Hello, it's Fenix Soul, aka Fen. This document is my response to Rossdraws’ second response to the allegations I made against him back in January 2025.
AI
Back in February 2025, Ross responded to my document where he claims on Twitter (X) to have experimented in the early stages when he created his Youtube video in 2022 and remained curious in 2024. He claimed that out of 600 pieces, only 5 pieces had AI influences. A thing that needs to be pointed out is that his first statement was only posted on Twitter and Bluesky, the two platforms with the least engagement and visibility for his account.
Ross also claims in this statement that he does not understand enough about the conversations around AI, but there is clear evidence that proves this not to be true. He asked me personally, but also had conversations about AI with close friends including Beezul.
These DMs have already been leaked and clearly show a timeline that proves he knew the negative aspects of AI in 2022 and that context was provided to Ross all the way through 2024.
Note: these dms were posted on my Twitter (X) but may have been lost along the way.
Ross asked for opinions on his AI statement he only wanted to post on Patreon. They suggest that he needs to take a clear stance because taking the sidelines as a big artist on AI is not a good move. 12/16/2022
https://x.com/fenixsoul22/status/1894547152870744273/photo/1
Here I sent Ross a video about the artist, Yuumei, getting backlash for using AI in 2024. Ross ignored the post and never commented on it.
In Ross' second statement, Ross briefly mentioned the AI allegations and claims that he had only experimented. He deleted the images he generated out of fear due to the climate of AI. What Ross failed to mention is that he had 24k images left to delete.
Note: This was an exclusive metal print for pre-ordering his Nima statue in 2023. You can see it in this reel here and on the website.
Note: This was also used at Lightbox 2023 to highlight Ross as an artist alongside his peers.
Note: Ross’s profile picture on social media.
Note: The 3 images above have been sold at conventions during his break from social media.
Note: The images above are pieces that were released on Patreon as tutorials and are now on his website being sold in a tutorial package you can see here and here.
These images are important because he’s not only selling you the final images but the process itself. In some cases, the AI image may have influenced more of the final than we were let on.
Again, I just want to remind you that these are just a handful. There could be many more artworks that have AI use.
For this next part, it is important to note that GenAI can have models meant to replicate/prompt another artist’s style with the database it has built up. But here we have screenshots of Ross making a conscious decision to feed images into Midjourney, especially from other pro artists and IPs to guide his creative process and style, while trying to claim it as his own.
Note: Rei_17 and TB Choi have both collaborated with Ross in the past. Rei was the layout editor for Ross’ Nima book and also joined him in this artist collaboration video (video is timestamped) celebrating the launch of his book. TB Choi was a guest lecturer for Ross’ Digital Art Bootcamp that started in 2021.
Here are links to the original artworks fed:
Fire Emblem Heroes is official art from the mobile game.
Arcane Jinx is a screenshot from the show that can easily be found through a search engine.
Note: A screenshot from Princess Mononoke being fed. The date in red also highlights him still using it in 2025. (1/02/2025)
(A folder with the ai images above)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bCvlVJ2SzX0_wQJ9usCiqT3siLcQXp0H
Am I really a stranger?
Ross spent a good majority of his video trying to paint me as someone he doesn’t know all too well. He claims to have taken a chance with me only after lightbox 2023, but this is further from the truth.
I have been to Ross’ house before lightbox 2023 (the scenario in the screenshot). He didn't mention this and an assumption was made as if I was forcing my way into his home, but I’ve already been there before.
I have his number and he gave it to me last year.
I was a Twitch mod for his editor.
I had friends that also became his employees and/or friends.
I’d be responsible for hosting games with his subscribers on his Twitch stream.
I am not some nobody or obsessed fan trying to pry my way in. Ross chose to bring me into his circle from 2020 onward, not when he claims in late 2023.
(Here are my friends and I with Ross at his place after Anime Expo 2022)
Below will be different screenshots to highlight my dynamic with Ross.
Here is a clip from a stream where I hosted an Among Us game for Ross and his community.
Ross’ username here is SSSSOR.
This is one of the conversations that we’ve had on our spiritual beliefs. I’m showing these screenshots because they’ll be important for the mental health retreat portion below.
Most of my friends don’t know what my spiritual beliefs are, and unless I was in a church or a religious place of worship, I dont think it’s common to share one’s belief with strangers.
I would hope this should be enough to prove that Ross and I were indeed friends and had a level of comfortability to have a wide range of conversations regardless of the tone or how other people are perceiving things.
The Mental Health Retreat “The Hoffman Process”
This is directly from The Hoffman Process Website
THE HOFFMAN PROCESS IS NOT A SUBSTITUTION FOR REAL THERAPY
Disclaimer: Both Ross and I are only talking about mental health from both of our experiences. Any questions you have around mental health and the practices involved should be discussed with a mental health professional in the corresponding field. I will provide as much context and supporting evidence as I can.
I mention the mental health aspect in my document due to how he represented treatment, the language he chose, on top of all the videos he made about the topic.
