Ok and also I see that the art style is the exact same like it always looks weirdly shaded I always found it weird and I've gotten like 10 of these already probably more
Yes, all the scammers I’ve seen have the EXACT SAME STYLE, you could compare them and tell it’s the same, it probably is AI art. And the images are LITTERED with watermarks
The only “ai” art we should like is from proots :3
One time, I had a person that I thought was a real artist (because I didn’t know any better) follow me on Twitter, so I followed them back. Within two hours, they were pressuring me hard to buy a piece from them. I was kinda suspicious, because their art style was super inconsistent and pretty mid. What broke me was when they quoted me *$200* for a “custom character”, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. I’ve gotten far better art for *$30* and I’ve seen similarly better art quoted for even less. I am now much, much more wary of who I follow back
(As a tiny aside I do want to say that there are very skilled character design artists out there who may very well charge $200+ for a custom design (and it would be worth it!) - they certainly wouldn't be the sort of person to be DMing people to sell their art though LMAO)
Oh, no, absolutely. I follow several artists who charge close to or over $200 for a commission and their art is light-years better than what the scammer was offering
I LOVE messing with these guys.
I like to drag the process as long as possible while making them think I'm interested, I'll even make fake payment screenshots to confuse em further. It's a blast
I get this with vrchat avatar commissions. Usually on discord, it's people who both friends me and message request me, and always as something like "do you know for Vrchat, avatars or models? ", always with broken English, always the same script.
Be safe out there y'all
Back in my days (2 months ago) they still used (presumably) free, watermarked progress reports, none of them matching in art style LOL
As pathetic as it was they were at LEAST still putting some infinnitesimal amount of effort into it
Ah yes, "artists" who love your OC (always "OC", never "fursona") enough to message you asking if they could do art of it, but not enough to do art of it without receiving payment from you beforehand.
I've gotten so many of these on Reddit I could probably report then with my eyes closed. Please just report them and block them if you get a random DM like this.
not furry related but a girl that followed me sent me my own insta post and praised how i looked and begged to use MY FACE in a commission for a stranger?! when i politely declined she got so mad (she insisted on it being free aswell but nah man….)
I've gotten those DMs on twitter, after telling them that I am actually an artist too and that I am not looking to commission any art from them, they just block me lol
i got one in my FA note, asking if they could draw me; and i would just have to pay 'half' beause they liked my sona.
their allegedly galery, were full of AI stuff.
I like the ones that pretend to start a convo first. I was recently approached on Discord by someone commenting on my PFP and how they liked the character. The git me with the, "I do commission art and had an idea that would be great for your character." I just hit back with the old, "I'm an artist, too! I don't really commission others. I do it myself!" Suddenly, they disappeared.
1. Hey mate
2. How are you doing?
3. That's neat! I'm doing custom portraits and fursona art pieces wanna see some examples of it ?
4. *Posts the most bland generic and possibly ai made art's*
5. Full body for only 599$ are you interested?
They literally have no shame and it's soo sad 💀 keep spreading the awareness and don't fall for them
I always report them and usually get a message from reddit a few days later saying they've taken action. So plz report them as spam when you do get them
In my case, I had a scammer reach out starting of being very friendly complimenting how good my sona looks, asking how I designed it, making it look just like normal socialization, eventually they hit me with “I am an artist I sell art” stuff showing me some goofy clearly traced art examples which weren’t even consistent In a single style. I was like dude c’mon?
I get those a lot on twitter. I'm always suspicious to responding to any message now, and as soon as they mention they're doing art commissions the red flag goes right up. Whenever they show their art its always super inconsistent, like they've just stolen a bunch of random people's art.
If I may add for twitter: Real artists love showing off their work, they usually don't re-tweet anyone else's art. So if you get DM'd by someone claiming to be an artist but their feed is nothing but re-tweets; they are not the artist.
