Advice on Art Theft...?

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

Someone on DeviantArt just contacted me to let me know that my art had been "stolen." I've never had this happen before, and it's not quite the normal "posting my work and calling it their own" situation...

The person who contacted me was an artist who was commissioned to draw someone's character. Their customer gave them a reference image, which they thought looked familiar. As it turns out, it's a recolored version of a commission I drew a while back.

The original is here, and the recolor that this person showed me had the cat character painted over with black and purple, and my signature crudely scratched out (the person who contacted me has removed the recolor from their photobucket account now, though their customer is still using a cropped version of it as their avatar on this FA account)

The customer claimed they first found my original drawing here, on some site called e621 - a site I've never heard of...

I'm at a bit of a loss, here. They're not publicly posting the recolor as theirs (other than the FA avatar), but they are distributing it via email and were careful to remove my signature and avoid crediting me (or the character's owner).

So... what should I do, here? Is this enough cause for concern that I should approach this guy about stealing my work? Should I just let it slide because this is the internet and stuff like this is bound to happen?

Looks like I'll be watermarking work from here on, though. Sigh, I hate watermarks.

Update: The avatar was removed by FA admins, and the reposted image was removed from e621 once I asked the admin to take it down.

Comments

[confusedkain.livejournal.com]

This.

Personally, I never post anything in full anymore because of the CONSTANT theft I deal with my work.. Watermark or like uozlulu said, compress it dddooowwwwnnn. Good luck!

[ryunwoofie.livejournal.com]

that's why you give them a small version for posting and large for personal uses (printing)

[djdragonboy.livejournal.com]

Yes. Being a musician rather than an artist, I only generate 32kb mono MP3s for distribution to FA/SoundCloud/Reverbnation/etc. If someone wants a higher-quality version of a song, then they can get a CD from me personally.

[connorgoodwolf.livejournal.com]

I'll forward this to the FA admins.

Also,

e621 is an art pirate site. Even though I had the site shut down over child porn, people currently post art of on the site which doesn't belong to them.

They're typical art pirates, including the mindset.

You can remove your art by emailing varka at varka@e621.net

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

According to their site, this "Char" person is the new admin and the new POC for takedown requests. I sent an email earlier today, so I guess I'll see.

[sigilgoat.livejournal.com]

The site is now owned by Varka of Bad Dragon and they are trying to make amends with artists.

Still don't like the site, but I've been hearing good things about how they're handling DNP requests.

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

They did actually remove my art when I asked and provided proof that I was the artist. So, that's promising. :)

[jamesalesto.livejournal.com]

Yes. I've contacted Varka every time an image has been uploaded that I did not want to. He responds promptly, and Char has had my images pulled within a week.

[bagheera.livejournal.com]

Varka is ACTUALLY a nice guy, so kudos to him. ^_^ (I've dealt with him because I am active on the Bad Dragon forums, he's just a very nice person; I can not imagine someone like him being disrespectful to artists)

[witchiebunny.livejournal.com]

There's not much we can do, except take down their icon at the request of the artist (which I'll take here, if she wishes to request it).

The person's not breaking any other FA rules that I can see.

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

I think the icon had already been taken down...? If not, that's the only thing I'd request, and the most I'd expect. Otherwise, the recolor isn't being displayed publicly, so I'm not really that concerned.

[witchiebunny.livejournal.com]

It has been, and that's fine.

If anything else comes up on FA, feel free to contact me.

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

I appreciate your help. Thank you. :)

[starlight-art.livejournal.com]

The avatar was still there when I just looked, maybe he reuploaded it?

[slavkei.livejournal.com]

Looks like it's been re-uploaded again. Boy doesn't seem to learn very well...

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Someone tipped them off via shouts, also, if it was just defaulted and no note was sent to the user stating they're disallowed use of it because it's stolen art... then they'll easily just reload it.

Just my thoughts.

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

I thought something had been said. I just sent a note explaining that it was a recolor of my work and asking him not to use it again. Should clear things up.

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

I meant as in the admin who removed the recolour didn't themselves send a note saying that their icon is unacceptable due to the fact its stolen work. But hopefully now with your note, they'll get the gist of it.

[albinowolf.livejournal.com]

I think they reuploaded it. I still see the recolored version.

[fatkraken.livejournal.com]

Other than the sig being scratched out, I don't think it's that big of a deal. If they were making money from the character or claiming they had drawn it it would be another thing entirely, but to use it as basically an outline to sketch out colours to commission an original image is different to me. It;s still a bit off obviously, but not worth getting upset about.

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

I didn't think it was worthy of pitching a fit, but the scratched-out signature irked me enough that I figured it was worth asking if there's anything I SHOULD be worried about... I've never run into this sort of thing before.

Thanks for your input.

[connorgoodwolf.livejournal.com]

I emailed WarMock earlier and he has defaulted the avatar.

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

Thanks

[animecat.livejournal.com]

I hate watermarks too, but since I started using them I have seen NO evidence of my work popping up anywhere but where I post them. I also only post things at a reduced size in a low quality JPG with a max of 72dpi. It helps, it really does.

My advice? Get creative with your watermark. I use my studio logo. You can make it fun instead of boring. It's not quite so bad that way.

