still unread to this day
I also wrote an email to his email address that is behind his paypal account he uses, wich reminds to look into the notes and discord messages. (Also no response yet)
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original agreement to the commission, as well as payment confirmation from them:
A little more than a month had past and i simply asked for a possible update:
About 2 weeks, maybe a bit less, later i had asked how much progress was made and if he'd been willing to use a different character than originally stated. he agreed and i sent a NSFW reference. (the character is the only thing blotted out here):
And here, from September till February i had heard nothing until he posted an "apology" and stated that he'd have a sketch (meaning he lied about the rough sketch originally) that night. a month later i had asked for a refund. he said he would send the refund on Saturday march 13th. today marks the 20th of march:
As a repeat. the ONLY thing blotted out is a NSFW character ref i had sent that he agreed to go with. nothing else is blotted out.
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Drunklion666 approached me on 21st Jan 2021 to inquire about a commission.
After a string of good folk who had commissioned me and knowing him from a ych raffle I did in December which he had participated in, I made the very careless mistake of allowing him to pay after the commission was done unprovoked, a mistake he would happily exploit later.
I started work on the commission right after details were figured out on 6th Feb, finishing on 12th Feb. Around the 11th however, nearing completion I asked for his paypal link, but noticed he hadn't looked at or responded to the past few wips.
He eventually replied saying he had been away for wisdom tooth surgery recently, while evading the question of payment, prompting me to ask for transparency about his situation - which he does not respond to.
A few days pass and I go public as he is now ignoring all DMs. He finally responds immediately after my (now deleted) public tweet, claiming [censored, see mod note] before giving me his paypal link.
I was very suspicious of the timing of these circumstances right after the completion of the commission and his hasty reply upon bringing the situation into the public, but gave him benefit of the doubt because of the graveness of the circumstances he was claiming. Still, I decided to send him an invoice shortly to receive my payment and get out of his hair as soon as possible in consideration of his alleged grieving. I would only learn later from others about his reputation of lying like this.
Naturally, he doesn't pay the invoice, and takes 5 days to even reply and acknowledge if he has received the invoice. When I press on the matter he claims to have run out of money paying for the funeral, and promises to pay within a week.
He then feigns ignorance trying to deflect the conversation when two days pass by the given date, making up more stories saying that he is depressed and seeking therapy.
With time running out due to personal circumstances that necessitate me to be away for a very extended period of time within a few weeks (compulsory enlistment), I send him a carefully worded explanation and post the commission publicly to ask for interest in it as a ych. People who have dealt with him in the past then learn of my situation and reach out to me in replies and DMs to inform me of his reputation.
Drunklion sends me an email, note and telegram as I have blocked him on twitter out of anger, and is upset at the "hate [I have] spread" and wants to "make things right"... confirming all my suspicions.
I turn down his offer to (theoretically) pay me, because at that point I was in talks with clients more deserving of the piece, did NOT have time or energy to deal with him and his lies further, wanted to give him no leverage against the situation he exploited and refused to pay for until he was caight - and to spread the word and caution others to be wary of him.
Note that at this point he is still keeping up the charade, trying to exploit nonexistent sympathy further with his alleged issues and claiming that my followers are liars.
A tweet of mine towards him was reported for harassment later that day, leading to temporary locking and limiting of my account. While I have no way of knowing the identity of the person, I struggle to think of anyone else who would do something like this to an artist's livelihood this given the context surrounding the conversation.
Though I will fully admit responsibility for causing the carelessness that led to the situation and I can't really debate interpretation of the tweet as harassment - I hope that and all the other evidence here should show you the character and priorities of this person, how much he thinks of the artists he scams, and how little remorse he has for his actions.
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I originally contacted Furfancy for a fursuit as of Sept 14, 2019. They provided me the link to their website and we continued with conversation from screenshot1.jpg:
We had discussed the details and around December I made the initial payment for my partial fursuit for $2000 and the start date to begin working on the suit around the end of 2020.
After December, I started making payments via Paypal.
Thankfully, I requested a written contract on Jan 2, 2020. The contract was created and signed. (Not provided since it contains personal information of both client and seller)
Aside from the occassional late response, things went fairly smoothly as I continued making payments. It wasn't until September that I started seeing some big red flags. I'll also note that in the contract provided, there was a 1-4 day window for communication which I thought was fairly reasonable. Going forward on this beware, it was mostly the lack of communication that resulted in me wishing to end this contract.
On September 18, 2020, I sent the following message on telegram:
At this point, the lack of communication was already becoming an issue. This was something that I tried to contact her on so that we could continue working around this but kept getting worse as things went on.
