My dear DA friends,

I have been away for a long time. I still have two months left to finish my master’s degree and free time is something I no longer posses, but I make a little break on this sleepless night to share a very crappy experience I had with this guy David Ravenscroft, who scammed me and many other TF artist here on DA.

My situation is quite similar to, sadly, many other artists, even here on DA, like the great who posted is experience on this thread [link] found about this guy months ago and encouraged us to expose what’s been going on.
So I share my experience for two reasons, one for warning my dear fellow artists of scammers like him, hoping you don’t go through the same humiliating circumstances I have and, second, because I’m done with keeping this situation confidential. (Which is no longer such, just take a look at [link] for a delicious review of his story of cheating and stealing other artists and transfans from TFAuctions starting since 2006!!!!!)

David Ravenscroft contacted me last December saying that he was from a "studio" [link] and requested me to do 2 full color pinups of the good and bad guys of the cougar story, stating that payment would be due to January 28, so I trusted the guy and I did two full color pinups, (I had free time then and kind of needed some money) Before I knew it, it was January 29 and nothing happened. Days later, after I insisted in contacting him he told me the sad story of him moving from his old house and having a baby. In that very moment I knew exactly the kind of fraudster I was dealing with, because even though I hadn’t worked for a studio before, I just knew that that could not be a serious response.
I contacted him several times, but every time he answered with a “next week I'll write you an email with a 100% sure date for your payment". or: "payment his now being processed and will be in your paypal account by Monday no later!, Thanks for your Patience with regards to the payment it has taken us longer than expected due to paypal verification issues."
that was in MAY. And the months went by.

I told my fellow artist I work with here what had happened and they encouraged me to insist on pushing the guy even more, just to see how far the bullshit would go ( At that point I knew I'd never get paid for the pinups I did). He told me that my paypal account wasn’t working, which wasn’t so because I get payments on a regular basis, but I said "yeah maybe", he kept giving me more future dates for payment......but still requesting me not to show the art I had done "for free" to anybody. Anyway, it wasn’t until I wrote him telling him that enough is enough and that, since he never paid me and it seemed he'd never do it, to forget about the whole thing, and I felt free to show my art to anyone I want and that had included it in my portfolio. The guy freaked out about this and wrote me an email immediately (august 4th) saying he was sorry and that if they didn't pay by September 5 th I would have “the company’s blessing” to do whatever I want with my illustrations and show them and all. But then he wrote me another email saying that "after showing my last email to his workmates at studio cougar- wonder if those guys get paid, if they are not imaginary friends- they would pay the money he owed me -for a job I had already done in the most professional way MONTHS ago- only after I provide them the names and websites of every publisher I had sent their precious material to.....well, well, well...........that was it. Pathetic, I know.

I had told him not to contact me anymore but the dude was worried, and he still is. Then he threw a couple of pitiful emails reminding me that I had to send him the info he had requested...or..if..no money...for me.........Then I knew the poor boy has really serious ego-related issues and that he indeed was thinking he had some kind of power or serious influence. Some weeks ago he sent me an "ultimatum" email saying that I had to stop posting damaging comments on his DA page [link] (which has almost every comment hidden and pictures taken down, as well as his website [link] …wonder why?...) unless "your going to tell everyone what you have brought upon yourself." he can't be serious.

Well, now I’m telling everyone what I brought upon myself by trusting a guy who seemed to be a serious TF fan and publisher (even said he was working with the master Simon Furman! And it seemed to be legit when I searched about that in Google) and turned out to be nothing but a scumbag who made me waste my time, lose faith in the industry and, thank god, not that much money as other fellow artists (may be you reading this….

Well, my friends, I have been as patient as I could about this stuff, but tonight I could not help but sharing my experience with you guys, I really hope it can be useful to someone, artist or TF fan. I still love art and I have kept doing it whenever I have the time and, most probably, will take it to a whole new level next 2010. I'm really glad I found real artists and serious studios after my "cougar" incident, but I had no experience whatsoever at that time and the whole thing was, at least for a while, a very discouraging time regarding the industry and the kind of specimens you might find in it.

Quoting The Boo , an awesome artist who, as I said before, also got diddled by this dude “We are all far too polite in the industry to talk about scammers.... which leaves us open to crap like this.” [link]
Well, I’m not in the industry and I definitely cannot be polite anymore.

Anyway, considering that I have the “company’s blessing” to show my unpaid art since September 6 th I finally post the two full color group pinups I did almost a year ago here [link] and here [link] . Besides the crappy feeling I had I’m quite proud of the turn out because I really worked fast and was able to finish them in almost 8 hours each, tried new techniques and, most of all, did everything digital from scratch to final render.

A big hug to all my good fellow artists out there and be careful!

Rafa