Hi, everyone! I hope ya’ll have been doing well~
I have some announcements to make, and I will vent a little while explaining why I’m making those changes. I’ll separate this post into two parts: the changes and then the explanation because the explanation will contain a bit of venting.
The Changes
- From now on, I’ll sign all my artwork with my Twitter handle (@mr_tiaa), my site (www.mr-tiaa.com), and an alert of “No NFT/Crypto – No resale”. Some artwork will have a watermark over it if it doesn’t get too busy (difficult to read), while others will have all the info handwritten.
- Every big artwork I do (anything other than Cheeb, Sketchy, and Telegram Stickers) will be resized when posting to the public. With full resolutions being limited to Patreon files.
- To access my Patreon feed you’ll now need to pledge at least $1USD/month, which means it’s not free anymore, even though I’m trying to keep it as cheap as possible. In other words, supporting me through Patreon will be the only way to get access to full resolutions and PSD files.
- Commissions are currently limited to my private Discord server, which you can access by supporting through Patreon. Unless it’s a commercial project or some other private project. (which costs more than my regular sales)
Reasoning (and some vent)
NFTs, that’s basically the reason.
Recently the NFT community has been targeting furry artists a lot. From mockery to straight art thief (to sell our artwork as NFT and get money over it) followed by sassy replies.
Internet was always full of stupid art thieves and trolls, I suffered from these a lot in the past but it never stopped me from sharing my artwork as I wanted, in high resolution for everyone to appreciate, regardless of their money condition. I already lost count of how many times my arts were resold in sites like Redbubble and Shopee, yet it never stopped me, but it’s different this time.
I do not support cryptocurrency at all, because of three main reasons: environmental damage, value-based purely in speculation without real stabilizing force, and the fact it’s unregulated and risky. In other words, I see it as a form of scam and money-laundry. I understand that it may be revolutionary, but at the moment it’s not, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be improved before it actually becomes something reliable and with more pros than cons.
Because of all the nasty people that saw an opportunity on cryptocurrency to profit while giving 0 fucks to anyone but them, while being sassy and mocking those against them, as if they are inferior for not understanding the “future”, I don’t feel safe as an artist anymore. Seeing all that NFT shitstorm daily is making me feel insecure and anxious, and honestly, I already have a lot to take in due to a lot of real-life stuff that’s going on.
I don’t want my artwork to be sold as NFT at all, because I feel like it totally loses its meaning. I create my artwork for someone, be it the customer who bought a commission, someone I want to gift, or myself, and while I do it I’m always thinking how much I want that art piece to make the other happy. I obviously need money so that’s why I sell commissions, and the money obviously motivates me, but wanting to see my client happy with my piece is also a big motivation. I feel extremely happy whenever someone random drops a message saying my artwork made their day better, that it made their smile. I don’t want it to become a NFT and become like a collectible, that has only “money” value (money that won’t even be mine). I don’t want it at all.
As much as I want to keep my artwork accessible for all, I feel stupid by doing so while a lot of other artists are recommending us to don’t share full-resolution files for free, to watermark our pieces, to do what we can to protect ourselves. To be honest, I feel like it’s a losing battle, but at least I need to try, try to protect my work and have as much peace of mind as I can.
It makes me really sad that we came to this point. Maybe if things calm down in the future I can revert back to how I want my artwork to be shared, but at the moment this is the best I can do for myself. So I hope you’ll understand. Thank you so much for supporting my work and I hope you will understand the changes! Thank you so much for reading, I deeply appreciate it!