To Those Who Have Survived and Escaped. (Post April Fools Update.)

Congratulations on surviving Evillak and escaping from the formerly inescapable move!

If that didn't make any sense to you, then congratulations you successfully dodged two fake outs.

With that said, hope y'all had some fun on April Fool's Day pulling pranks on each other. I most certainly did! I haven't celebrated April Fool's Day properly in a long ass time so it was nice to partake in the festivities this time around, What I had done was replace several cards with a card that, upon opening, was just .jpg of a giant red spider from Conan: The Animated Adventures.  Initially, I thought I messed up and uploaded the actual cards on Pixiv as no one went "The fuck's an Evillak?" Then again, like, 90% of the comments are just emotes so who knows, maybe they were saying that and I just haven't cracked the code yet. 

Meanwhile on Discord, it was a smashing success. Quite a few people were asking "Hey what's up with this card?" so that went exactly as planned. Some folks asked me if I was gonna post the real cards after April 1st and I'm not going to. 

...

I'm serious. 

This isn't an out of season April Fool's joke. 

Why, you may ask? Well, ever hear  of the old proverb, "Mo' money, mo' problems"? Yeah. 

So like, I wasn't lying when I said those cards were hardly edited. Hence why I didn't want to upload them outside of a prank. Sure, I have uploaded cards in the past that weren't all that different from their original's. (Flannery comes to mind as the only things I did touch was the face n' body. Y'know, stuff that's pretty subjective to personal taste and easy to pull off.) But that was before ~~the troubles~~ Patreon It's all fun n' games until money gets involved, that's when the guns n' knives get whipped out.  

I know that I don't charge per card (Holy shit I would not get anything done I don't need that kind of pressure in my life man.) or hell even have tiers that are like "Hey if you pay X amount, you'll get X amount of cards!" But like I worry, maybe a little too much, over whether or not I'm fleecing/conning people. There's always that fear of becoming "that guy", that guy in this case being someone who charges people for cards that either an old ass grandma in Siberia could make in two minutes, or very little, if any at all, edits of cards that were publicly available. 

Like this one guy who ran around peddling a card that was just the default female body, except with a different wig. Dude was charging a buck for it and y'know maybe if he actually put some effort into it, you'd still look at it funny but hey at least they actually tried. All he did was just change the base hair without using any accessories at all.(So all it took to make the card was a 3-5 button clicks.) Then he took some card from the booru and started peddling as an edit, even though there hardly any changes to it. Somehow he managed to get 5 bucks off of it before calling it quits. Y'all deserve better than that c'mon, respect yourselves more. 

Then there was another guy who took a popular card, made some barebone edits to it, then charged 10 bucks a pop. Yeah you heard me, ten bucks for one card that was publicly available with very little changes made to it. They got that ten bucks btw. I think they've been getting better by making cards from scratch which is nice and I applaud that. Not that it excuses their earlier attempts but hey, at least they're trying. 

Point is, I've been self conscious of posting cards and now that there's money involved, it's gotten worse. Which on one hand, does mean y'all will be getting shit that's worth your time, but on the other hand it does mean cards that people would be totally okay with aren't posted. Not saying I don't appreciate the support which on a side note, it was a bit awkward on Pixiv seeing people saying "Ey nice job!" knowing that they had no idea what they were actually getting. I felt rather bad seeing that and I hope I could make it up to them in some fashion later down the road. 

But I digress, because I don't want to come off as a guy who just takes credit for other people's work without exerting any effort on my end, I'm not gonna be uploading those cards. Here's a breakdown as to why on a card by card basis and where you can get the originals:

Nero Claudius 

Okay so I was actually gonna upload this, but then Astartes posted their's ( https://www.patreon.com/AASTARTES  Can be found here!) and I was like "Well shit now it's gonna look like I just took their's and tried to pass it off as mine for a quick buck." I mean, it was rather shaky to begin with as 90% of the outfits weren't made by me and all I really did was adjust her face n' hair. Initially I was just gonna post it to Discord as a minor touch up, but then I was planning on adding some more stuff so that it could stand on it's own merits. Then I saw Astartes's post and down the drain my plans went. 

Considering that their's locked behind a paywall and it looks like it's worth the asking price, I rather not take the risk of looking like I'm eating someone else's lunch. 

