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Art Scammers on Discord
2 years ago
Hello everyone, I just wanted to point out a thing I've started to notice more and more of over discord. There appears to be an influx of people going person to person on discord typically through public servers attempting to sell users art.
They are often very sketchy, poor english, mention the very general scammer things like "I saw your pfp and thought it looked nice figuring maybe you could help me" kind of deal, I don't advise buying from these people even if you're not sure.
Ways you can check a list for things to look for
-poor spelling/grammar
-they come to you out of nowhere
-they make no real posts in the server they found you from [if any]
-if they have little to no regard for rejection
They might check one or more of those things, generally the first two imo are the most obvious giveaways I feel it doesn't need too much explaining but still it's growing so I've got to warn people who might not yet know.
If you didn't express some form of interest in an art, and you're approached by an "artist" simply because your profile picture is nice, take extra care in making sure they're a real artist.
Generally ask for an FA if what they give you is
-new
-mostly blank
-no icon
-very odd generic looking art
those are also red flags
To artists who are starting off here are some things you can do to avoid looking like a scammer.
-Don't contact people who you haven't already spoken to before and have reason to believe might be interested in art
- CHECK YOUR SPELLING AND GRAMMAR PS. To those of you where English is not your first language, as I'm sure many of you are already aware to do, just be honest about it don't try to hide it.
-Have a website link FA, DA, Twitter [x], etc with lots of examples
-Remember to cite those who commissioned the art in your descriptions properly, [unless they ask you not to] previous customers serve as references and validation for your service. If you've not sold art yet, I would suggest doing a couple of trades/collabs and requests you do NEED to pad out your gallery with references when people come me to sell art if I see a blank account with no real sufficient references to people I'm probably not going to commission you solely on the fact that if I have any doubts I can't contact your previous customers and ask about you.
I hope this jumbled mess comes helpful to people both starting artists and buyers alike. Be careful, A LOT of people have found out that the furry fandom is a gold mine, and with things like AI art, bases etc being so common now you need to know what you're buying.
They are often very sketchy, poor english, mention the very general scammer things like "I saw your pfp and thought it looked nice figuring maybe you could help me" kind of deal, I don't advise buying from these people even if you're not sure.
Ways you can check a list for things to look for
-poor spelling/grammar
-they come to you out of nowhere
-they make no real posts in the server they found you from [if any]
-if they have little to no regard for rejection
They might check one or more of those things, generally the first two imo are the most obvious giveaways I feel it doesn't need too much explaining but still it's growing so I've got to warn people who might not yet know.
If you didn't express some form of interest in an art, and you're approached by an "artist" simply because your profile picture is nice, take extra care in making sure they're a real artist.
Generally ask for an FA if what they give you is
-new
-mostly blank
-no icon
-very odd generic looking art
those are also red flags
To artists who are starting off here are some things you can do to avoid looking like a scammer.
-Don't contact people who you haven't already spoken to before and have reason to believe might be interested in art
- CHECK YOUR SPELLING AND GRAMMAR PS. To those of you where English is not your first language, as I'm sure many of you are already aware to do, just be honest about it don't try to hide it.
-Have a website link FA, DA, Twitter [x], etc with lots of examples
-Remember to cite those who commissioned the art in your descriptions properly, [unless they ask you not to] previous customers serve as references and validation for your service. If you've not sold art yet, I would suggest doing a couple of trades/collabs and requests you do NEED to pad out your gallery with references when people come me to sell art if I see a blank account with no real sufficient references to people I'm probably not going to commission you solely on the fact that if I have any doubts I can't contact your previous customers and ask about you.
I hope this jumbled mess comes helpful to people both starting artists and buyers alike. Be careful, A LOT of people have found out that the furry fandom is a gold mine, and with things like AI art, bases etc being so common now you need to know what you're buying.
Now, every 2-8 days I get a new one.
Same insincere template.
"I saw your character and I was so impressed\inspired" etc etc.
"I have an idea \ vision \ image \ suggestion"
Most of them have no gallery to link to. The one that pretended to was just a simple garbage prop-up website you can make in ten minutes.
They advertise each others' art as "theirs", spotted the same "I do these" images between 3 of the 5 people I got, including a brand new one today.
I usually waste their time as long as I can but the vapid toxic insincerity is getting to me. At best, these *are* legit people who are still advertising themselves to you which is still hilariously rude.
But they're not.
They love to do this on Discord. Total rando I never saw or heard before, adds me, goes through the script, tries to scam me for some money and run away but I'm not dumb :-P.
Charge less than other furry artists but be in a "team" of 2-15 people to share the income with, right?
Ten hours of work for 80 divvied up to 2 people is absolutely financially feasible.
I'm actually not in any furry Discords! The singular one I'm on is the Inkbound one and nothing happens there that I care about. I can view patch notes when they come out :-P.