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Deviation Actions
A while back I posted about iconSketcherjak: stealing my artwork, namely my dinosaur tutorials, which she put in a book she sold on Createspace. (You can see all my proof here, for the most part: droemar.deviantart.com/journal…
I randomly stumbled on her book again on Createspace, reinstated and for sale again. www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Dinosa…
It's pretty defeating. I contacted Createspace about what the hell was going on, and they said basically "yeah, we reviewed it and decided to reinstate." No reason given, just, you know, apparently whether something as plagiarized or not depends on the person looking at the situation.
I made a fuss, and have people due to call me back, but this is the reality of what art theft looks like. No one cares. I was hoping to get her book negatively reviewed, but only one person bothered to. One. People say "Get a lawyer!" like that's something easy to do, like you can go pick up a lawyer the same way you can grab a candy bar at Wal-Mart.
I had someone ask not too long ago if I would do a ceratopsian tutorial. Why? So someone else can steal it? (Or hell, this Jessica Rockeman would if she could all over again.)
This isn't an 11 year old posting to their account and saying "Look what I drew!" This is someone who is making money by selling my stuff, and it's kind of not a big deal at all to the world at large. I don't know if I've made mistakes by not documenting enough, or what. People are going to buy her book without knowing that's my work.
Today really sucks.
I randomly stumbled on her book again on Createspace, reinstated and for sale again. www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Dinosa…
It's pretty defeating. I contacted Createspace about what the hell was going on, and they said basically "yeah, we reviewed it and decided to reinstate." No reason given, just, you know, apparently whether something as plagiarized or not depends on the person looking at the situation.
I made a fuss, and have people due to call me back, but this is the reality of what art theft looks like. No one cares. I was hoping to get her book negatively reviewed, but only one person bothered to. One. People say "Get a lawyer!" like that's something easy to do, like you can go pick up a lawyer the same way you can grab a candy bar at Wal-Mart.
I had someone ask not too long ago if I would do a ceratopsian tutorial. Why? So someone else can steal it? (Or hell, this Jessica Rockeman would if she could all over again.)
This isn't an 11 year old posting to their account and saying "Look what I drew!" This is someone who is making money by selling my stuff, and it's kind of not a big deal at all to the world at large. I don't know if I've made mistakes by not documenting enough, or what. People are going to buy her book without knowing that's my work.
Today really sucks.
Night Pride: How Fandoms Groom Artists for Abuse
Oh boy, was this an interesting little roller coaster. So strap in. I saw the teaser trailer for the fan created Night Pride a while back and I was annoyed. I happen to like My Pride, because for God's sake it's an original work in a sea of corporatism. That the people working on Night Pride disparaged and discussed doxxing the My Pride team is not in the least surprising to me; what else do fandoms do but train one to hate original works? If it's too original, it's not canon, after all. And if it's original work, it's copyright, and that's a dirty word in fanart. Don't say YOUR WORK is copyright, make sure you give credit to Disney! And just recently, the Night Pride got cancelled, and people are making videos about the fallout. Somehow, guys, SOMEHOW, a whole bunch of artists and writers, voice actors and musicians, got roped into doing free labor, without a contract, by someone who wasn't licensed by Disney to adhere to their (admittedly lacking) labor laws. Can you believe
What I Learned From Doing Mark of the Conifer
1. Everything you're afraid of is true. When I really sat down and decided I was going to try publishing, I had a panic attack. A legit, teeth chattering, sick-to-my-stomach panic attack that I had to do breathing exercises to get through. And a lot of cuddling my cat and writing in my journal about what I was so scared of for the next few days. I think the regular stuff was there: what if it doesn't work? What if I fail? What if nobody likes me? But the two biggest things I was afraid of were the work and succeeding. What the HELL was I going to do if I succeeded!?
Turns out absolutely everything I was scared of was right on the money. The a
The Problem of Fan Art: Part 2
"Everything is derivative!"
Some things are more derivative than others. That's what copyright is for.
"Who are YOU to say what is and isn't art?"
I'm a little miffed by this one, because it's like people shooting the messenger. I hate to rain on your parade, but there are legal definitions out there for art. And yes, those partially define art for me personally, but guess what? They also define art for you, too.
Now, I'm not saying the effervescence of humanity as put to canvas is legally defined. There is no way to quantify the blood, sweat, and tears put into a piece. (Which, if you are sweating and bleeding, why you'd want to do it fo
The Problem of Fan Art: Part One
I suppose I've been musing over this for a long time, and since I have released my first big piece of "real" work, I've found myself reading more about the phenomenon of "toxic fandoms."
That's not really what I'm going to talk about, though, even though I think it's a very obvious element to consider. It plays its part in the Problem of Fan Art.
And personal disclaimer: it's not like I've never done fanart myself. I obviously enjoy the aspect of fanart that is creative and expressive, and acts like the proper machine of artistic joie de vivre #notallfanart. But that allows me to move into my introduction: artists do great fanart; fanartist
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I'm sorry to hear you went through so much but I'm glad she finally lost in the end! For the future you should probably have some plans in place to stop this from happening again though. I'm still figuring out how to do that myself but some useful ideas I found/came up with are watermarks and embedded signatures. Keeping your working files with the meta data dates can also go far, though really any can be faked, but it's something at least. Then if someone steals and claims the actual artwork as their own they have to not only remove the watermark but also the signature and prove that they created the files before you did, which is all highly unlikely. If they trace it should be easy to do an overlapped comparison and if they reference without tracing it is completely legal and you should let it go. (You don't need to even impede the artwork too much with the watermark and you can totally HIDE the signature in the art so that it's unlikely to be found by someone other than you - that's what I called embedded - , then you can point it out. Do things like lightly covering the foot of your creature with a watermark so that if they want to remove it they have to do some weird cropping shit that would look really bad and put the signature in the central most important part of the picture so that it can't be cropped out.)