Not so long ago I heard about Kukuruy´s ad troubles with Project wonderful and Paypal (SJW´s stripped him of his ad revenue). And that made me quite upset I have to say, and since I just happen to be a fan of Kukuruyo ´s art (NSFW!). I decided to do an interview with Kukuruy. So we talked about everything from his lewd art, #GamerGate to the SJW madness of today.
Robin TGG
You know. It’s something of a tradition for us to ask everyone who we interview for a formal introduction of themselves. So would you be so kind to tell our readers about who you are and what you’re all about?
Kukuruyo
I’m a Spanish artist who self identifies as the Spanish inquisition. I’m essentially a freelancer who does hentai, web comics about monster girls, and mocks social justice warriors with my works, like my Gamergate life web comic.
Robin TGG
On the 5th of May, you tweeted out the following message:
“SJWs succeeded in striping me of ad. Not only that, PW changed their policies cause of me!” (http://archive.is/Zufg1)
Could you perhaps tell us a little more about what happened to you? And why?
Kukuruyo
Since I have adult content in my website, I can’t use common Ad services, so I used Project wonderful, because they allowed websites with adult stuff. One day I was contacted by them, and they told me that Paypal was pressing them to enforce Paypal rules, which apparently don’t allow for sexual drawings of characters under 18 years old, and someone had contacted them to tell them about an ms.marvel commission I had made just that week. The new version of ms.marvel is apparently 16 years old, something I didn’t even know, so they couldn’t allow for it in my site.
At first we came with a middle ground solution: They made their ads to not appear in that specific drawing. But a day later they contacted me again, and told me that they had talk about my case, and decided to change their Terms of service, so now you can’t use PW if you do sexual fanarts.
I don’t know if they made the change as an excuse to specifically drive me out of their service, or if they really plan to enforce that, but I would love to see them try, since almost any artist in the world has done fanart.
Robin TGG
For how long have you created drawings and art? And do you get a lot of requests?
Kukuruyo
I’ve been drawing since I had about 15 I think, and I went to arts since high school, but I have not always being focused on that. I’ve had parts of my life where I was more into audiovisuals, or education (as a teacher) or as graphic designer; but right now I’m focused on illustrations and comics. The number of requests I’m asked vary with time. There are some very poor months, and some others I can barely keep with the commissions.
Robin TGG
Have you been a #GamerGate supporter for a long time? And when and why did you start to support GG?
Kukuruyo
I’ve been a supporter since the very beginning. My first contact was thanks to a friend (whom I don’t think will call me friend anymore), who’s very much a SJW. It was the time of the Quinnspiracy, and he was talking about how sexist and Nazi the critics of Zoe Quinn or Anita sarkeesian where. I didn’t know who Quinn was, and i am the kind of person who likes to heard both sides of an issue before making a judgment, so I researched a little on the topic and discovered that, indeed, things were not as simple and one-sided as my friend tried to make it seem.
I must say my reasons to support gamergate are not really because the “ethics in journalism” thing. I mean, yes, that’s important; it would be good if we managed to have good video game journalism, and I don’t have a problem with people who are “ethics only”, but I stopped paying attention to any game media when they were still paper media, so it doesn’t really affect me much if their reviews are trustworthy or not.
I was attracted to Gamergate because I saw, even in its early stages that they were raising up against an invasion of political correctness, censorship and perpetual offense that had been worrying me for some time. I’ve gone to Arts University, I have known the SJW types that come from there since a long time ago; I know how a world dominated by them would be, I’ve been personally affected by being surrounded by people with that mentality, and I don’t want that to expand until it becomes common.
Many people know how SJWs are in the internet, but I think most don’t know what insanity it is in real life. All those videos that pop up from time to time about students doing and saying insane things at University where my daily experience for years. I even almost got suspended because I posted some comics in the walls making critique of it.
Robin TGG
I could be wrong now, but I have a slight memory of you mentioning that you have had problems with Google´s rules regarding nudity and sex on your homepage? In short, you have lost income because of their rules. Personally, I think the rules for Google’s ads are pretty hypocritical (and this is the reason why).
Kukuruyo
No, I have never had Google as ad service. I knew beforehand that they were very strict with adult content so I didn’t even try.
Robin TGG
What went through your head when all the drama concerning Tracer´s butt (“Overwatch”) kicked-off back in March this year? And what kind of response did you get from your own Tracer drawings?