I come from a religious background where faith healing is a common belief depending on the circumstances. When I left the church, I went down the new age rabbit hole and became very accustomed to chakras, shamanism and energy healing. They can provide a sense of emotional and mental support but they shouldn’t be used as a primary form of healing. Depending on the severity of a person’s condition, they should be supplementary at best. Unfortunately in the spiritual community, it’s a common trend to throw away clinical treatment in all forms, which is why being grounded in your beliefs are important. But if you surround yourself in this echo chamber and something is wrong, you’ll have dozens if not hundreds of people telling you don’t go to the doctor, you’re just clearing the heaviness and your body is detoxing.
A personal experience, I had contracted lyme disease during the pandemic, and seeing doctors was difficult. The spiritual community I was in told me that I was detoxing from the heavy emotions I was healing, but I didn’t buy it and kept pushing for a doctor’s appointment. Thankfully I did because I had nearly gone into late stage lyme and almost lost my ability to draw. This was also a failure on my doctor’s part because I have gone to him multiple times in six months, only to be taken seriously after the 4th appointment. And it’s moments like this that push people to seek out alternative healing methods. If I had relented, I could have been paralyzed or worse by now.
This leads us into the Hoffman Institute and the Hoffman Process. Ross tries to paint this as a valid way of healing, and the website tries to paint itself as such but in truth, this process is based in pseudoscience and isn’t recognized by the American Psychology Association. The basis of the Hoffman Process is Negative Love Syndrome (not a recognized mental health term), and uses different mental health processes to heal thought patterns and behaviors deemed negative that stems from childhood. Only a couple of teachers on their website have the appropriate title to facilitate certain processes, while the rest have degrees in a variety of different fields or even hold degrees in consciousness or shamanic psychospiritual psychology. The common denominator is that all teachers have gone through the Hoffman Process and complete a two to three year training program, which is not the same as receiving clinical training or a license.
https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/faculty-bios/
https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/podcasts/
The Hoffman Process may feel legit due to using a mix of different processes that are similar to clinical processes. Based on what I’ve seen online and In my opinion, one of the processes that they use is very similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. A process used to recognize distressing thoughts and behaviors, understanding the behavior and gaining the skills to cope with the situation and behaviors. The methodology used in the Hoffman process is to identify negative thought patterns around being unloved, especially tied to childhood, and gain skills to rewire those patterns. CBT is meant to last from a few weeks to a few months, the Hoffman process is a week long. When a method that’s meant to be used by licensed professionals is in the hands of just anyone, you’re typically sacrificing something along the way, and it’s usually the ethics.
And without the ethics, it can be very easy to label any experience that you don’t like as negative and use this watered down version of CBT to rewrite the experience in your head.
DMs
Note: You can see the complete conversation here.
I agree that this looks really bad if you’re looking at it from a stranger’s perspective. I’m not gonna downplay the words that were said, but if you know Ross, he tends to be very forgetful if something is not on his calendar. Not only that, there was some added context that was being left out. For example, this conversation happened two weeks before Lightbox. Con crunch is real and if you’ve sold at a convention, you can understand how stressful that period is and how much time you can lose during this lead up. There have been moments where I don’t really hear from Ross all too much when it’s time for cons, unless he needs my feedback and advice on merch and prints.
With two weeks left until Lightbox, between having to plan out the logistics, make sure everything is okay on my end, and mixed in with my general excitement at having the opportunity to go to lightbox, I got carried away. Given the way Ross was responding was no different to how we usually talk, I thought everything was fine. If I genuinely made you uncomfortable Ross, I am sorry and will note that behavior in the future.
To address the dms where it mentions the different days and the dinner question.
The different days were in reference to the video where Ross had a fan dm him every day for a year, he responded and drew his OC as a reward.
This fan DMed me every day for a year so I drew his OC
At this point, Ross had told us that he had some characters that were gay (this was before Ross came out though) and everyone wanted to know. We agreed that if I did the same thing he’ll reveal all of them.
We’ve talked about our sex life before, especially in the 11 months between these two screenshots, so the way we framed this was disingenuous.
These two screenshots below seemed inappropriate because Ross made it seem like we didn't know each other, and that we only just started to cross that step during this time period but I established that we knew each other fairly well at this point. My friends and I talk about our sex lives with each other, this isn’t that far off from a conversation with my friends, including ross.
…this was in regards to around gay culture and I don't have as much experience with relationships, intimacy and what’s deemed as normal. So the question was more or less trying to get another opinion and break down some fears I have. He didn’t feel comfortable with it, so I dropped it there.
In my opinion, this was an attempt to try to make me look like this rude, aggressive and ungrateful fan. This is normal between me and Ross. My friends and I refer to ourselves as bitch and hoe all the time. I however will not use this language on people I don’t know or acquaintances.
This framing is also disingenuous because he’s shifting focus from his reaction to me asking for the bare minimum to my language instead. I’ve attached the beginning of that conversation below and you can judge for yourself and see why Ross chose to show my later messages and not include his earlier messages.
