A story with a bad ending: "How the user @ameliazane scammed me, using AI-generated drawings as if they were her own."
Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing well. I wish I could say the same about myself, but I'm not. I caught a really nasty virus and I'm only just now getting better.
I'm a huge Sailor Moon fan. It was the first anime I ever watched. I still remember being five years old and seeing the opening of the first season on TV. Thanks to that nostalgia and love, I decided to write my own Sailor Moon fanfiction. So when @ameliazane contacted me herself, offering to do a commission based on my fanfic, I was thrilled and accepted her terms.
I admit I made the mistake of not noticing that her blog was empty when we agreed to the commission. No fan art, no concept art, no sketches, and no other commissions. She wasn't even reblogging posts from other blogs. However, I did take the precaution of asking @ameliazane for some of her work to familiarize myself with her art style. Since I saw the images on my phone, not a computer, I didn't notice anything unusual and assumed she was imitating an anime style, which was essential for the commission I wanted.
Because it was my first commission, I didn't know much about the costs. So I trusted @ameliazane's word that 100 pounds was a great deal for a full-body drawing, plus an extra 20 pounds she asked for to draw a background.
At first, everything went well. @ameliazane asked me for a reference image and a description of the drawing I wanted, which I sent her. @ameliazane sent me sketches and made the modifications I requested.
One thing I have to be honest about is that I was often late with payments due to various physical and mental health issues, which strained her finances. Something I appreciated about @ameliazane at the time was how understanding she was regarding payment deadlines for the commission installments. She never got upset if I was late with a payment and extended the deadline for me.
Therefore, when she delivered the final piece, I didn't complain, even though I personally considered it a poor job, given the high cost. At that point, I had already approached Tumblr artists who do commissions themselves, like the talented @vanisagi27 and @lady-nyx-de-muertos (go check out their blogs!), and they charged much less for work that I consider a thousand times better and more accomplished. Damn, another talented artist, @wanderinginwonderagain, who doesn't yet take commissions but has uploaded several of her drawings, had done better Sailor Moon sketches than the work I had paid for.
It must have seemed suspicious to me that, given my delay in paying, @ameliazane repeatedly offered to do a second commission. At first, I refused for two reasons:
1) I had to pay the first commission.
2) I hadn't yet seen the final result of the first commission.
But @ameliazane offered me a deal: 150 pounds to draw a specific scene from my fanfic with two characters. I couldn't resist the temptation and accepted. I managed to pay an installment of 40 dollars.
It was with this second commission that my suspicions began that @ameliazane was using AI to produce her drawings. This time, despite her repeating the same request, I didn't send her a reference image, opting instead to send only the descriptions of what I wanted.
The result was a piece of work that bore little resemblance to what I had asked for. To begin with, she drew a character absent from the scene, Sailor Moon instead of Sailor V, one of the protagonists at that moment along with Tuxedo Mask, who didn't look as I had described in my instructions. I explained the mistake, and she promised to fix it.
But the next sketch not only failed to meet my instructions again, but it also looked somewhat different from the previous sketch. I didn't make a big deal of it and demanded that @ameliazane make the changes I had requested. I even sent her several images to serve as a guide and inspiration, so she would understand what I was asking for.
After almost a month, she sent me a third sketch, and when I saw it, all the alarm bells in my head went off. The sketch had so many changes that it no longer resembled the scene I'd asked her to depict in the commission. Sailor V and a long-haired man looked like they were posing for an Instagram photo instead of fighting. Tuxedo Mask was nowhere to be seen. I started analyzing the details of the drawing, and they seemed messy or drawn in a very strange way. Nothing resembled what I'd asked for. It unnervingly reminded me of something done with AI.
I didn't want to accuse @ameliazane right away, so I asked other Tumblr artists for help; I asked @vanisagi27, @wanderinginwonderagain, @lady-nyx-de-muertos and @d0vegum (Go check out their blogs, they're amazing!) for their honest opinion on whether all the drawings, including those from the first commission, seemed to be made with AI. They all told me they were 90% sure they were AI.
I immediately wrote to @ameliazane, demanding an explanation. She denied everything, but ironically, her justification—that she didn't use AI—read more like a confession, because she was incapable of creating a personalized drawing based on my instructions. And with each redesign, she drew something random.
When I demanded proof that she did the drawings herself, I asked her to send me sketches, concept art, or coloring processes. She only sent me a video of a drawing that wasn't any of the ones I had commissioned. It wasn't enough to convince me that she wasn't using AI; on the contrary, the absence of sketches or anything similar seemed very suspicious. Furthermore, the drawing in the video had a very different artistic style from the commissions I had entrusted to her.
I demanded to see his portfolio, and oh my god, what a horror! Everything looked like it was done with AI! None of the designs matched each other. Sure, it's possible for an artist to have more than one style, but no one other than Pablo Picasso could possibly be capable of so many different drawing styles. Most of the drawings looked like they came from a fraudulent animated commercial trying to sell a phone app.
Without further hesitation, I asked @ameliazane for a full refund of all the money I paid her for the first commission and what I had managed to pay her for the second. I didn't want to be funding AI; the evidence she gave me to convince me that she created her own work was insufficient, and ironically, it only convinced me more that @ameliazane was using AI.
Instead of accepting that I had exposed her and apologizing and returning my money, @ameliazane continued to insist that she didn't use AI and that I was being irrational and rude. She said she did everything for the love of art and that she wasn't interested in money. Which I found amusing, because the excuse she gave me for why the coloring on the first commission was so sloppy was that I hadn't paid her £800 for a good job. What an art lover!
Since our last conversation, she has refused to answer my messages and calls. This situation is causing me deep distress. I didn't spend a small amount of money, and her refusal to give me a fair refund after deceiving me has caused me profound emotional turmoil. My health has been very fragile lately, and I don't have the financial stability to lose my money on the artistic delusions of a scammer who uses AI.
@ameliazane I beg you to refund all my money! Please stop lying! I've already figured you out!
Otherwise, I will be forced to sue you for fraud, because that's what you did when you refused to admit you were using AI when I asked you, even before the commissions started.
If anyone knows a way to recover my money or demand an explanation from @ameliazane, please leave it in the comments.
