Coming clean and saying goodbye.

[chrisco97]

 

Hello, everyone. It's been a while! I hope you are all doing well.

 

I do not know how many of you remember me, but I used to be incredibly active on these forums from 2010-2012. I even won the forum troll award one year because of how frequently I posted.

 

The primary reason I am posting today is that I want to make amends for some unacknowledged wrongs in my past. I am not seeking forgiveness, but rather the opportunity to apologize to everyone who was on the receiving end of these wrongs. I have carried the guilt for years, and I finally want to acknowledge it and stop pretending it is something that should be left alone. I also want this post to be viewable to anyone who may visit my profile in the future.

 

I began designing when I was very young. I do not remember my exact age, but I would guess I was between nine and ten years old. For many years (specifically during my days here on the Paint.NET forums) I was dishonest in many ways. I voted for myself in competitions using alternate accounts. I said I had done things I had not. I said I created work in Paint.NET that was actually created in Photoshop. Most egregiously, I used resources I did not create without attribution, assuming all of the credit for the creation of the works that utilized them. There were times I was almost found out, and I did whatever I could to cover up my tracks. One such instance I remember was the time I took a stock image of crumpled paper off of Google Images and used it in a wallpaper and later in a signature and claimed to have achieved the effect myself using nothing but Paint.NET. When someone asked for a tutorial, I claimed to have forgotten the process. I eventually found a tutorial on the Paint.NET forums that had gone almost entirely unnoticed, added an additional step and screenshots, and went on to merely credit the original author for "helping" me complete the tutorial. I portrayed myself as the brains behind the process.

 

Another such example was the "Dry Bones" avatar I used across multiple sites for years. The background of that avatar was from a sig someone else had created (I do not remember who exactly). I cut out a section of it, and though I do not remember what changes I made to it (if any), I passed off the entire work, including the background, as something I had created entirely by myself.

 

One last example I will give was the SparrowScope logo (which was created for a browser I made using Visual Basic), which used a silhouette of a sparrow I found on Google Images. I did not draw the sparrow myself as I either implied or directly stated (I do not remember which it was).

 

There are countless other examples, but I do not know if I could ever recall them all. It would not surprise me if every type of art I produced during those days was affected in some way, whether it was logos, signatures, wallpapers, or some other form of art. I never made money from any of this art, and as far as I am able to tell, none of it is still online (except maybe through the Wayback Machine). Many of the websites I was active on no longer exist and these images are so old I do not believe the Paint.NET forums host them any longer (I have not been able to find any of them in any case). I have long since removed them from my DeviantArt galleries. I am not sure I even have them saved offline anywhere for my own reference.
 

I stopped this behavior soon after I became inactive on the Paint.NET forums; perhaps before. This appears to have been back in 2012, when I would have been around fourteen years old. This was a year that gave me and my family so much change that we are still, more than ten years later, reeling from some of it. Somewhere in the midst of all that chaos I became convicted that this behavior was wrong and should be stopped immediately. I decided that I would only create art that I could stand behind with integrity and that if I ever used resources I did not create, I would properly credit the original authors for them when the time came. I no longer had the desire to pass others' art off as my own in any way. In fact, I believe the reason I deactivated my original chrisco97 DeviantArt account and created the newer ChriscoDesigns one in its stead was part of this attempt to start fresh. Some time later, in 2016, I went further and announced that I had removed everything from my DeviantArt gallery that used resources without permission, even if I had properly given credit to the original authors.
 

Again, I am sorry to anyone whose art I passed off as my own during those years. I am intent on never doing so again in the future. I would love to undo it all or pretend that it was all a product of that youthful desire to fit in and feel important, but the simple truth is I knew what I was doing and that it was wrong; I just didn't care at that time in my life. There were things I could not accomplish on my own, and it seemed easier to take this shortcut than actually learn how to do it myself. I so sincerely wish I could change this part of my past. I wish I could remember the names of the people whose art I used like this so I could apologize to them directly, but I don't. Please know, if you are one of those people, this apology is addressed to you.

 

I am also sorry to those who liked, shared, and commented on these pieces. You trusted my descriptions of the process involved in creating these works, and I am sorry I misled you.

 

For all of the above, and for all of the rest, I am sorry.

 

I do not intend to publish any other work under chrisco97/Chrisco Designs/Chrisco. My plan is to slowly begin closing all of the accounts using these names. I am not sure to what capacity--if any capacity at all--I will pursue design in the future. All I know is that, if I do, it will likely be under my real name.

 

I want to thank you all for the years of friendship and for investing in me. I have learned so much from all of you. And, though there is some work I am no longer proud of, there is a lot that I did not utilize uncredited resources for and completed with help and input from some of you that I am still proud of. For that, too, I thank you.

 

Having said all of that, this is goodbye. Thank you all, so much, for everything. I intend for this to be my last post, but if anything I have shared here isn't clear enough, please ask questions if you have them. I desire to be as transparent as possible about this.

 

Chrisco

Edited May 23 by chrisco97

[mapperx]

To err is human to forgive divine. (A. Pope)

 

[lynxster4]

@chrisco97 I don't know you...I didn't join until 2015. But that took great courage to post the above.

 

I agree with @mapperx.  But most importantly, forgive yourself and move on.  🤗

[BlastOfBN]

As I wasn’t on the forums during your time period, I wasn’t there to see any of your wrong-doings.

 

Either way, I forgive you, because at least you came up clean rather than coming up with insincere excuses to justify them.

 

Telling the truth about your mistakes is better and more forgivable than masking them to avoid the consequences.

[Pixey]

Hi @chrisco97 I remember you and I was probably signed on as @nanettealsop at the time and I've done a few of your great tutorials along the way  

 

I'm worried about you, as you seem very upset at the moment.  Please don't let this subject get to you, but I admire you for your honesty and I think you are so brave to be able to talk about this.  Let it go and don't say Goodbye -  OK?  And we'd love to have you back on here to join in with us again.  Do think about it 🎨 and take good care of yourself 🥰

[Ego Eram Reputo]

I'd like to add my support to the sentiments voiced above. It is a very courageous post, and I like where its coming from.

 

You're obviously a different person to who you were then. I hope your restart goes well 👍

 

8 hours ago, Pixey said:

And we'd love to have you back on here to join in with us again.  Do think about it 🎨 and take good care of yourself 🥰

 

Amen.

[barbieq25]

Echoing the sentiments above @chrisco97. I have been MIA for a while now due to work and other commitments. Don't be too hard on yourself.