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It Is Officially Over
11 years ago
General
This is being posted at the behest of 
Echoen who agreed to help GAfoxtaur manage owed artwork and debts. In exchange for organization of owed work, cleaning email of spam on a regular basis, and keeping various online accounts clean and tidy and free of clutter, the artist agreed to work on completing owed artwork and processing refunds when able.
However, the artist has not held up this end of the bargain, and has violated the terms of the agreement in several ways.
Michael Higgs (Known as GAfoxtaur, Tinyfoxtaur, Foxtaurmike, Foxtaurgraphics) had continued to accept money for new commissions, despite a backlog of owed work. These new commissions were also not worked on and simply added to the backlog.
The artist has also proceeded to ignore emails and notes, set up new email addresses, and not communicate with anyone in any way.
After repeated warnings and attempts to communicate, the agreement between Foxtaur and Echoen can be considered terminated.
TO ALL COMMISSIONERS:
You can consider all payments made to Michael Higgs to be lost. You were scammed.
You can consider all owed work to never be completed. You were scammed.
You can consider all future attempts to restore community name to be further attempts to steal money.
The above statements will only be voided if and only if all completed work is drawn and all debts are repaid. Until this is done, please ensure you and your friends understand that
gafoxtaur and all affiliated accounts are not to be trusted.
Echoen who agreed to help GAfoxtaur manage owed artwork and debts. In exchange for organization of owed work, cleaning email of spam on a regular basis, and keeping various online accounts clean and tidy and free of clutter, the artist agreed to work on completing owed artwork and processing refunds when able.However, the artist has not held up this end of the bargain, and has violated the terms of the agreement in several ways.
Michael Higgs (Known as GAfoxtaur, Tinyfoxtaur, Foxtaurmike, Foxtaurgraphics) had continued to accept money for new commissions, despite a backlog of owed work. These new commissions were also not worked on and simply added to the backlog.
The artist has also proceeded to ignore emails and notes, set up new email addresses, and not communicate with anyone in any way.
After repeated warnings and attempts to communicate, the agreement between Foxtaur and Echoen can be considered terminated.
TO ALL COMMISSIONERS:
You can consider all payments made to Michael Higgs to be lost. You were scammed.
You can consider all owed work to never be completed. You were scammed.
You can consider all future attempts to restore community name to be further attempts to steal money.
The above statements will only be voided if and only if all completed work is drawn and all debts are repaid. Until this is done, please ensure you and your friends understand that
gafoxtaur and all affiliated accounts are not to be trusted.
Also, since he's been scamming people, does this mean he can now be banned from FA, IB, and any other art sites he'd try to use to do business?
Best we are going to be able to hope for is simply blackballing him from the community, conventions and art sites.
Neat subject matter, and I like the art style ... but taking money for things and not following through is not acceptable behavior.
My advice is find yourself a streaming site, like Picarto, and get on there with everyone you owe stuff to, and draw it while they encourage you in the stream, watching you, and don't take any money till you've finished what you owe.
Bye bye cash......nothing in return.
Fool us twice...
The one time I got a commission from Mr. Higgs it was a simple sketch at a convention. He didn't seem to have any problem working on it, as well as the other various projects he was given. That was a few years ago though; if something has happened since then, I don't know.
That said, if this is a recent thing then something is wrong. My first thought is that perhaps someone is impersonating Mr. Higgs, and possibly even Echoen. My second thought is that, if no one has heard from Mr. Higgs then perhaps something happened to him? If "he" is only communicating with people to accept commissions, when no one else has spoken to him, that raises a red flag for me. I can't rule out the possibility that someone is taking commissions in his stead, when he is either unknowing of them or unable to work on them.
Plus, there comes a time when a person MUST, own up to their part in things
But in postings I have a track record over several years long. And speaking from personal experience, it is FAR different when you have an artist at arms length vs the impersonal internet. I was able to get art done from two notorious procrastinator artists, but only because I was able to "reach out and touch them".