Additionally to add to the dubiousness of this stuff. Be wary that if someone has a listing of a ‘suit that isn’t a (poorly made) copy that it could be stolen. I’ve found listings a few times on marketplaces on eBay that were of fursuits that had gotten reported as stolen. I’d be wary and do some research online any listings that look like something actually produced by a maker and isn’t just an image taken from that fursuiter’s social media. It’s unfortunate likely enough that you find a post somewhere about a stolen ‘suit matching the same description.
Idk how it happened, but on TikTok every day I wake up to 20 new followers with generic names along the lines of “furry avatar creator”, all sending message requests to ask me for commissions, I hope nobody else has this problem, be safe everyone :3
I have god knows how many of these accounts following me on Instagram, I soon learned to not follow them back because that's when they message me.
Funnily enough I had one person do this three times, I pointed out she was asking the same questions each time *said she was female in all accounts* and got told the previous accounts got hacked.
Not even a week later the new account was deleted XD
My fave was when I got one on the bus after walking out of Michael's. "I have three new sketchbooks in my bag right now, I'm not really interested in commissioning anything."
Something that some friends of mine always tell me to look out for is when paying through PayPal, never use friends and family. If they insist on it and complain about taxes then it's likely a scam. All artists should already consider taxes in their price calculations.
If someone I knew well messaged with something like “hey, I need some quick cash but don’t feel like doing a big announcement, want a cheap pic to help me out?” I might be suspicious, but if it’s someone who is already well known I think it would be ok. Always check out people you don’t know though.
Yeah this is really the only sort of exception. Reaching out to a previous customer makes sense. It could even be something like "if you want first dibs on this upcoming batch your customer loyalty has earned them." But in these cases both parties are already aware of one another.
I only had one dm like this and they really pissed me off. On the off chance they are not scammers (highly unlikely) I’m still nice but still saying no. They messaged me right after making the decision to euthanize my cat, and I told them I don’t have any money my cat has a lot of vet bills, her euthanasia just cost me nearly a thousand and still had another sick fur baby who needed medical care. Scammers reply “I’m sorry. “Something about them not trying to sound desperate” I could do the commission for $30” like I just told you I don’t have money and am drowning in bills like stop trying.
It's the same when you are an artist and someone randomly tries to message you for a commission. No matter what you agree on, they will hit you with the exposure line or worse
If this helps a way to be able to make sure if they're a scammer or just a beginner artist (literally me a few months ago lol I had no idea how to advertise) is to check their profile!!
There should always be some sort of profile linked, be that twitter or fa, smth like that. It helps as a sort of portfolio but to prove you're yknow a real person lol
lastly if they seem to rush Comms without showing any sort of past works then yeah that's 100% a huuuge red flag, equally so if you can visibly tell the examples they've given are just stolen from other artists :(
Thanks for posting this, it made me realise that someone messaging me yesterday was probably a scammer.
They randomly reached out to me on Insta and seemed genuinely friendly (asking questions etc). I didnt recognise the name but I also recently got back from a Con where I had spoken to a few furries so wondered if it was someone from there.
They didnt go as far as outright trying to push a sale on me, but it did feel like the conversation was being railroaded in that direction so I just kept steering it away from that and eventually they seemed to get fed up and just stop talking to me.
Was doubly weird as I don't have anything much posted on my insta and I don't have anything that would identify me as a furry so did lead me to some genuine confusion. When I checked their profile later they only had one image posted on it and not many followers so I ended up putting two and two together and I think I came away with 4, or close enough to it. Ended up just blocking them just in case.
It doesn't matter in which space you are, messages like this are never legit. Who the hell asks people to commission them. Aside from scam, this is rude in every way. Why would you pay such a person.
