Post #394288 by Paipo on Tue, Jul 15, 2008 7:36 PM

tikitony - I'm not surprised you've experienced this too, because your work is very desirable (read: saleable) - Fatutu is probably the most distinctive tiki in my mug cabinet. I'm really glad you followed your instinct at Hukilau, but I do feel sorry for those who bought one of these pendants in good faith.
I remember seeing C'Al's post in his thread documenting the various obviously-influenced through to outright-copied pieces his work has spawned, and unfortunately he must be the most copied man in Tiki. So, yeah, I guess I'm in pretty good company! It's made me realise that this will probably happen again, so I've got to learn not let it eat me up or affect my work - not so easy when I still consider myself a newbie as a tiki artist, and I've put so much effort into trying to develop my own approach.

TK, maybe those dodgy "big ups to City Buddha" reviews you mentioned are gone already? I only see a whole pile of comments about the bogus pendants still (which is great) and a couple of positive reviews predating this whole sorry mess. I gave up on trying to join YELP after about the 20th attempt, but I'm guessing anything I post will probably be deleted anyway?
PS: Don't worry - a few people have been wondering if I've been posting less because of all this (yes, but only for a little while while I figured out what to do), but I've also been very busy with other work too. Regular tiki programming will resume shortly...