Kukuruyo
It was amazing to me that things have got so bad that a single complaint about “sexism” can make one of the most powerful video game companies to make changes, and being addressed by the higher-ups. Something similar happened in Spain not long ago. A famous TV comedian with more than 30 years of trajectory did a sketch about a doctor and a patient, where the patient tells the doctor to only tell him “50% of the truth”, and he keeps lowering the % until the doctor tells him he’s healthy, even if he has cancer. The TV station got one complain. One single complain. And they made public statements of apology, and said they would look into it, so who knows what will happen to the comedian.
Fortunately people fought back in Tracers case, and Blizzard changed their minds, but just think about what terrible future awaits us, if creators will make immediate changes to their works for one single complain, in a world where it’s impossible to make anything that doesn’t offend anyone.
The response to my Tracer drawings have been mostly positive, tough I’ve seen some people saying they are offended by them.
Robin TGG
What´s your take on Scott Kurtz´s (the creator of the online comic-strip “PvP”) statement about #GamerGate?:
“I disagree. Gamergate is a hate group. And they’re on the wrong side of not only history, but decency. Good luck to you.” – Scott Kurtz (https://archive.is/AjCMD)
I also do recall Kurtz making statements about “sexism” in movies, games and comics, but I find that to be somewhat hypocritical. As some of Kurtz past PVP comics have contained sexy ladies, naked skin and such (http://archive.is/otF2H, http://archive.is/C4Wcp, http://archive.is/QkOg4).
Kukuruyo
I didn’t know that. It’s a pity to see artists in a camp that actively wants to censor them, but I guess they won’t realize it until something happens to them. You should see the Spanish web comic community though; it’s the biggest nest of SJWs that you’ll ever see, aside of Tumblr.
Robin TGG
Do you have any favorite artists? In my case, I like your art, Frank Cho, Boris Vallejo, Dorian Cleavenger, Kuvshinov-Ilya, Luis Royo, Hajime Sorayama and Sonia Roji (to name a few).
Kukuruyo
Most of my favorite artists are Japanese. Yukito kishiro, Oh great!, Norihiro Yagi, Tsutomu nihei; though I have always been a fan of some American artists like Joe Madureira.
Robin TGG
Where do you get your inspiration from? And does your art inspiration mainly come from games, movies and comics? Or do you find your creative magic elsewhere as well? And do you prefer to make a certain kind of art and drawings? (since most of your art creations are either parodies or of lewd nature).
Kukuruyo
I’m pretty much an aesthete. I like to draw beautiful things, and one of the most beautiful is the female body, so I draw a lot of lewd stuff, and also I like to draw monsters; and specifically Monster girls are beautiful, badass and exotic. I like to use art as a method of expression; I think I can express things with comics and illustrations better than I could with words, thus why I think art should have no chains.
Robin TGG
I can´t speak for everyone else now, but I think you made a really good point about stereotypes and double standards with this drawing:
So my question to you would be the following. Why do you think the SJW´s makes such a big thing off skin color and stereotypes? And why is there so much anti-white propaganda going on in the video game industry today?
Kukuruyo
I think this all amounts to Virtue signal. I’m very grateful to the guy who popularized that word, because I have always though exactly that about many of the people who surrounded me, without being able to explain it correctly. I think that if someone really believes in what they say they would be consistent with it, but this people instead make selective enforcement.
If they cared about gender equality, they would point out any problem both men and women had, and they would fight against privileges for both, yet they only care about first world women problems, and If they can’t find one, they make it up. If they cared about racial problems they would point out any problem for any race, and would fight against racism in any direction. Yet somehow whites cannot receive racism, and while the killing of Blacks in a video game is a big offense, the killing of Spaniards is not.
So what this people really want is just to feel morally superior to others. They act very vocally so they can show everyone around them how virtuous they are. They see racism/homophobia/sexism in everything because they WANT to see it; because they NEED to see it. Social justice warriors need to be continuously pointing things out to other people, to show them how inferior they are. “Look at how racist/homophobe/sexist this person is, UNLIKE ME”. It all comes to that. So they have created a cult that teach you how to “see” things through a special lens that allows you to see everything as sexist, homophobe or racist in some way.
Robin TGG
I would love to hear your thoughts on Anita Sarkeesian’s famous quote:
“Everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic and you have to point it all out”
Kukuruyo
I think it defines the SJWs very well. There’s a similar quote that was circulating around in feminist circles in Spain: “the problem is not that I see sexism everywhere, is that you don’t see it”. They use their special cult lens to see everything as harmful and evil, and they convince themselves that the problem is everyone around them, because then they can feel morally superior.