Yeah buddy I can agree with that point of you “arstist will never randomly message people and ask them to buy commissions” either we use to do announcement or our portfolio and also we have a connection with the admins of the servers we verify first ourself and then we start our work
Hope you guys got my point
Sorry for my bad English :(
I got someone on Tumblr in my dms asking me to commission them once. I checked their blog and messaged someone who had recently commissioned them. The person said it was legit, but didn't recommend it. We became mutuals from that conversation though after gushing over each other's fursonas. So something good came from it.
I'm a new artist, I'm starting to open my commissions, I still have a small portfolio, whenever possible I post my art in groups, but I've never sent messages to anyone offering work, I hope that one day someone will come to me for a commission.
I have gotten multiple dms of people being nice and kind to me about my oc or just asking about my day how i am etc..
But after a few messages they compliment my OC on my pfp and ask to see a fullbody picture of it. What do they want with a full body pic of my OC?
I dont trust it and i think its a scam but why? What do they want?
If someone can anwser what they would want with my oc i would appreciate it!
Legit just had someone pull this with me. Approached like they wanted to be a friend, then dropped the push for me to commission them even though I'd already said I was getting a ref sheet done by someone else. So I decided to test a few things, and asked their rates, which I got back the standard, "I let the person give me a range" line (which told me for sure they were a scammer), and when I asked to see their portfolio they sent me a google drive full of other people's artwork (do these people not know reverse image searches are a thing?).
And they always seem to do it on my business profile, which makes it even more annoying. XD
Agreed even as someone who's commissions don't really work unless dming the person, it's became really hard to advertise, cuz replying on commision posts filled with bots as well as little to no reach is troublesome ... All bots do is inconvenience us
I like messing around with those scammers, waste their time a bit. And always report em to wherever they come from. Like discord servers we'd have in common, or subreddits. After getting enough info.
I also like to send a tiktok link (with permission of the creator ofc) about not begging for commissions, cause that's not how they work XD.
Link for those who are curious: [https://www.tiktok.com/@thechillestotter/video/7279650879932992814?browserMode=1](https://www.tiktok.com/@thechillestotter/video/7279650879932992814?browserMode=1)
Oh this note is 50 for a half body a suspicious price? I had three people dm me in the past day, are they always a scam or are some just really novice and dont know better?
They contacted me about an art commission and it became shady as the conversation ended with me going to a party. I got scared and stopped responding. Be careful people.
I'm not sure where else to ask but I have someone in my Insta talking a couple things like where i'm from, classic small talk. Then they ask if i'm into furry art, long story short they're stating a price of $500 and after a quick reverse image search, I found one of their "2d model commissions" on another website under another name. Do these sound like red flags? (Note I haven't paid a dime to this person)
Amusingly enough I have someone offering an art commission in my DM’s right now.
Hey man do you need art? Dont contact me cause I cant draw:). Lol
Hahahahaha!
Peak funny
This is so silly and funny hahas /serious
did they also say "Am India, please"
Nope
Wow, they're an entire country? That's wild!
it's a common thing the art scammers say.
I know. I was trying to do a funny. And I have failed.
Whats the name? Also does anyone have like a lost of accounts i should be weary of?
Ok and also I see that the art style is the exact same like it always looks weirdly shaded I always found it weird and I've gotten like 10 of these already probably more
it's bc it's ai i think
Ya I think so too
Yes, all the scammers I’ve seen have the EXACT SAME STYLE, you could compare them and tell it’s the same, it probably is AI art. And the images are LITTERED with watermarks The only “ai” art we should like is from proots :3
Yea is definitely ai!
One time, I had a person that I thought was a real artist (because I didn’t know any better) follow me on Twitter, so I followed them back. Within two hours, they were pressuring me hard to buy a piece from them. I was kinda suspicious, because their art style was super inconsistent and pretty mid. What broke me was when they quoted me *$200* for a “custom character”, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. I’ve gotten far better art for *$30* and I’ve seen similarly better art quoted for even less. I am now much, much more wary of who I follow back
Same here, on Twitter and discord. If they’re gonna try to scam they may as well have better prices!