Throughout this process, other commissioners were having the same experience as me and were backing out. On top of the fact that she was so far behind deadline and also the lack of communication, I was (and still am) worried that she has no intention of really completing my fursuit. Despite no work being done on the suit and breaking her own terms on her contract, she never offered me a full refund, and when I requested one eventually, she said that she could not provide a full refund. My initial $400 payment was non-refundable. If any work was done on the project or parts were already purchased, I may have understood. However, at this point, we are already a year after the initial request to commission a fursuit. There was no work completed and still 20 people in the queue before me which meant I would need to wait approximately another two years before she could even start working on my fursuit.
At this time, I had also joined her group chat which I will not provide screenshots of since Victoria largely provides updates via voice messages. Every update that was provided has been about personal problems and why she needs to extend her deadlines for all of her clients. These were the only updates that were provided for approximately a year. I can sympethize with these problems. However, I paid $2000 for a commission. This means that I'm working with a company to provide me with a product. I understand that roadblocks occur, but at no point of the process did Victoria hold any accountability or responsibililty.
This screenshot is from September 22, 2020. Please keep that in mind while you look at the next screenshot from October 2, 2020.
This last screenshot I found out that she had apparently purchased my furs apparently months ago and didn't bother to inform me.
"If a charge back is made, I'm going to assume you no longer want the slot. If you are backing out 35% is non refundable."
If the communication up to this point was a red flag, then threatening me for 35% of what I paid so that I can guarantee I don't get screwed through this process should be just straight up illegal.
At this point, I managed to call her. Only after a full year, did she share her trello board with me. I contacted her asking her to update her contract for a deadline and a full refund if she did not complete the fursuit by August 1, 2021.
After signing the new contract, we stopped communicating for a while. Then we pick back up in February.
At this point, this brings us up to where we are currently in the discussion and I'm mentally checked out of this whole process. I just want my full refund so I can move on with my life. I was really looking forward to commissioning my first fursuit and now I'm not sure if I want one anymore. Victoria has completely ruined the idea of fursuiting for me at this point.
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I payed for this YCH (down below)
Since I like bigger proportions I asked which did increase the price
Sent payment
after I sent payment I waited quite a bit since I usually like to give the artist time before asking for progress. though almost a year is pretty bad without them messaging me. So I sent a message to their manager asking if I could get a refund.
Nothing was sent so I messaged the manager again 3 months later
I was hoping the manager would have it settled, not the case they never responded after that. So I messaged the artist.
Thought that would have fixed it wrong again.
Still waited on good faith.
They read the next note but never responded
I started to get frustrated so now every month I send them a paypal money request
They wont respond to notes or paypal request's. So here I am putting up an Artist Beware
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I contacted the artist known as Coyot_Tea at the time in reference to an open commission post made 02/09/2020 for a full body character painting.
Discussion was quick and they responded within 20 minutes, where references were provided and payment exchanged. Deadline was self imposed by the artist within 2 months. Once the deadline was met I contacted the artist asking for an update. I was told that they were experiencing computer issues, and that once resolved my commission would be completed.
Since then the artist has made no attempt to contact me, and since created a new account that they use to post their art (Sudo443) and is currently ignoring my messages. No contact has been had since 04/21/2020
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https://www.furaffinity.net/user/stripedbearboi/
Discord birdistheword#1981
26.10.2020 stripedbearboi ordered a commission from me via Discord. The order consisted of two characters in a NSFW situation.
Based on the description of the customer's idea, I offered him a full body full render. The cost of such an order was $ 400. The customer could not pay such an amount, so we agreed on lineart + flat color. It cost $ 200. But this seemed to the customer a lot and he asked for a discount. The final price was $ 190.
After creating the sketch, I received its approval and sent an invoice for payment for birdistheword
According to my ToS, which was provided to the client, I am requesting a 100% advance payment after the sketch is approved.
The customer ignored my invoice for payment and in the messages said that he could not pay. This is confirmed in the screenshots from Discord. Then I asked him to pay only a sketch, and to stop cooperation. I asked to pay for the sketch because it had already been created and approved. The need to pay for the approved outline is also spelled out in my ToS.
Since the customer (according to him) did not have PayPal, he paid for the sketch through the Ko-Fi platform in the amount of $ 60 on 01/31/2021.
However, on February 19, 2021, I receive a notification in my email that my received payment is on hold.
The customer canceled their payment. He motivates this by the fact that he did not receive a drawing in color. But for my part, I did not violate the terms of the deal - I made a sketch. I just asked to pay for it. I repeatedly told him that now he is paying ONLY for a sketch. The need to pay for the approved sketch, despite the termination of cooperation, is written in my ToS. This was also discussed in Discord posts. It is also written there repeatedly that after the payment of the outline of the cooperation there will be no more.
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