Hello!

Tumblr is where tens of millions of creative people around the world share and follow the things they love.

Our culture of assuming there is one isolated genius behind every work— the photographer with their photo, the performer with their show, the iconist with their photoshopping— is sick and has to stop.

Claiming dibs on all the credit is the work of an ungrateful artist who forgets the massive debt they owe to those who designed and made the components that allowed them to do their work. And usually bespeaks an artist who cares more about fame than creating things— which is normal, but doesn’t exactly give you the high ground.

Most artworks and art types also aren’t created from scratch, and making a moralizing fuss about credit for yourself without also asking it for all the others who designed the components is so hypocritical it just makes me want to puke. A bid for fame and moral superiority in one grand stroke; you just want to twist the system to get it all so conveniently for yourself.

And I say this as someone who is an artist who doesn’t work from scratch and also spends upwards of 48 hours on one piece, so there’s no way I just “don’t understand the feelings of being a creator” or whatever shit excuse people want to come up with in place of a real counterargument. I never ask for credit but people insist on perpetuating the “credit this artist” moral imperative against my wishes. I just don’t want to speak out about my feelings there because if you speak out against obsessively crediting the artists then you can’t be in the nice people’s club with all the other artists. but it makes me so sick.

People who save someone’s art from their page and then reposts it without credit

People who reblog other people’s art and remove the artist comments and souce links

People who disrespect the artist by messing with their art and then being an asshole when the artist asks them to properly credit and/or not steal their art or remove their comments

Okay guys! This whole art theft thing is putting a serious damper on my groove. I went ahead and posted the whole story on my dA journal~

I’d appreciate your support in this, especially since I plan to continue my Mon Esprit series as soon as I have time. orz I love the Amnesia fandom; we’re too small to have something as petty as this consistently lurking about.

Watermarks on art?

I would like to pose a question to all the wonderful artist folk on the Tumblr lands:

How do you feel about adding a watermark to credit your own illustrations (original and/or fanart) that you post on the web?

I personally do not like the idea of adding watermark on my illustrations (especially fanart since it derivative to begin with), but lately I have been feeling differently about this. Often (and especially on websites like Tumblr and zerochan.net) illustrations are posted without any source link or credit to the original artist. This makes me think that a simple digital watermark with the artist’s homepage or their name can at least give credit where credit is due (although anyone with intermediate Photoshop skills can easily remove a watermark… see this post as an example of an artist who DOES include watermarks on their art but has had it literally stolen).

Thank you in advance for any thoughts anyone may have on this :)

HEY, A MESSAGE TO ANYONE WHO REBLOGS ANYONE'S ART EVER

Story time: You see a nice post, with an awesome picture. The user who posted it has, of course, included the source with the picture - you know, giving credit to the original artist. You reblog it, add some tags, maybe a comment, that’s fine! You’re great! Keep on keepin’ on!

You know what’s NOT fine? Removing the source. Stop it, stop it, stop it. There is absolutely no reason to do it. NONE. Removing the source is bad enough, but changing it to your own url is just a complete dick move. Discrediting artists to self-advertise is extremely rude.

Now, it’s not your fault if you’re reblogging from someone who’s already changed the source. I don’t blame you. While it would be nice if you could go back and replace the source, I know it can sometimes be tricky to find the original post, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to do that every time they reblog something.

But to take the time to deliberately stop giving credit to someone, and use someone else’s art for your own self-advertising? Stop it. Just stop it.

This is kind of important to me:

Okay guys, this has very little to do with Jeremy Renner and I’m sorry about that. But I want all of you to know that if at any point any of you feel that I’ve stolen an edit, or a gif, or whatever from you I want you to tell me so.

I’ve gotten two messages from a fantastic blog asking me to credit anything that I’ve taken from them (suggesting that I have taken and not credited them). They were incredibly polite and I don’t mean to suggest other wise. I’m familiar with their galleries and definitely enjoy the work that they do (particularly their video compilations) but truly do get my pictures elsewhere.

However, all of this did get me thinking: there are so very many sources for different images and a ton of galleries and blogs just like their’s and mine that upload and share images and videos of Jeremy that were taken by magazine photographers, portrait photographers, film makers, etc. etc.

I think it’s a huge downside to sites like tumblr that people sometimes forget where these images and videos come from. Putting a filter on or cropping the edges of something doesn’t make the original piece mine or anyone else’s. I know, though, that good edits and gif making and all of that can and does take a lot of work and technical savvy and it makes sense to be proud of that work. Even gathering images into a gallery can take forever and can be a lot of work.

For those reasons I really feel strongly about this and would appreciate any and all polite requests to credit any artists that feel that I haven’t credited them. I am in NO WAY suggesting that I run rampant through the internet stealing people’s work. I work hard on my own edits and gifs and spend a lot of time finding and converting files from the sources (like talk shows, etc.) and I feel just as strongly about my work as others do. I simply recognize that some people may feel that I must have gotten something that I posted from them and took it without credit. It’s really frustrating, but I understand it because, really, how can anyone know that I wouldn’t do something like that unless I’ve said so? There is a disclaimer under the gif of Jeremy on my blog that is a very brief synopsis of this that reads as follows:

Disclaimer: I’m obviously not a celebrity photographer so any pictures posted here were taken by someone else. Regardless of the source/archive/gallery/publication that they came from they were first the art of photographers whose names I will probably never know. If I unwittingly post an edit or something that is unarguably your work, please let me know and I will credit you or remove the post according to your wishes.

Please consider my feelings on this topic, the amount of work I personally put into this blog and the sheer amount of sources for Jeremy Renner material that there is to be found on the internet. If you still feel that I’ve posted something and not properly cited it, please feel free to come to me in my ask box and we’ll get it all sorted from there.

Sorry to all of my followers for this long, text-heavy post but this is very important to me and I felt that it needed to be posted.

It really, really bothers me when I see people reblogging art on Tumblr without any attribution. I don’t care whether it’s sculpture, architecture, fanart, even some crayon drawing a five-year-old drew. If you like it enough to have on your blog, then you like it enough to give credit to the person who made it.

If you create a post showcasing an artist, credit the artist, and provide a link to their online presence (if they have one.) If they message you asking you to take it down, fucking take it down without complaining.

If someone has specifically requested that you not post their art on tumblr, DO NOT POST THEIR ART ON TUMBLR. This is not rocket science.

If you don’t know who made something, Google Image Search now allows you to search by image. That means you can copy the location of the image (eg, Tumblr) and paste it into Google and usually find the artist and the art and everything you need to credit the person. If you can’t figure out how to do this, there are tutorials.

Artists make beautiful things for you to enjoy. The least you can do is say, here, this is cool, this person who made it is also cool. Art is hard. If you don’t think art is hard, you have probably never tried to art. Give credit where credit is due. This includes your blog. Okay? Okay.