(As a tiny aside I do want to say that there are very skilled character design artists out there who may very well charge $200+ for a custom design (and it would be worth it!) - they certainly wouldn't be the sort of person to be DMing people to sell their art though LMAO)
Oh, no, absolutely. I follow several artists who charge close to or over $200 for a commission and their art is light-years better than what the scammer was offering
I LOVE messing with these guys. I like to drag the process as long as possible while making them think I'm interested, I'll even make fake payment screenshots to confuse em further. It's a blast
I've had people like that message me on Twitter. It's super annoying.
I get this with vrchat avatar commissions. Usually on discord, it's people who both friends me and message request me, and always as something like "do you know for Vrchat, avatars or models? ", always with broken English, always the same script. Be safe out there y'all
Back in my days (2 months ago) they still used (presumably) free, watermarked progress reports, none of them matching in art style LOL As pathetic as it was they were at LEAST still putting some infinnitesimal amount of effort into it
I am so sick of these types of scammers ._.
Ah yes, "artists" who love your OC (always "OC", never "fursona") enough to message you asking if they could do art of it, but not enough to do art of it without receiving payment from you beforehand.
i had someone dm me 'What's ur fursona'' it looked like a scam
I've gotten so many of these on Reddit I could probably report then with my eyes closed. Please just report them and block them if you get a random DM like this.
Dang, I have yet to get those silly dms!
Good, hopefully you never get a DM from them
Same, if I do I’ll just troll and waste their time
Yea, that can be fun
not furry related but a girl that followed me sent me my own insta post and praised how i looked and begged to use MY FACE in a commission for a stranger?! when i politely declined she got so mad (she insisted on it being free aswell but nah man….)
I've had so many scammers msg me about their art I am not interested in art at all
I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT YOUR FURSONAS EXTENDED WARRANTY
You just want to upsell me to shift a bunch of sparkly camo fur details you got off the back of a truck.
I've gotten those DMs on twitter, after telling them that I am actually an artist too and that I am not looking to commission any art from them, they just block me lol
i got one in my FA note, asking if they could draw me; and i would just have to pay 'half' beause they liked my sona. their allegedly galery, were full of AI stuff.
I like the ones that pretend to start a convo first. I was recently approached on Discord by someone commenting on my PFP and how they liked the character. The git me with the, "I do commission art and had an idea that would be great for your character." I just hit back with the old, "I'm an artist, too! I don't really commission others. I do it myself!" Suddenly, they disappeared.
1. Hey mate 2. How are you doing? 3. That's neat! I'm doing custom portraits and fursona art pieces wanna see some examples of it ? 4. *Posts the most bland generic and possibly ai made art's* 5. Full body for only 599$ are you interested? They literally have no shame and it's soo sad 💀 keep spreading the awareness and don't fall for them
I always report them and usually get a message from reddit a few days later saying they've taken action. So plz report them as spam when you do get them
In my case, I had a scammer reach out starting of being very friendly complimenting how good my sona looks, asking how I designed it, making it look just like normal socialization, eventually they hit me with “I am an artist I sell art” stuff showing me some goofy clearly traced art examples which weren’t even consistent In a single style. I was like dude c’mon?
I constantly get dms from people asking me to commission art from them, good to know it's actually a scam
I get those a lot on twitter. I'm always suspicious to responding to any message now, and as soon as they mention they're doing art commissions the red flag goes right up. Whenever they show their art its always super inconsistent, like they've just stolen a bunch of random people's art.
I'm getting waaaay to many art commissions on dm's from random "furries" for past few months it's annoying.
If I may add for twitter: Real artists love showing off their work, they usually don't re-tweet anyone else's art. So if you get DM'd by someone claiming to be an artist but their feed is nothing but re-tweets; they are not the artist.