[sigilgoat.livejournal.com]

That's why I started using watermarks as well. Commissioners all get an unwatermarked version (which sometimes they post, but I send them a low rez resize which they end up using most of the time)

I've noticed a half in my stuff showing up other places. You'll want it to be in the MIDDLE of the picture, or at least covering up some of it, or people will still work around it.

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

This. My favorite thing to do when I watermark is actually put several in the piece itself. A big one in the middle, overlayed, 50% fill (Photoshop speak wooo), and then one or two others in the corners, one at least at 70% and the other at somewhere around 30 or 60% depending how I feel.

If they're that desperate to snatch your work, they have a lot of watermarks to go through, and just end up giving up.

[sigilgoat.livejournal.com]

I do one at 10% opacity, and 20% opacity for my prints (JUST IN CASE? lolz)

It's my logo, but stretched over the whole picture

[animecat.livejournal.com]

Same here. My studio logo, over the center of the image, and at least as large as the character in the image set to 10-15% opacity on a multiplied layer. It also contains my FA and DA addresses, since that's where I post them the most often.

[sigilgoat.livejournal.com]

I haven't yet put my URL on, i probably should :C

[animecat.livejournal.com]

It helps when someone HAS reposted your artwork, because then folks know where to find you and let you know!

[thaily.livejournal.com]

Confront them directly if you have a chance, tell him to stop using your work.

Then make a public note on your original submission and contact the new owner of e621 and tell him to take the image down. Hopefully this guy will have more sense and respect for artists than the previous one.

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

Contacted e621 earlier today, we'll see how that goes.

As for a confrontation, FA has already taken care of the only public display of the recolor (his avatar) and beyond that, I'm not too bothered just yet. I'll keep an eye on things and speak up if it comes up again.

[cesarin.livejournal.com]

as for the icon thing, I think you could ask the dude, I found people as well using my personal icons I bought for their characters, and they kindly acomplied to change theirs.

being nice at first can make wonders, unless the admin or subject at hand is an asshole.
wich of course... requires more effort to make them still acomply.

[mandyseley.livejournal.com]

I'm all for manners and being kind by default. The artist who contacted me deals with this customer in real life, and asked me, if I DID confront them, not to bring up their name just in case it caused problems. With that in mind, I'd planned to wait a little while before confronting this guy, so there was less of a chance that he'd put two and two together.

In the meantime I asked advice, since I've never run into my work being "stolen" without being publicly posted before... The FA admins already stepped in for the icon, so as of now I'm willing to let it slide as long as the recolor doesn't show up publicly again.

Try not to blame e621 for this one

[cary everett (from livejournal.com)]

I hope you will take consideration to the fact that e621 both named you as the artist, and linked to your DA gallery.

e621 has always had a policy that it is never acceptable to remove an artist's signature, or to remove watermarks, or otherwise defile an artist's work.

The whole purpose of e621 is to be a search engine, nothing more, and strives to give every artist the recognition for the work that they deserve. A human powered search directory, using keywords people assign to images in order to be more powerful than crawler based search engines which lack precision for images.

Please reconsider the way you think of e621.

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[kayla-la.livejournal.com]

That might be more possible now with the new management, but understand that the bad reputation e621.net has currently is pretty much all due to Arcturus, and the abhorrent way he treated the artists that were essentially the lifeblood of his own site.

All us artists want is respect.

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[cary everett (from livejournal.com)]

Arc isn't a bad woman. I've known her for a long time; she's nice, and was respectful to the artists themselves if they were respectful to her in turn.

She just lost her temper with people like InsaneKangaroo, and other people who were the more stereotypical unpleasant internet users. And unfortunately, those are the sorta people who start negative propaganda crusades, and go out of your way to smear you. Jack Thompson wannabes.

That being said, the new management is going out of it's way to be more patient with unpleasant individuals, so that such a negative reputation does not get spread.

Arcs reputation was undeserved, and she's a sweetheart, but it's something she'll likely have a hard time escaping :(

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[kayla-la.livejournal.com]

She? I thought Arcturus was male. Ah well.

I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong. There have been so many accounts of artists here in this very comm that shared their experiences. I'm not going to believe every single one of them is going to lie about Arcturus talking down to them and ignoring their requests no matter how polite they were just because one person who is obviously their friend says they're nice. I don't mean any offense to you, but there is simply too much evidence to the contrary.

Unless you mean someone bothering to ask at all to have their art removed means they're 'unpleasant'. Otherwise, I think you'll need to accept that Arcturus really was nasty to at least some people, unprovoked. But you're free to confront all the artists that have spoken up in artist's beware and tell them they're lying, if you want.

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[bagheera.livejournal.com]

I dug up some pictures and Arcturus is a he... unless there's a reason he prefers to be called a she...

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Lets not get too off topic with a discussion on Arcturus' gender/sex. Its a touchy subject for many and A_B truly isn't the forum for it.

Re: Try not to blame e621 for this one

[connorgoodwolf.livejournal.com]

Uhh...

Arcturus dug his own grave and he needs to lie in it. I know of a major incident where he acted insanely childish refusing to remove art of a character drawn in a harassing way, the owner of the fursona made the request. Arcturus... he went further and pulled a," you owe me money for consulting my lawyer as well over this issue."

So no, he is completely at fault for his own actions, no other individual created his own reputation, people are responsible on their own for such.