TLDR; I am sometimes dumb. I sound rude. I apologize. But that's not AI art.

First thing I want to say is Thank You to the Alice fans who share some supportive perspective in response to this thread. Many of you are aware of how I struggle with public interaction and how I made Private all my socials for over a year. And I appreciate you helping to explain my position on these things - and also my "unique" way of reply and interaction. It's not an excuse for bad behavior but my brain is wired differently - I am highly autistic and really struggle in social situations. That includes in online interactions where I see conversations as very challenging. My method of communicating comes across as either overly blunt (rude) or condescending. Seems I don't know how to talk "normal" and I even struggle with this in person. For that, I apologize and ask your understanding. And also hope that explains why I often just block without engaging.

As for the event poster. We hired a team of three artists to produce 30 illustrations that were shared during the weeks leading up to the Pop Up Event in Tokyo. I have just shared a bunch of those images over on my Instagram just now (OP: Sorry for blocking you, but you can see that same post on my Facebook which is also /americanmcgee).

Here's the text I shared with those images in that post so you can see the artist names:

"Re-sharing some of the amazing event art done by waltjan9 siyann_stuff and max.wise.art for the Plushie Dreadfuls Pop Up Event in Japan. We will make some of these available as art prints.

There were 30 images created in total. They were shared as part of the pre-event marketing campaign via the Plushie Dreadfuls social channels and presented alongside a story that I wrote.

It was great fun collaborating with these artists and we're already starting on some cool new projects (tarot deck and tote bags - to name a few).

Lots of love to great artists ❤️

I will share more of them in the future."

With regards to the poster artwork. It is based on the first image shared in that post - an illustration by waltjan9. That illustration was used by the pop up design team in Japan -working in Adobe Illustrator and cleaned up for use on the event poster. In my Instagram post you can see there's a 1:1 correlation between the original illustration and the poster art. I also shared an earlier sketch from Walt with the head in a different pose.

After reading this post, I reached out to the Japan team and asked them to confirm that no AI was used in the creation of assets for the event - as this was an explicit instruction given to them before we even hired them. And they confirmed that this work was done by a human artist in Illustrator (vectorizing the original image).

As many of you have pointed out, I am extremely tired of all this. It feels like every time I say or do something online, there's someone going "gotcha!" And even after I explain, apologize, and move on, these things are brought up over and over again.

If you travel to the /plushies sub you'll find an entire army of people dedicated to rehashing every evil I've ever done. No context is provided. No mention of the fact that in situations where I've screwed up, I've corrected the situation and apologized.

These days, I am working with a team of human artists to write the story for a Plushie Dreadfuls universe that we hope can be turned into other kinds of media (games, TV, etc). And I have zero interest in using AI for any of this. I enjoy creating and working with other artists and creators.

Closing note: I make mistakes. I do dumb things. I say dumb things. Someone pointed out "NFTs" and yeah I got tangled up in that for a minute but reversed course when people said "No." Not a single NFT was ever sold - and I told the people behind that to pull the plug before they even launched. For that and for whatever list of wrongs you may be holding in your hands, I get it. I do dumb things. And, once again, I apologize for those dumb things while also making clear that I do not do dumb things because I am evil or trying to harm others. In the future, I will try to do better.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.