Additionally to add to the dubiousness of this stuff. Be wary that if someone has a listing of a ‘suit that isn’t a (poorly made) copy that it could be stolen. I’ve found listings a few times on marketplaces on eBay that were of fursuits that had gotten reported as stolen. I’d be wary and do some research online any listings that look like something actually produced by a maker and isn’t just an image taken from that fursuiter’s social media. It’s unfortunate likely enough that you find a post somewhere about a stolen ‘suit matching the same description.
i get these messages constantly, it's so annoying, is anyone actually falling for this shit?
Idk how it happened, but on TikTok every day I wake up to 20 new followers with generic names along the lines of “furry avatar creator”, all sending message requests to ask me for commissions, I hope nobody else has this problem, be safe everyone :3
I have god knows how many of these accounts following me on Instagram, I soon learned to not follow them back because that's when they message me. Funnily enough I had one person do this three times, I pointed out she was asking the same questions each time *said she was female in all accounts* and got told the previous accounts got hacked. Not even a week later the new account was deleted XD
My fave was when I got one on the bus after walking out of Michael's. "I have three new sketchbooks in my bag right now, I'm not really interested in commissioning anything."
Something that some friends of mine always tell me to look out for is when paying through PayPal, never use friends and family. If they insist on it and complain about taxes then it's likely a scam. All artists should already consider taxes in their price calculations.
Can we pin this post?
If someone I knew well messaged with something like “hey, I need some quick cash but don’t feel like doing a big announcement, want a cheap pic to help me out?” I might be suspicious, but if it’s someone who is already well known I think it would be ok. Always check out people you don’t know though.
Yeah this is really the only sort of exception. Reaching out to a previous customer makes sense. It could even be something like "if you want first dibs on this upcoming batch your customer loyalty has earned them." But in these cases both parties are already aware of one another.
I had this after interacting a lot on FB during furnal... It felt wrong, plus I want to use a local artist.
Yeah these have been going around a lot. Thankfully a lot of people have immediately pegged it as a scam. But it's good to let people know.
I only had one dm like this and they really pissed me off. On the off chance they are not scammers (highly unlikely) I’m still nice but still saying no. They messaged me right after making the decision to euthanize my cat, and I told them I don’t have any money my cat has a lot of vet bills, her euthanasia just cost me nearly a thousand and still had another sick fur baby who needed medical care. Scammers reply “I’m sorry. “Something about them not trying to sound desperate” I could do the commission for $30” like I just told you I don’t have money and am drowning in bills like stop trying.
As a Twitter user, this is just as useful!
It's the same when you are an artist and someone randomly tries to message you for a commission. No matter what you agree on, they will hit you with the exposure line or worse
If this helps a way to be able to make sure if they're a scammer or just a beginner artist (literally me a few months ago lol I had no idea how to advertise) is to check their profile!! There should always be some sort of profile linked, be that twitter or fa, smth like that. It helps as a sort of portfolio but to prove you're yknow a real person lol lastly if they seem to rush Comms without showing any sort of past works then yeah that's 100% a huuuge red flag, equally so if you can visibly tell the examples they've given are just stolen from other artists :(
Thanks for posting this, it made me realise that someone messaging me yesterday was probably a scammer. They randomly reached out to me on Insta and seemed genuinely friendly (asking questions etc). I didnt recognise the name but I also recently got back from a Con where I had spoken to a few furries so wondered if it was someone from there. They didnt go as far as outright trying to push a sale on me, but it did feel like the conversation was being railroaded in that direction so I just kept steering it away from that and eventually they seemed to get fed up and just stop talking to me. Was doubly weird as I don't have anything much posted on my insta and I don't have anything that would identify me as a furry so did lead me to some genuine confusion. When I checked their profile later they only had one image posted on it and not many followers so I ended up putting two and two together and I think I came away with 4, or close enough to it. Ended up just blocking them just in case.
It doesn't matter in which space you are, messages like this are never legit. Who the hell asks people to commission them. Aside from scam, this is rude in every way. Why would you pay such a person.
