KoudoawaiaVortex

So last year when I found out that DA was where most images were being stolen from for NFTS, I put my gallery in storage. A few weeks ago, DA rolled out their AI image generator. It's good that they corrected their initial error and made opt out automatic instead of opt in and I'm glad that the form I submitted to opt out my username from image generators was accepted but both that and opt out is basically a 'Hey now don't do that' and trusting that people will just respect that and not use opted out images for AI images anyway. To be honest, unfortunately I can't trust people to respect that and not do it just because some text says not to. That said, I spent two weeks deliberating on whether I should keep my art in storage or delete my entire gallery. Moments ago I finished doing just that. That was 20 years worth of images and over 2500 images. I just really don't feel like my art is safe here anymore and it makes me feel sad.

I joined DA September 15, 2002 and so there was a whole lot of history with my gallery. I've made friendships here. Other friendships carried over from other sites like TLKFAA. I completely appreciate every single one of you that has followed me, commented on and/or faved my art or interacted with me in any way here. A lot of art I've posted has been related to emotions or life events over the years so you've seen me through relationships, my marriage to my wonderful husband Maelstrom, the joyous occasion of acquiring pets like AF , Vixen and Nightfury and the sad occasions of when they left for the Rainbow Bridge and loss of friends and family members over the years as well as other life events. So that's a lot of history I had to delete though I still have the images saved of course. That's another thing that makes the idea of some generator callously scraping a nd mashing together our art insulting. The fact that so many artists do incorporate their emotions and things they've experienced in their art. Our art is not just something to callously gank for things like this especially without consent the way it is now. Even over a year later after I put my gallery in storage, I still have 550 watchers and I am so grateful for all of you. Means a lot you're still sticking around even though I no longer have anything to look at here but journal entries. I'm not leaving completely. I still want to keep up with the art of those I'm watching and I will still be running TheLionKingFanArtArchive DA Club. I definitely still care a lot about you. However, I will no longer be posting here. If DA ever makes the right decision to remove their AI image generator, then I might post here again but until then I'm just here as an observer.

Many years ago I held an icon contest which MutantPiratePrincess won and I've been happily using that icon for this club ever since. She has just made us a new one since as she pointed out the new icon dimensions did stretch it out a bit. So let's give her a big hand and a thank you for contributing to our community this way^^ For some reason I can't seem to be able to link to her the way I can in the credit I gave her at the bottom of the rules section but at least I was able to do it there.

Hi all so an amazing feature of Eclipse is that I have to go into the Admin area to see if anything has been submitted instead of it showing up in my regular notifications of things like in the old layout. That depends on me remembering to check now and then so please bear with me and I am really sorry if I don't get to your submission before your submission request desires. If it does, I'll just ask you to resubmit it.^^ Hope everyone is staying safe and well during the ongoing pandemic.