It honestly looks like they're tracing AI in the first one.. christ
Disclaimer: This post is not meant to harass or witch hunt the user in question. This is simply a warning to others to be wary and/or not to do business with said user in terms of art commissions. If you have had an encounter with this user please feel free to leave a comment sharing your experience or DM me if you wish to remain anonymous.
WHO: ceginus on TH
DeviantArt: Ceg1nus
Alt DeviantArt: welpschmerz
Discord: unknown
WHAT: selling traced imaged as commissions & adopts
To start off, i posted an ad in the Design marketplace looking to order a custom for myself. I got a comment (now deleted) from ceginus showing me their prices and examples./ (archived) (caution: NSFW examples as the bottom on the linked post) After taking a look, I noticed that one of their examples was a traced image from a popular 18+ artist.
(original image) (traced image)
(Overlay)
I originally didn't want to make this PSA public until i had more evidence as i feared this would be written off as a one time occurrence. However, due to some actions that i find to be suspicious, i've decided to take action now as to hopefully prevent others from being scammed in the future.
This suspicion came when i made a comment on The General PSA thread.
Being unable to find more then one example of tracing, i decided to ask for assistance in locating the original source of the art. (not naming Ceginus or publicly showing said art) What came as a surprise to me was that a few hours after posting in the thread, Ceginus’s comment from my marketplace ad had suddenly disappeared. Thankfully, i screenshotted the comment the day before (Link). And then Ceginus @’s me in the PSA thread inquiring about who it is im talking about (Link). This further cements in my mind that they know that im talking about them, and that i know they’re tracing and scamming people.
What caught my eye when looking for proof is the fact that their art drastically changed in style and skill over a short amount of time.
(date posted: May/9/18)
(LINK)(reuploaded to TH)
(date posted: April/19/20)
(LINK)
(date posted: April/20/20)
(LINK)
(date posted: May/23/20)
(LINK)
(date posted: July/14/20)
(LINK)
(date posted: July/17/20)
(LINK)
(date posted: July/28/20)
(LINK)
(date posted: November/28/20)
(LINK)
I’ve been looking for the source of the other art with the assistance of some friends but have had no luck. The images looked familiar to us but we could not pin point the exact source just yet. We believe the images are either from doujins or manga as it’s hard to locate a single image to analyze. Even with the assistance, this task was much more difficult then i expected.
If anyone recognizes the source of the traced works please let me know. We’re still actively looking for more proof but hopefully this will be enough to convince those of you who are reading that this is without a shadow of a doubt a flat out scam.
I wish no ill will towards Ceginus as i’m mostly making this PSA to protect others from being scammed. They’re still young but are still an adult who should know better then to sell traced works as commissions.