i know folks are often looking for sites to post art to - this one’s got veeeeery strict content rules and is maybe geared towards kids/teens (i haven’t seen a site with an info section For Parents in a while!) but i figured it was worth passing along anyway!
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This looks really cool! It seems like it’s a platform specifically for original characters, not necessarily all art, but I know most artists do have a few OCs. (All my OCs are from my writing rather than my art, because drawing people is hard, otherwise I’d probably use this site relentlessly.)
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Okay so this is a character repository, not an art gallery.
That being said, Yeah uh. Don’t use Unvale.
The person that bank-rolled Unvale is completely unlisted and unmentioned. And their goal, (the person that funded it) was to try to fleece the furry community for money. The site went through a lot of iterations, the character repository is an afterthought to try to get people interested in the platform. I’m sure the rest of the people on staff are fine, but knowing what I know behind the scenes, I don’t trust it to be good to the users or to stay afloat for long. Unfortunately I don’t have any proof to link, this is what I’ve heard from those that have worked on it. So, take from that what you will.
If you want a place to store characters, here are some alternatives:
https://toyhou.se/ (I have like 70 unused codes)
https://refsheet.net/
https://characterhub.com/ (best for a younger audience)
https://www.rprepository.com/
https://www.ocbin.com/ (also requires an invitation code, you have to join the discord to get one)
If people want to know the art galleries that are out there, I can do a giant writeup on that…
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could you elaborate on that? it’s free to make an account, so i’m not sure in what way you mean they fleece money from people. something to do with the “market” functionality?
i’m also not finding any information online that indicates it was bankrolled by a specific person, just that they’ve gotten venture capital funding from a handful of different investment companies. (which they depend on, since they don’t have any actual income stream yet as far as i can tell)
i can’t even find any gossip on reddit about it? unless i’m using the wrong search terms or something’
edit: based on this sec filing, the main initial funder is just casey lawlor, who is definitely mentioned on the site since he’s still in charge.
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The initial bank roller knew that Furries had money and wanted to make an art market to get a cut of the furry money pie. And their not being honest about the origins of the service and their funding is enough to make me not trust it.
Like I said, this is all information I was told by people personally that I am trying to retain their privacy. (that’s why you won’t find anything public) And I’m telling you, Casey is not the one with the money. Like I said, I don’t have proof beyond that, if you don’t believe me I don’t blame, you.
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On the other hand, here, have these articles that IMO do not make the site look nearly as ‘creator focused’ as they try to make themselves to be. The way they’re trying to pump themselves up to Venture Capital is not a look I find encouraging, for creators and especially not for children.
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WOOF. I’d seen Unvale sponsor a few art YouTubers I like, and, while I was interested in the concept (I’m already a toyhou.se user, but I’m also just generally interested in character storage and display websites), I have held an intense inherent distrust for YouTube sponsorships ever since the Honey scandal broke. Disappointed but not surprised to see my distrust proven founded.
Thank you for the list of alternative sites! I’ve been meaning to check out Character Hub myself.
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can you spare a toyhouse code for me?
I honestly wouldn’t mind reading through a writeup on that, for sure! I have been on and off Unvale due to either site culture or just not interested in the site overall, but if that’s the case then I do feel some form of relief for the feelings I do have for the site in general. I use TH a bit myself and for the most part, it’s quiet but good nonetheless. Never really done much on the forums despite recent years of the interest in such going up. Maybe I’m still soured by my own silliness involving the Neopets’ forums years prior.
RefSheet isn’t too glaring, but I had heard the person behind is trying to revive the site on a different server from what I read last time. Makes sense considering my account is still stuck in unverified limbo. Emails go through but the link I get goes to a dead end… CH didn’t work well for me because lack of activity and I felt like there’s a lot of push to get the microtransactions - A LOT. Left on that merit with much disappointment.
Never heard of the last two, but considering I don’t know anyone that uses OC Bin much - I can see about the RP Repository. Only RP interests stems from the persona/fursona characters.
Personally, I think it would be better to showcase your characters on your own site rather than on a service like Unvale. Unvale has incredibly strict guidelines, which limits its usefulness as a platform for any sort of creative endeavor (even if it is done with the intent to appeal to younger demographics). Plus, some rules just feel as if they could cause issues for more nuanced situations.
More concerningly for me, it has a Class Action Waiver Section in its TOS. I understand this is very common for most companies to do these days, but I can’t say I’m keen on joining a site that, should it genuinely violate the rights of its users, has things set up to make it harder for those users to fight against them.
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I honestly had considered that myself even as I’m in the process of nuking the entire account on Unvale clean out… No way to delete the account is another reason to think twice about joining, imo.
I do use Toyhouse but sometimes I use the library internet and doesn’t play kindly with it because of the weird domain it uses and maybe that’s why? My biggest concern lately is always AI scrapers. I had already had a run-in with one snooty child that done it via the scrapings of Artfol/PaperDemon ARPG. I already have a vendetta against those supporters at the moment…
Need to reiterate to read their ToSes before registering for a site, coming from one that is bad about not doing so and/or speed read through it.