Animation Source Forums

With a recent outbreak of Balto-Sourcers' arts being stolen on DeviantART (you know who you are, and you know where it is), I decided to help you all out with an art theft prevention lesson.

Keep in mind that it may not be 100% fool proof, but it will detour thieves from stealing your art (be aware tracers can still trace, and people can still jack your poses!).

First of all, putting your signature along the bottom simply will not do! Nor will it do around the corners of any side. The art theif can simply crop the drawing and other people won't know the difference.

Also, signing all huge in bold marker won't do, either. It takes attention away from the picture, and could inflict on the people who like it (for example: I like it, but the signature ....).

So this is what you can do:

Balto Sorucers:
Sign your signature in an irremovable place. Such as on a leg, on an open space near the tail and hind quarters, or stuck in/around the body. What does this do? Makes it hard to remove! Then, if the thief does get it off, someone will notice that somehting isn't right (a white spot or smudged area), and someone will get suspicious and call them out.

What am I talking about? Something as simple as I did with my painting Starchaser. I put my signature in two places, on the bottom and right up around the leg - so close to the body that it'd be impossible to remove without "harming" the image in some manner or another (plus, I have it on several websites, so someone would be bound to recognize it ;D ).

Deviant Artists:
There's a thing called a "watermark." It will show up on the full view of the image(s), and will have (c) Kirada.deviantart.com (for example) on it.
To select the watermark, after you upload it there will be a dimensions page. You want to select the highest dimensions, and then check the box "Add Watermark" (your image must be 400 pixels plus for this to work). I put the watermark on as much of my DeviantARTwork as possible, as well as the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. (This gives you copyrights to the picture{s}).

If you're on a website that is notorious (famous) for art being stolen, I suggest you make a DeviantART account (if you're old enough! ) and use these watermarks, and then distribute the watermarked version on other websites. ;D

If you have any other tips, feel free to post them. Artists around the world will appreciate it.

thank you Kirada! I saw who stole a lot of our friend's art on DA...I want to put in my art this "watermark"

Good advice.
But I wanna say that I incredibly dislike the deviantArt's copyright mark on people's work. Ruins the quality drastically.

Well there's another option. You can create your own watermark on photoshop by lowering the opacity percentage on the layer with the watermark on it. (Draco told me how to do that)

Kirada i only have to say one thing You rock thanks for sharing this i never really put out any art work without a sig or watermark on the leg or somthing but now i am going to be sure to do so on every one of my pictures.

* Evil glare to all those who steal art* Beware the watermarks XD