I've been involved in the 3d porn world since 2005 as an early adopter (anyone else remember Mistworld by Svarog? or Stimuli?) and since 2014 as both an artist and a paid employee of a 3dx company. DL is another example of an artist silo'ing themselves, disappearing into whatever they want to make and finding a paying audience rather than the general audience. Seriously, who was a fan of Darklust because of bottr and thought "yeah I'd love to see some star wars shit with tentacles, that's the follow-up to bottr I want to see!"? I get that it's great for the artist making whatever they want and having people willing to pay but for fans of the medium (or just the artists original output) it's time to move on as it's clear the artist has disappeared down their discord rabbit hole. I really just check this thread to see if we're ever gonna return to the island, I don't hold out much hope for that though.
Very good point! I’ve been a fan of DL’s work since his old Patreon and really loved the original
BOTTR. I still liked the new version, but some things were lost in the update—minor things, but ones that made it special to me. The
Star Wars stuff was a huge drop from the great success of
BOTTR and
BBB. The things he’s been releasing recently are more promising, but I wasn’t a fan of the strange tentacle stuff compared to the
Lara Croft story.
I think an even bigger issue is why he didn’t at least try a different software. I can understand not wanting to learn something new, but he’s been doing this for a long, long time. I wouldn’t put it past him to be able to pick up a new program like Blender—or something of that quality—fairly quickly. Maybe it could even spark new ideas. But I guess, like you said,
"it’s clear the artist has disappeared down their Discord rabbit hole." It seems like they’re just trotting along while the money keeps rolling in.
Either way, I still like his art. But he also had a kid and was focused on that, which understandably slowed down the process considerably. That was a while ago, though, so there really isn’t much of an excuse now. I just hope he finds that spark again and creates something new—dare I say, even better than
BOTTR and
BBB. If not him, then maybe someone else will. Until then, I’ll wait patiently.
