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Loppy Rae

@loppyrae.bsky.social

Two rabbits in a trench coat. Mixed media art, junk journaling, & chaos. Email me at loppydraws @ http://gmail.com #sketchbook #dollop

99 Posts5335 Follower272 Folgt
Loppy Rae@loppyrae.bsky.social · last yr.

tl;DR: Y'all gave me hope after a hard year, and I am so incredibly grateful. There were many times this year where I thought my only option was a "dirt nap," but I'm so glad I stuck around. This past week has given me so much joy and I feel like my hard work paid off.

Thank you all for giving me some hope again. I’ve been holding onto this story since January. I have my reasons for keeping silent, and this situation goes so much deeper, but for now, I am just sharing to give y’all the full context of how much your support has helped me. I also hope this can work as a cautionary tale to new artists. I was admittedly so nervous to put up my recent shop update. The economy has been quite rough, as I’m sure you all know, and I was not expecting much. The turn out though? WOW. Y’all absolutely blew me away with the support, and I just need everyone to know how grateful I am... And I truly mean ALL support! Whether you placed an order or not, my update would not have taken off without y’all showing up for me, engaging with my posts, and interacting! Please never underestimate how much a simple interaction can change an artist’s life. I am so proud and grateful for the incredible community I’ve grown over the years. So to all my trouble buns, thank you, thank you, thank you!I have been struggling a LOT this year, but I know so many of us are hurting in this economy. Truthfully, I never truly recovered after the wage theft incident with my husband last year. But I had enough, and that’s all I wanted. As long as I kept my head above the water, I was content to just keep working hard, hoping that one day it would pay off. Some of you may know that I’m the parent of a special needs child. Artists are already famously broke as hell, and adding up the cost of medication, appointments, and therapy... Let’s just say, it adds up quick lol! The next part is going to be kinda dark, okay? Please don't feel obligated to read it. Just know I am grateful as hell to all of you.The truth is, in January of this year, I was the victim of a wire fraud scam. I lost more than $10,000+ USD, and to this day, I have not been able to retrieve my stolen funds. I know that sounds like an insane amount of money to just have sitting in my bank account. I have never had more than $10k in my account at a time. Of course, this was from the Hurtsies Backerkit campaign. At this point, I had already paid for the add-ons for my campaign (keychains, sticker books, etc.) All that was left was to complete the samples and put the plushies into production. Upon completing the campaign, with all things considered, I should have made a decent profit. After having a horrible year, living paycheck to paycheck and skipping meals, I thought that the campaign would have been my saving grace.So how did it happen? In late December, my manufacturer’s e-mail was hacked. During the security breach, the hacker downloaded our entire conversation history (consisting of 100+ messages spanning over multiple projects,) as well as the Commercial Invoice for the Hurtsies plush production. They then spoofed the entire e-mail chain, and sent me the commercial invoice again... with their OWN banking information. During this time, they were also impersonating me to keep my manufacturer from reaching out to me. Unfortunately, by the time my factory rep realized what happened, the money was GONE. I spent all of January desperately trying to get my money back. I filed a police report. I drove to my bank. I even contacted Shanghai police, as well as the Chinese bank. None of them could help me.
Karla Ortiz@kortizart.bsky.social · last yr.

GenAi companies know where all the court cases are headed, and how badly it’s going to go for them. Their only resort? Entirely destroy legal systems that are in our constitution in order to get away with their theft of creative works. But they wont succeed. We wont let them.

If you don't let us scrape copyrighted content, we will lose out to China says OpenAI as it tries to influence US government

The company also tries to frame its scraping as covered by the 'fair use doctrine'.

pcgamer.com

🌐TORI.PNG🌐🔜 MAGWEST@toripng.com · 2y ago

The exp in this job is heavily romanticized- there are plenty of things illustrated to look easy bc content that is easier to consume in that way /makes money./ There's nothing wrong with digestible guides/short-form media but it's cause+effect to see how that tip of the iceberg informs very poorly.

🌐TORI.PNG🌐🔜 MAGWEST@toripng.com · 2y ago

If you're seeing a lot of professional artists or small businesses push for people to understand that keeping your art as a hobby is ok- it's not because we're looking to block competition. It's because we are seeing a broad scale of investment-to-failure ESPECIALLY amongst beginners.

Trix 🍵@trxyland.com · 2y ago

My shop launch is live with Cooking Kitty pins and more! Plus the biggest sale of the year! 🍞💖 💖trxyland.com💖

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Sylessae@sylessae.bsky.social · 2y ago

artists 🎨 stop apologizing for not posting, for taking breaks, for being slow, for drawing the same character, for posting only sketches, for gushing over OCs, for being a beginner, for raising your prices, for trying a new medium— start doing whatever you heckin want