I don't know him personally, so I can't say for sure what it is he's going through, and I am pretty sure the same applies for everyone else here. That's what bothers me the most...There's no way to tell if this guy is ok or not. If he's hurt, depressed, been hacked...Perhaps everything is fine, and he's just in the throes of some pathological compunction? If there is an established pattern of this sort of behavior from him then who knows? It may very well be pathological. But this is the first time I've ever heard of it coming from him.
The one time I met him in person he seemed congenial, gracious, and professional. He was uncertain about the sketch but did it for me anyways. I know that one encounter does not a familiarity make, but it seems..."off" to me that he might be deliberately fleecing people for money. It is also telling that no one who has posted in response yet has been truly angry at him...just a lot of resignation and regret.
I feel bad about the people who got shorted on their commissions. This sort of thing happens to me all the time, and in spite its prevalence in the fandom it still comes as a shock to me to see gafoxtaur doing it. He used to be so prolific with his art back in the day...
Maybe someday he will come back and explain himself, but even if he doesn't, I hope he's all right and that that his next endeavors bear fruit that isn't bitter.
HE is NOT the artist you thought you knew. This is NOT something sudden / unexpected, it has gone on for years.
NO MORE EXCUSES, NO MORE ALIBIES and NO MORE SYMPATHY. The money is gone. The work unfinished, And as I said 4 years ago, forgiveness doesn't come at the public mea culpa, it comes AFTER the art is DELIVERED and repentance is shown by DEEDS. I bear him no malice, but I also don't foresee forgiveness coming any time soon.
I guess a lot has changed since those glory days. It's only sudden/unexpected to me because I wasn't aware of it, but now that I am...I'll be warning my friends about him for sure.
Seriously, I can't tell if this is due to some inability or if this was a malicious money grab. If money involved this stops being a hobby and becomes a job and business. Treat your customers as you yourself as a customer wish to be treated. If you can't show your customers the respect they deserve of course you'll go out of business. I suspect he's just one of those artist that can draw well, but can't run a business.
But I sadly predicted this turn of affairs back at the last message. Sorry to hear that even more people fell into the trap even after the countless warning signs.
His completed art was enough to at least earn some goodwill among his followers on FA that hopefully a good number of us will sympathize and understand his problems or his reasons for the delays in the artwork if he chose to share them with us. He had the space to express himself creatively in his gallery and personally in his journals/e-mails. Why he chose to not take the latter form of communication to keep us informed about his situations after money was exchanged for his services is a mystery.
(5/2011) http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2450794/
(11/2011) http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2914840/
(8/2013) http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3731483/
(6/2014) http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3731483/ and asking for MORE business
and this is for a SIMPLE drawing (x3) from 2008 that initially played to his artistic strengths and was even rewritten after he it was still to difficult to draw a CATGIRL ?!!!
Now if his remaining apologist want to make good on his obligations, I am willing to listen. But no more excuses or rationalizations or maybes or delays. As they said on Independence Day, "Time's up."
He had actually finished two commissions earlier in 2009 after waiting for a couple of months. Shrinking character themes that were up his alley.
...thank goodness for small miracles.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5600701/
I may attempt to draw the characters in further pictures myself but they probably will turn out more exaggeratedly cartoony than anatomically correct.
I really liked his art! To hear that he's turned himself into a mangled hybrid of leech, magpie, and virus by means of motherfucking beshitten petty theft… well, as Tourettes Guy so aptly put it, "BUTT-FUUUCK!"
Still I chose to think of him not as a malicious thief but as someone who got way over his head in so many ways. Though I know it is doubtful at this point I do hope that all the various people he has taken advantage of will get restitution in some way, either with proper art or a full refund. It just makes me so sick to find out that someone like Michael Higgs, a very well known and respected member of the community, was such a flake.
This, along with the recent passing of Doug Winger has made this a really crappy month. Makes me wonder who is going to be next...
http://foxtaurmike.deviantart.com/
http://foxtaurmike.deviantart.com/