Likelihood of Being Uploaded: Probably Not. 

Tharja and Celica

So this one's a twofer as both of the original cards were made by the same guy, Hyper. 

 https://kenzato.uk/booru/images/2018/11/18/FE_Celica_HD.png  
https://img.booru.org/illusioncards//images/40/74d289a720ae4153ac82bfed74bd7e9aab13815a.png 

(If these don't work, or if somehow they're both Evillak, I have no idea how to help you. You can look these up on their respective sites if for some reason these cards don't work.) 

So here's the thing: Tharja and Celica's outfits in the April Fools post were updated using Razor's cards. (4chan guy. Can be found here:  https://mega.nz/#F!ZjAzCYia!jDNNh1SJYqeVMqrkSeYTlQ!gmJ33QxD) Strike One.  Strike Two: Not sure if Hyper has uploaded them on Patreon, but he already has updated versions of those two cards. Y'know how much of a lazy fuck I am so I wouldn't even bother trying to make new outfits when I know there's better ones out there already. If he ever does upload them, then I'd take them and merge 'em with the ones I have. Meaning that the differences between the two are gonna be granular at best and that's Strike Three, we're outta here. 

That being said, I've seen cards that were just straight up ripped models from whatever they came from and while they looked amazing, there was just one little issue: They never came out.  As the saying goes, better one bird in hand than two in the bush which is what inspired me to make Lucina even though I think someone ripped her Smash model and managed to put into the Koikatu. Only months later did someone finally upload a model rip of Lucina so if Hyper never does end up posting those two cards, I might as well do it. Knowing my luck, he's gonna post 'em the second after I post mine but hey, at least it's there. 

 Likelihood of Being Uploaded: Maybe? No promises, but keep an eye out.

Sinon

 https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/80406057 

 https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/77529071 

Iunno, you tell me.  

Seriously, barring some MAJOR changes, I don't think I have much to offer that these cards already do. Like, the card I posted has a number of repeat costumes and the only unique one isn't even finished. That ALO outfit proved to be a lot trickier than I thought hence why it's rather undercooked. I don't care enough about SAO to really put forth the effort necessary to make it stand out. 

 Likelihood of Being Uploaded: Slim at Best. 

Kazami Mizuho

 https://kenzato.uk/booru/image/TpFvD  

The creator's Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ZMX9511 

So like, the card itself looks fine, but since all I did was tweak a few things here n' there, it has some quirks that I'm not familiar with. I mean it works, but iunno, I get this odd feeling that  I should really look under the hood. Other than that tho, I did not touch anything else so you can throw this at the "Trying to Make a Quick Buck" pile. I mean, the original creator thought it looked nice so y'know, maybe they'd be cool with it as is. Not that I have their express permission to post it in it's current state, but hey at least they like it? I suppose I could tweak it a bit more, make sure it's all nice n' dolled up, and then upload it. Who knows, maybe I will do that some time in the future, not the first time I made a character that I never actually seen in their original media. Not saying anything, but I would like to note that I was planning to release her alongside Eris and Liru, but then I got lazy and only  posted Eris. I mean a lot of the work is done already, so if  I ever find myself facing yet another delay, I could reach for this.

Likelihood of Being Uploaded:  Chances are Good, But Not Certain. 

Rise Kujikawa

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/78857356 

Honestly, I'd say this version stands well enough on it's own. Not sure what the hell I was thinking when I was editing it but somehow I managed to turn what you see here into this weird moe blob. I have no idea what reference I was using or what I was smoking that day that lead to that. Looking back at it, I seriously went in a circle with this card. No joke, I think I accidentally recreated this card while trying to fix my earlier mistake. So if you wanted Rise, here she is. 

Likelihood of Being Uploaded: Unnecessary, Original is Fine As Is.

(I'm still baffled over my original edit. It looked nothing like her at all.) 

In Conclusion... 

No more fake outs, what you see will be what you'll get. No bamboozle I swear. Seriously, if I upload cards to Patreon, you can trust that those will be legit. I wasn't lying when I said you'll get your money's worth and I ain't about to start to now. Actual cards will be coming soon, I can promise ye that much.*

*Unless a meteor strikes my house.