Robin TGG
Just recently you announced your “Monster girls 1st year anniversary“. So how´s the one-year anniversary going so far? And I also remember that you said something about being out on a tour? So how´s the tour going?
Kukuruyo
I went to a convention. I sell my art at several conventions here in Spain; it’s one of my biggest ways of income. People usually send their entries for contests at the last week or even the last day, so it’s soon to tell how it’s going. But I hope I get many entries. I would love more people reading MGoT because it’s on those kinds of comics where I can tell my original stories, rather than parodies.
Robin TGG
What´s the story behind that one Pokémon comic strip of yours that got reported and banned on deviantart? And don´t you think that it´s rather crazy that “some” people talk about age when it comes to fictional characters?
Source (NSFW!):
http://archive.is/I4m2M
http://archive.is/3o5Zn
Kukuruyo
That’s mostly all the story. They banned they image because the girl was underage (though she was totally dressed, which means that Anita’s request is against DA policies). I made that character precisely because I knew it would piss SJWs, so the reaction was predictable.
Talking about age in anime drawings is just ridiculous. I wrote about it in length in my ms.marvel drawing description, but essentially it comes down to:
1. It’s not real. They are fictional characters. No one gets harmed.
2. Being fictional, one can set any age they want for the character. I can draw a little child and say she’s a goddess with 2.000 years old; or do an insanely attractive adult and say she’s 6 years old made adult with magic.
3. Anime is a style that uses idealization. Characters are drawn in the most attractive way possible. So a 16 old character is drawn more adult and with a perfect body, and a 30 old character is drawn younger and with a perfect body. Many times you can’t tell the difference; you can have an image with 5 characters in ages ranging 14-30 and not be able to tell who’s older than the other.
Being concerned about that is like watching a TV show where the actors are 25-30 acting as high school students and being concerned about feeling attracted to them because they are 17 in the show.
Robin TGG
I´m somewhat curious to know how long it took for you to create your famous Gawker drawing? And did you get any response from either Hulk Hogan or Gawker? Other than that, what did people think about your Gawker drawing in general?
Kukuruyo
Not much time really. Gamergate life pages are done very quickly. They are just meant to poke some fun into something that has happened at that moment related to Gg or SJWs, not anything that will prevail in time, so I don’t spend many time drawing them. It’s kinda fun when haters try to mock me by saying that the comic is badly drawn, as if it’s something I don’t know or do intentionally. It’s interesting that they don’t say that about my illustrations (some of them even admit they are good) and instead they try to make it seem as if GG life is the only thing I do or my life’s work. The reaction to the image was very positive. I even did a T-shirt with it because some many people where asking for it.
Robin TGG
It´s time for the last question now. What´s your plans for 2016? And what games are you currently playing?
Kukuruyo
My end goal would be to win enough money through advertising, Patreon, etc, so I can dedicate myself to draw my web comics and illustrations, instead of relying on commissions and conventions. What I would love most is to tell my own stories and people to enjoy them. I have a world setting called Robukan, with a lot of details. I first did a comic in it called Guild adventure; now that comic is close to an end, and Monster girls on tour will tell more stories about this setting.
Right now I’m in a complicated position, because I don’t make enough money through Patreon or ads and I have to rely on a lot of commissions and cons, but at the same time I have enough patreons that I have to dedicate a lot of time to Patreon exclusive content, rewards, etc. And I don’t remember the last time I went to a convention to just enjoy it without working. I would like to reach the same point as other web comic artists, where they can maintain themselves thanks to the web comic income, and dedicate themselves to it. If I managed that I would be happy releasing a lot of pages and lewd drawings, or stuff to mock SJWs every day.
Right now I’m playing Overwatch from time to time. I recently finished Nights of Azure and Defense Technica, and now I’ve started Trails of Cold Steel. There are also a ton of games I’ve started but I’ve to go back to them at some point, like Moe chronicle or Dungeon defenders 2. I’m waiting for the release of Mirror’s edge 2.
And that was the end of our interview with Kukuruyo, so thanks a ton to Kukuruyo for taking his time answering all of mine questions. With that said, don´t forget to support Kukuruyo´s art and comics via Patreon, because he really needs all the help he can get in-order to live on his art and comics.
***Disclosure***
I´m a fan of Kukuruyo and his art.
Robin “V-Act” Ek
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheGamingGround
More by Robin Ek:
Tags: #GamerGate, Art, Censorship, Kukuruyo, Lewd, SJW, Video games