April News (Patreon)

Hello friends! Welcome to the month of April, with the completed artwork for "Ace of Pentacles", including some bonus photos! I also have some important news to share, as well as a question about the direction of my Patreon. But first... This is a hard post to write.

It came to my attention, about a month ago, that one of my Patrons logged into a 3rd Party website and used a scraper to harvest my content. Effectively stealing years worth of artwork.

Honestly I was pretty heart broken, and went through a looooong deep depression while pursuing this through Patreon's Legal team, the registrar of the Website stealing content, social media channels, and more. It was exhausting, it killed my spirit, and was frankly a nightmare. It's like years of hard work meant nothing, and I had no desire to create art. 

I'm starting to feel better, and I'm looking for a solution that allows me to move forward. 

In the beginning, I was trying to determine which user was doing this, and which tier it was coming from. I believe I've narrowed it down to the $2.22 tier. My instinct tells me to change the tier to a different price, which would force those users (sorry) to sign up again for the next available tier. This may help me catch the person, but it's sure annoying for everyone involved.

Before I make any decisions, I thought I'd open things up to your feedback.  What would you like to see? Do you have any advice? Suggestions like "Just sue them" isn't super helpful, as I don't know which user is doing this. ...Yet. As far as the host website, they are hidden behind WHOIS privacy, and have been pretty confrontational so far. I'm still working on it.

*deep breath* Now you know. 

Alright, back to the artwork featuring the lovely Klay Wandelear. 

Thanks for listening, and supporting my art. I appreciate it more than you know.

Love,

Brandon