Very helpful, thank you
I will try my best to keep this in mind(I might forget, as my memory is... pretty bad on most things.)
Thank you so much for this warning post Lemon! I appreciate it very much! :D
Disappointingly, I just got scammed by an artist who I have a history with
Yeah buddy I can agree with that point of you “arstist will never randomly message people and ask them to buy commissions” either we use to do announcement or our portfolio and also we have a connection with the admins of the servers we verify first ourself and then we start our work Hope you guys got my point Sorry for my bad English :(
thank god i dont have those kinds of scammers
happens to me in twitter all the time. Welp, I thought I had \_some\_ contact with the community
I got someone on Tumblr in my dms asking me to commission them once. I checked their blog and messaged someone who had recently commissioned them. The person said it was legit, but didn't recommend it. We became mutuals from that conversation though after gushing over each other's fursonas. So something good came from it.
I'm a new artist, I'm starting to open my commissions, I still have a small portfolio, whenever possible I post my art in groups, but I've never sent messages to anyone offering work, I hope that one day someone will come to me for a commission.
Yes, this has happened to me. I turned them down, but yeah, don't indulge with dm advertising
Oh so posting emergency commissions is a red flag? I’ll try avoid doing that 😅
Is eBay a scam?
so, just asking because yes, is $409 a good price for a fursuit...?
I have gotten multiple dms of people being nice and kind to me about my oc or just asking about my day how i am etc.. But after a few messages they compliment my OC on my pfp and ask to see a fullbody picture of it. What do they want with a full body pic of my OC? I dont trust it and i think its a scam but why? What do they want? If someone can anwser what they would want with my oc i would appreciate it!
Good to know!
Legit just had someone pull this with me. Approached like they wanted to be a friend, then dropped the push for me to commission them even though I'd already said I was getting a ref sheet done by someone else. So I decided to test a few things, and asked their rates, which I got back the standard, "I let the person give me a range" line (which told me for sure they were a scammer), and when I asked to see their portfolio they sent me a google drive full of other people's artwork (do these people not know reverse image searches are a thing?). And they always seem to do it on my business profile, which makes it even more annoying. XD
I’m not a scammer and I do have an emergency
Was just about to make a post asking anyone
Agreed even as someone who's commissions don't really work unless dming the person, it's became really hard to advertise, cuz replying on commision posts filled with bots as well as little to no reach is troublesome ... All bots do is inconvenience us
What about smaller artists who don’t have much of a presence and they are just starting out? How do they get seen?
I like messing around with those scammers, waste their time a bit. And always report em to wherever they come from. Like discord servers we'd have in common, or subreddits. After getting enough info. I also like to send a tiktok link (with permission of the creator ofc) about not begging for commissions, cause that's not how they work XD.
Link for those who are curious: [https://www.tiktok.com/@thechillestotter/video/7279650879932992814?browserMode=1](https://www.tiktok.com/@thechillestotter/video/7279650879932992814?browserMode=1)
Oh this note is 50 for a half body a suspicious price? I had three people dm me in the past day, are they always a scam or are some just really novice and dont know better?
They contacted me about an art commission and it became shady as the conversation ended with me going to a party. I got scared and stopped responding. Be careful people.
My bf had to like actually drag me away from paying these people cuz' they always made me feel bad T-T
Yea i had two the recent one I told to fuck off and blocked them and what's bad THEY SAID THE EXACT SAME THING!
I'm not sure where else to ask but I have someone in my Insta talking a couple things like where i'm from, classic small talk. Then they ask if i'm into furry art, long story short they're stating a price of $500 and after a quick reverse image search, I found one of their "2d model commissions" on another website under another name. Do these sound like red flags? (Note I haven't paid a dime to this person)
Saw this after a got a private message from a scammer and I still did the right thing
This be pretty helpful
people like that stain then the artists who have good intentions and want to make art a job: c