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

[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!