Grape Britain

I know I'm not very active here anyway , but going on a break for a while from posting 💜

I will be participating in artfight still but I think I need a break.

The Internet has been negatively damaging my personal growth as an artist and as a person hence why I'm taking a break. Tumblr is the least problematic for me so I may still come back and like art occasionally but I will not be posting.

(artist awareness, please read)

Recently me and my friends were lied to, scammed and impersonated. This will be a post covering what happened not only to spread awareness about the scammer, but also in hopes of helping artists to be more careful about what they share with people publicly, and more privately on discord servers and with friends. 

Please share this around if you can! I’d really appreciate it <3 This can happen to any artist of any size.

Do not harass anyone mentioned in this post.

Hello! I don’t usually do posts like this, but I feel as though I should speak about this considering it is something me and my friends fell victim to, and were hurt from.

A few months back me and my friends began befriending someone on discord under the user “voidstars” (later changed to ZoruaRawr i believe). We hadn’t had the best experience in a discord server together, so after leaving, we made a small server of people who we’d befriended on there. Void was one of those people.

At the time, Void seemed very real of a person. He’d go on rants about oc’s, send sketch wips, showed us adopts he’d posted, even commissioned one of us a few times,( @kikamationsartblog) , one being make a ref sheet for his oc. Nothing about him seemed particularly off. We’d seen his socials(even if he was a bit weird about us seeing them), we’d seen things he seemingly was sketching and so on.

(screenshots of his wips/sketches) --^

(screenshot of his adopts and open commissions)--^

(Kika and Void talking about the comm he asked from them)--^

Over time though, despite this, all of us slowly began falling out with him. He would upset people, wouldn’t take accountability for his actions, seemingly supported bigotry from his friend’s he’d invited from the sever, and even scammed money out of one of us (@blisslabyrinth). Bliss had commissioned him to draw something for him, but after months of not getting even a sketch, Bliss asked for a refund, only for him to only refund half of it and then completely ghosted by him of kofi when he politely asked for the rest of the money.

(screenshots of kofi)--^

Bliss had fell out with him first leaving the sever, then me and kikamations a little while after when him and his friends started being bigoted about kika's gender identity .We had an argument in the sever with him and his friends, kika leaving, and then void leaving a few days after.

Me, bliss, kika and a few other close friends where all in another sever together while this happened , all venting some frustrations about the situation. Bliss decided that he’d reach out AGAIN to him on kofi for a refund, but this time, he reached out to him on what void had made out was his ‘main/satire  account’ as he’d been sending money through second accounts. 

When bliss contacted this account however, the person speaking to him seemed confused what he was talking about. At first, we thought it was Void playing dumb, but after Bliss spoke to them more, we realized that Void was not the person he said he was, and he’d been impersonating the ACTUAL artist bliss was now speaking to. toyhouse artist, iKitsunyan.

After this, we all spoke to iKitsunyan personally on discord to figure out what exactly had gone on. We soon found out, that that he’d been impersonating ikitsun, claiming their ocs as his own, their art as his, and their accounts as his as well. not only had he been impersonating Ikitsun, but he’d ALSO been impersonating one of US in ikitsun’s discord.

Void was seemingly/is seemingly obsessed to a concerning degree with ikitsun and wanted to get closer to them without seeming suspicious as he isn’t an artist from what we know (while also scamming people out of money on the side+ impersonating them). 

To do this, he got close to us, particularly kikamations, making them feel safe to share wip artworks, take commissions off him ect ect…before making an account on discord pretending to BE kikamations non of us were aware about.  He then joined Ikitsun’s discord sever where he’d share kikas artwork , claiming it as his own, even using the commission of “his oc” he’d asked kika to do, which we later found out was to be ikitsun’s character, as ‘fanart’ he made for them , showing wips in the server, those wips being sketches kika had sent to him when working on the commission. He did this all while we were still friends with him, happily talking to him while having no idea he was pulling this crap on the side. All of this seemed to be done to become friends with ikitsun without raising suspicions, especially considering kika is a smaller artist. This apparently was going on for a while.

(Kika's REAL account ! )---^

(impersonation account)-----^

(pretending to be kika on Ikitsun's discord/ to Ikitsun)---^

He even removed kika’s watermarks from their art and covered it up with his own, making a toyhouse account with that user so when ikitsun posted it on their account, his account would be credited, not kikas.  He’s constantly also ask the real artist he was impersonating to us, ikitsun, to share wips and progress of their art framing it as being enthusiastic about their creations, only to use those wips to make him seem more real to us, and farm more art off kika. 

(REAL signatures from kika)---^

(FAKE signatures/his signatures he added)--^

Just as a sidenote too, he also was very enbyphobic and would edit out the gender identity of characters owned by Ikitsun??? He also seemed transphobic + potentially sexist to afab ppl in general but it's hard to tell with him bc he would lie about everything.

(original on ref sheet by Ikitsun)---^

(void's version with the gender identity edited out?? ew)--^

he asked kika on the ref sheet he commissioned to have Ikitsun's oc Hibiki male , when the character is nonbinary. Kika had no idea about them actually being nonbinary.

(Ikitsun's character mentioning they are nonbinary)--^

(what Void asked to be on the ref sheet)--^

There is a lot more that went on with many more people i believe , but those are some key things that went down just surrounding me personally.

Non of us know yet what exactly he’s up too, and considering all of us are artists he made friends with, it’s a possibility he may try and impersonate one of us in future , or anyone else he tries to get close to. If not, he will ,at the very least , try and scam cash off of them. 

Due to this, i think it’s very important for everyone to be cautious what you share online in terms of your art. I suggest staying away from sharing wips if possible, make it obvious what ur socials are online, and be cautious on who you make friends with online. 

Also we highly suspect he was putting Kika's art through ai to remove the signatures so, take this as a sign to poison your art from ai.

If anyone would like more information such as accounts to block/in depth what happened, please check out both kikamations bulletin on toyhouse, and ikitsunaya’s:

Ikitsunaya bulletin 1: https://toyhou.se/~bulletins/2558485.important-impersonation-warning

Ikitsunaya bulletin 2: https://toyhou.se/~bulletins/2562985.all-known-impostors-voidstars

Kikamations bulletin: https://toyhou.se/~bulletins/2565024.art-thief-impersonator-alert

recently found out someone i was thought was my friend was actually going around and impersonating people he had befriended.

For that reason I want to say, if anyone is claiming to be me, even if they share wips, even If they share sketches , that very likely isn't me .

If you want to check who ur talking to is me, please send me a dm here on tumblr . I will not be offended if you want to come check in any way, so don't be worried too 🫶

My socials: