How to Basic and Not Commit Art Theft, Part 1

Hey, yoo-hoo, and how do you do?

As I have said in a different post of mine, I am largely a lurker in these parts; I don't make blogs or anything all that often. Where you might see me most active is in the comment section of various posts.

Overall, these comments have been largely welcomed by the authors and fellow Amino s alike; only a few times have authors been disgruntled at my bringing the credits up. However, believe it or not, looking up credits for all of these people takes a lot of time, and the amount of people that post uncredited work is enormous. Frankly, my job SHOULD be unnecessary. EVERYONE should be looking up their own credits and posting it accordingly.

So let's go over the two main forms of art theft that occur on this Amino: blatant art theft and inadvertent art theft.

Blatant art theft

The rarer form of art theft, but still happens on this Amino. Blatant art theft is taking a piece of fanart you found and then saying that you made it. This includes posting a piece of art you found of a character that may not be part of a certain franchise, and claiming that it is your gemsona. Even if you come up with an original back story for it, the fact remains that you stole that character's likeness. Here's an example:

"This is (insert obligatory gem name). Her eyes are gems. She can see far into the past and holds all the secrets of the Gem War. She is quiet and in a constant state of gloom thanks to her ability and having to re-experience the horrors of the past."

I just made that up on the spot. Credit to http://bluesaga331.deviantart.com/art/Miss-2-328511194 .

By the way, even if you credit the artist, you CANNOT claim the art for your gemsona. Because the fact remains that you merely formed your gemsona around a piece of art you found, or else came up with a gemsona and hunted for a pic that was close enough to your idea and settled on something that wasn't intended to be your gemsona in the first place. Repurposing art will lead to the curators' red band of love.

Another form of blatant art theft that I've unfortunately had the displeasure of running across is s trying to cover up their tracks of their theft. This includes cropping photos so that the signatures of the artist, or parts of the pic that reveal the content to be for something else, are cut. Or sometimes s will delete and try to hide credits to the original artist. I have had a try to block me so that I couldn't comment the credits in their posts. These people are the worst kind of thieves, and I work to expose these kind of low lives.

Artists are very under-appreciated for the amount of time and effort they put into their artwork. It's a sad truth that art is meant to be looked at, but artists largely make no money from people looking at their art. But they need views in the hopes that someone will come along and want to purchase their art. So let's help them along by giving credit where credit is due, shall we?

Next time, I'll talk about inadvertent art theft. Until then, peace and love on the planet Earth.

EDIT: Thank you for the feature and the resultant likes and follows.