Keep in mind, I’m just asking him to pay my bare expenses that wouldn’t make things difficult for my roommates if I were to stay for the entire month.
Below I just want to further highlight the dynamic and language between me and Ross, as a couple of people thought my use of the word, bitch and hoe, were off putting between “strangers.”
Lightbox 2023 was unpaid. The issue with Lightbox is that I found out through other coworkers that my coworker for the con was being paid and I asked about that but I didn’t push for it. Ross reached out to me to clear things up. In the process of trying to clear things up, by saying he had some volunteers come up, he heavily implied that if I was seeking compensation, he’d replace me with the volunteers. And this was the day before I flew out. I was okay with it, I was just asking a question, but it doesn’t sit right with me to threaten to take away the opportunity, the day before I flew out when the flight was booked and I rented out an airbnb for a day, so ross can have that last day to himself before the con.
I would also like to point out as well that I tried to ask Ross to work for Lightbox 2024 and be compensated this time and he declined, although he had stated he enjoyed having me work for both Lightbox 2023 and Anime Expo 2024.
To make it clear here that I was only paid for Anime Expo 2024 and that was after I had to argue with him over payment. He had brought on another helper after day one of Anime Expo and offered him payment with no issues or complaints. When I asked for payment, he responded, “but I can take you far,” and “I pay people 99% of the time,” we ended up having a dispute over this. He did pay for Anime Expo after our little argument but he refused to bring me back on again once payment exchanged hands. As a friend with experience, I shouldn’t have to argue for payment especially if you’re so willing to offer payment to other people.
When it comes to the badge for lightbox 2024, I wanted to borrow it for a day and it was for a couple of hours at most. I gave the badge back to him before I left. I was even offered to hang out with him and his group for halloween but declined because I had other plans.
The free badge for other conventions is very misleading because it implies he does this often but it was only for lightbox. I also knew he had spare badges available because he always orders extra badges for friends to use and cycle through to visit conventions for a bit. At Lightbox 2023, Ross even gave away some of his spare exhibitor badges he didn’t need to people waiting in line.
16 Ways to Improve
Ross didn’t want to show you the “16 ways to improve” so I’ll do it. For the sake of transparency, I redacted one of them because they were truly personal and involved other people.
For some added context. During my time helping Ross at Anime Expo, Ross would ask for my opinion but if it’s something that he doesn’t want to hear, he’ll dismiss me. If I try to bring in a different perspective and his other friends or employees are there, they will try to fight me on my stance.
An example scenario that happened at Anime Expo. Ross was upset that his sales weren’t as good as he had hoped and kept trying to figure out what the problem was and how he could fix it. He asked for everyone’s input and I gave mine. “A part of me thinks it has to do with your pricing and your inventory. You claimed during your last sale before your hiatus, you’d be getting rid of everything and come back with all new inventory, so your diehard fans probably have everything they need. New fans probably don’t feel like 30 dollars is worth it for a print from an artist they don’t know-” and then Ross proceeded to cut me off and say that “he’s worth it.” But it’s not about being worth it. You told your fans one thing and didn’t follow through, and we’re practically in a recession, so new fans will have a harder time to justify spending 30 dollars on a print from an artist they don’t really know. And suddenly it was three against one, with everyone telling me how the price shouldn’t be an issue because Ross thinks his art is worth it. There’s nothing wrong with believing in the value of your art, but you have to meet your audience half way because at the end of the day, worth doesn’t pay your bills, your customers do. Ross even tried to justify that his sales were poor because he wasn’t in the artist alley, he claims that’s where his people are, but he is almost never in the artist alley unless it’s a new con he hasn’t been to which is rare.
Ross is surrounded by yes men and will remove anyone that tries to hold him accountable. Everything I mention on this list, I have talked about it with him in person or online in some capacity but he just brushed me off. I wanted to come to him again with everything because I believe that friends shouldn’t be afraid to call each other out. This isn’t me telling him how to improve but have him be aware of his behaviors and how it may impact others. Especially since he’s always surrounded by people who will only validate him.
Here is Ross’ response to my list. Clearly he felt a type of way about this which is fair, I’m blunt, I know it, my friends know it. This isn’t the first time I’ve been blunt with Ross or any friend. This isn’t about being perfect though, but about taking the baby steps to change. If you see your friend do something toxic, are you just going to let it slide, or are you going to say something? Context matters and I’m not some stranger with a list of how Ross can improve so he can meet my expectations, but I know I won't convince everyone.
Things to note though, Ross does admit that he saw me as somewhat of a therapist and yet the irony is not lost on me that if he saw me as a therapist, why were there these sudden hard boundaries.
For added transparency, this was my last response to Ross on this topic.
My Closing Thoughts
I do not blame anyone for being doubtful of me throughout this whole process. I could have handled certain aspects better and I will reflect on this situation as a whole. I tried my best to be as clear and concise as I can be throughout this second document. If there's anything that's unclear, I don't mind trying to clarify some things. Though this will be the last time I make a statement on this situation and we can hopefully move forward and heal from this.