Response to the drawing tracing discussion, don't be afraid to tell me your thoughts if you think differently! I'm always open to discussing and I won't be mad at arguments!
1. My schedule is shitty, to say the least.
Every day, I spend something close to 6 hours at college and the rest of the time studying for college exams and working on the game. My college is the second-hardest in my country, and I have to prioritize it to some degree. Before the game made enough Money for me to quit my previous part-time job, I was working and studying for 12 hours every day, all while working on the game at the same time. Best way to describe my current situation is that I have very little time to have fun and talk to friends, and I work/study for about 14 hours non-stop. Lack of time was the first reason.
2. Femboy Survival is not a product.
I love games, I've played ero games for a while now, and I've Always wanted to make my own. Femboy Survival is my first try at something I had in mind for the future, not something I thought would be liked by so many people, so I thought I was doing something for myself and maybe a small handful of people who liked Femboys as well. If you're a supporter on Patreon, that means you support the work that I put on the internet for free, I'm not selling you anything other people created. When you play parody games that use characters from manga/anime, the creator is also using other people's creative work to do something of their own, I don't think that is wrong as well because it doesn't take something away from the creator himself.
I'll say it again, to make it clear. You're NOT purchasing Femboy Suvival, it's free software available to everyone and was started as a fun side project for me. If you think what I'm doing harms other people in any way, you don't need to pay me any money in order to play what I build.
The second reason is that I don't charge for other people's artwork.
3. I am still learning.
I could never do some of the things I wanted to in reasonable time if I hadn't used references to nail anatomy at first, I've started learning to draw at the beginning of the year. Having that in mind, I tried picking references from (mostly AI) packs in sites like Luscious.com, to nail the shapes and the positioning of the characters, but you can see I did less and less of that as time went on. Sometimes I go back to it when I'm on a very tight schedule and I can't spare time to sketch before I need to publish something. After more and more people started to support me, I could spare some Money and time to buy and take online courses to learn anatomy and animation. Once I move on to a proper commercial project, I won't do what I did her. Meaning I had to choose between building a noncommercial project I wanted to build or giving up for a year or so before I could learn the basics, I chose the former because of the reason I'll write below, but the third reason is that I wanted to learn anatomy WHILE building my first project, instead of doing both things separately.
Given the situation, I've decided to start the project like that, mostly to practice and gain experience, and I understand if you think there's something wrong with it. Here's what I think in ethical terms:
What I do is like writing fan fiction, using established characters as a basis. Imagine every parody game/series/story uses character design, writing, reputation/fame and other things from franchises with a large degree of success. If I posted my drawings online, they wouldn't amount to anything by themselves. What gives Femboy Survival it's 'kick' is that the artwork mixes with the context, gameplay and the fetish themes, besides it being about 1/4 of my workload on average. Finally, the drawings sometimes follow the shape of other drawings, but that's it, the majority of the time is spent painting and adding detail, all of which I use no references for. Absolutely everything in Femboy Survival comes exclusively from my head, except the shapes/anatomy used in some of the sex scenes. But the main thing is that nobody is paying for it, that's basically it.
Also, if I traced something from any of you and you want it taken down, I don't mind! As I said, it's a side project while I'm finishing college and I don't want to sell it at any point. I don't think what I do is wrong but I'd remove the pictures to make sure I don't get in fights with artists that I admire and have always enjoyed!
