Name: Piqu
Hence the name, Neko-Piqu. Neko is her, my character, and Piqu is me, the “ghost in the shell”.
Character: Nekomimi
Her main colors: Hot Pink & Mint Green
Character design, art work, emotes, avatar pictures, background, banners, panels: Koherinn
Rigger: To be announced – my character is their first work. I will announce the rigger and their contact soon.
Timeline
Her design process started in May, 2022.
I received her character sheet at the end of July. But I kept asking for more things for her so I delayed the final release quite a bit with my extra requests.
Her cut-out PSD file arrived in April, 2023.
The “debut” was December 8, 2023. We could say, this is her birthday.
Before this date, her debut, I used a list of pay-to-use Live2D models I found and purchased from all over the internet.
How it all started…
I saw VTubers streaming on various platforms before and this made me want to become a VTuber. I always liked talking with people, I wanted to do streaming, but I was never comfortable live-streaming myself for hours and hours. Mostly for privacy reasons.
Rough patch – The character sheet and the tale of Fiverr
There were quite a few bumps in the road. Not with the “original artist” who done my model in the end thankfully, but first I wanted to get her design done through Fiverr. Not because I didn’t like other artists, it’s what I found first.
So I checked out all the available artists on the website and I found a few that would seemed OK. The designs looked okay, and I thought they would be able to create a sheet based on my description.
Well, not quite. Turns out, the majority of Fiverr “artists” are just simple scammers. I am sorry to use this harsh word but it is the reality. If you check them out, you can see they post a few great works – these are the ones you see when you check them out. And if you check out their other works – which is their actual work – it just looks horrible.
Of course you might say “but you have Support on Fiverr, they can’t scam you” – that’s what I thought too. But it’s the opposite. Fiverr support enabled this behavior.
Once I received the sheet from the “artist”, I almost burst out laughing because it looked so bad. Like a child drew it. So I contacted support that I want my money back because the “art” obviously does not look anything like the ones posted by the artist.
And they just said “art style can change”. So here is my first tip! Don’t use Fiverr. Unless you find an artist who is present on other sites too, such as Pixiv, Skeb, VGen and so on – and they just happen to have a Fiverr. Then it’s fine to pay them via Fiverr. But don’t trust the rest. Make sure you will get what you see. Then double make sure. And make sure again.
Fiverr won’t help you.
They forced me to finish my order, to rate the “artist” 5* and submit a great review. Only so I could get back a portion of my money. I was blackmailed with my money basically. Great site.
This does not apply only to VTuber models or sheets. It’s the same with emotes and everything. So be extra careful.
Finding a rigger is just as hard
Where do I even start. At the beginning I thought I will simply find a rigger from a website, send my character sheet and PSD file, pay the price and receive my usable model.
Rookie mistake. It’s much harder than that.
Plan – A – Fiverr – again, I know – most riggers are scammers on this website. Just check out their “work”. It’s usually a reposted GIF or video from some actual artist and then they post a few GIFs which looks like someone did a 1-minute “rig”.
Plan B – Big-name artists: So I thought, I will just go and pay some company or known artist so I can’t get possibly scammed. It’s true, you can’t get scammed, because you won’t even get into a queue.
I am happy for their success but this is the definition of “suffering from success”. Their queue is very long. And the price list is never ending. Everything is extra and the terms are draconian.
You want your model? Good, 5,000$. Oh, she should also smile? +500$. Want her to move her tail? Another 1,000$. Extra clothes? Movement? 1,000$ each.
After you kind of add up your model it will come out around 10,000$ if not more. But this is not all. They often post a very restrictive License. What do I mean by that?
- You can’t use the model commercially for example. Of course they say “oh don’t worry about that.” Except you should worry; because this means even Twitch streaming is NOT in your terms of use as it is a commercial use of the model.
- You can only use the model to do this or that. Again, each term is different.
- You will not receive the CMO3 file, which means you will never able to change anything on your model. You can’t fix anything on the model, you can’t add parts, remove things, it’s done. You can only get changes done by submitting a new work order – if the rigger is still around and they have space in their queue – and that’s it.
I don’t want to paint them in a bad light. I am just telling you to actually take the time and read the terms, the website, the order, everything. It’s not a small amount of money.
Plan C – Time to find a smaller, independent rigger…
So after not getting into a queue for months I went to look for a “smaller rigger”. Again, I was checking out websites, other streamers, everything.
And I found one! It looked too good to be true. Affordable prices? Check. Good rig? Check. And they have open queue? OH. MY. GOD.
I ended up almost sending the money but before I could finalize the order I had some doubts. And I researched more about this rigger and turns out, they just casually disappear for months. Not only that, I found customers who ordered and had buggy models. They received the file, the rig looked good on the video of the rigger, but when they wanted to use it, it was broken. And the rigger never replied.
So that was another huge crisis averted. I guess “too good to be true” is.. true.
Please don’t take this personally. This story actually happened multiple times with me, with multiple riggers.
Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?
I cannot give you a good place to look for a rigger unfortunately. I found mine by chance and I got lucky. But as you can see my journey was not easy.
Just be careful in general
With all that said, I had bad experiences on other sites as well, such as Pixiv. So it’s not just Fiverr. This does not mean you will have a bad experience. I received great art from Etsy for example. It simply means that scammers are everywhere.
Be careful and be financially responsible.
- Try to pay via PayPal. NEVER send money as “family & friends” because you won’t have any help if you do that.
Why? Because if you send money as goods, you get Buyer Protection. - When you pay (via PayPal and others), your personal information will be sent out. So they can “dox” you. So if a dispute happens because the art is not what you asked for, or they just disappear, they can always threaten to expose your personal details to the internet.
This is of course not legal. But not every country has similar laws as your country. You can’t just take a person to US Court from the other side of the world basically.
For this, I have no good tip for you, dear reader. This is a risk you have to accept. You can ask friends, maybe family to pay for you, but then you need their account in case of a dispute and things. So don’t just use a random person or you will end up with more trouble. - DON’T send money via SEPA, via bank transfer, etc. You can’t file a chargeback to get your money back after months passed – and your bank does not care if the art looks like a dog painted it.
Tip: If you didn’t know, you can actually get your money back if you pay with a credit card. It’s called a chargeback. So if you get scammed through an online store or something, call your bank and they can give your money back. But this will not work in the case of art, rigging and whatnot because months can pass. - Get a contract. Get it signed, sign it. If you can’t come up with one, ask ChatGPT, Bing. They will make you one.
- Get an invoice. This is kind of sketchy because a lot of people will give invoices, even though they would not be able to. Like as a normal person you can’t just create an invoice – you need to be a legal entity so to speak. So invoice itself does not mean much in my book, but it’s still a good “proof” of what you paid for.
If you can’t afford to lose your money, don’t risk it. Just receiving an art or a sheet or your rigged model will not earn you any money; you are already down thousands of dollars at this point. If you can’t part with this money easily, don’t do it.
You can stream with free models like the ones you can find in the Steam Workshop for VTube Studio. You can buy cheap or even expensive pay-to-use models like I did. My most advanced “pay-to-use” model came with emotes and even an animated background.
What did I learn from all this?
You never know if you will get scammed or not. 😸
In the end I still consider myself lucky because I did manage to find an artist and a rigger who actually got the work done.
Thank you.
– NekoPiqu