There was a (book cover/trading cards) artist who found that someone had used and photoshopped her images for forum signatures at an AOC RP site, without credit, because the signature ‘artist’ couldn’t remember where she found them and was playing the “well it’s free publicity for you” card. There was some amusing drama but takedown requests made to the site operator.

Unlikely, yes, but it does happen.

So, if someone is comfortable with using copyrighted images without permission, more power to them.

I guess for that reason I hate to be all “NO U SHOULDN’T USE XX OR YY 4 PIX!” since not everyone is that lucky. But at the same time, yeah, there’s lots of good points made by Alysia et. all. At the very least, I think it’d be nice if people would post where they got something from, and credit the original artist/photographer, etc. I’ll likely start trying to phase out from shops and things like that entirely for that reason, and just use drawn pictures, or stuff with licenses that lets me. Because as I start doing commission work and stuff, it gets me to thinking “What if someone stole from me?” then it makes me a sad panda. So I’m gonna work on that.

As far as commission work goes, if you try to commission a piece and the artist just draws something for you and is all “PAY ME PLZ?” you likely.. don’t want them. *makes a face* To my knowledge, most that do artwork like that work up sketches and communicate with the person paying. They come to agreements, picture is done, everyone is usually happy. If you’re not happy with the sketches, just don’t progress beyond that.

And I’ve never had a person wield an angry stick at me, elf_fu, . I’ve found that people are pretty patient about things like that, and are just happy to finally be getting artwork of their character. More often than not, they’re willing to work with you. So I wouldn’t worry too much about that.

And if I were to commission another artist, that’s probably the biggest factor in keeping me from doing so. Worry that they’ll not be able to capture a character right.

Besides, a few people have tried to draw her and they never seem to get it right. They always try to give her cat ears or leave off the claws or the tail, or get the eyes totally wrong.

She’s so complicated.

I am guilty of airbrushing/drawing over and color tweaking some of the stock photos I use for my characters :s

And speaking of commissions, I know that : http://andrea-koupal.deviantart.com/ is looking for commission work too. A really kick ass artist.