#cocadope

largely personal but its the phenomenon of what happens when a rather soft, genuine art culture kind of opens up to a vicious world of competition.. which is what will happen more and more as furry normalizes.

there is an artist jen lee/repoghost with a distinct art style who just over a few years ago, cocadope, a non-furry, dropped his previous generic art style to attempt to copy 1:1 in his entrance into the fandom (he was an adult, not a teen mind you, when he did this).

Repoghost is probably the first furry artist to explode out of the fandom and gain art and illustration world recognition for her work. She, certainly within this community, innovated a comic and commission art form of looping gifs as sequential (thunderpaw). She has collaborated with apparel companies like DROPDEAD, art mags and eventually found work at cartoon network. This is how cocadope, before he was a furry but rather some illustration and art blogger, found her work and thru her, a way into the fandom. In what he recently recounted HIMSELF as having seen an “opportunity” to “market himself” by outright copying her work. ie:

https://hfoded.tumblr.com/post/159009336588/cocadope-new-lil-icon-inspired-by-the-talented

jens art for reference: https://repoghost.itch.io/old-art-by-jen

At the time, his attempts to copy her was almost indistinguishable from repoghosts work. She expressed discontent and upset with that, but he continued to do so. Jen lee and her friends even found he would use the photoshop ink dropper tool to sample the EXACT colour schemes in her work, to make his reproductions. His effort to copy her was brazen.

As a result of this and his hyper-marketing of himself, people thought cocadope was repoghosts alt and started commissioning him instead of her THINKING she was him. He would not dispel that, even though he spent alot of time making her uncomfortable by showing her the art he was doing by copying her so closely.

In time, people began to recognize jen lee’s style as his own. People still refer to it as the “cocadope style” which he used as branding to establish a self-important youtube and podcast series en route to what is little more than him making himself spokesman for the fandom a la Uncle Kage.

Eventually Jen lee distanced herself from the fandom because he came to eclipse her even tho jen lee’s work of vivid urban scenes were sourced from her own life and experience, while his scenes were merely vapid aesthetic aping attempting to imitate what she produced. You can feel this difference when beholding both of their work.

both artists have since tried to distance themselves from eachother, jen from the trauma of the experience, and cocadope from the rising antagonism of fandom artists who KNOW what he did and constantly bitch about it.

its also ironic because now cocadope, via his super stardom, is now experiencing teen furries idolizing and attempting to copy his style whom he blocks and lectures down to, against “cutting into his art market”

honestly fuck him

lmao

i only give a shit because as a professional artist, i have sympathy for what jen lee experienced. It’s not fucking fun to be copied entirely and then the person who copied you, because their skill set is in capital mining and marketing rather than art, went on to be enormously successful off your back.

admittedly, you cant change the past, nor is it fair to really hammer in this point.

i just want to remind the world what happened and that cocadope is an outsider hack who capitalized on our Community.

disclosure: jen lee is my friend and i witnessed this happen.

..

Theres other stuff, like (because im frens with other large artists) how cocadope would push his way into art groups and antagonize and in one case even make a youtube video to disparage artists who didn’t kiss his ass when he came into these groups.

Which is like, these art groups are usually really chill but then you ahve people like cocadope with NO chill and an entitlement complex (big surprise from this dude, considering his whole schtick is based off of copying other people) with huge insecurity and ego problems

anyway.

i really could and shouldve grabbed tweets and stuff to show for my allegations but he blocked me, so i wont.

PRE-REGISTRATION FOR FURPOCALYPSE IS NOW OPEN!

Come join me as the Master of Ceremonies throwing a Halloween bash with @cocadope and Jib Kodi in Cromwell, CT from October 26th-28th!

And if you snap a picture of your badge name while registering and send it to me, I might just save a little something for you to come and get from me at the con ;;3