Art Thief Look-Out

This art thief was first alerted by LiLaiRa in this journal entry, showing the blatant rip-offs: lilaira.deviantart.com/journal…

How to spot an art thief?  One simple way that is very well showcased in this "artists" gallery is the hugely wide variety of styles and the combination of very good and not-so-good techniques and drawing capability.  For instance, this artist APPEARS to have fantastic anatomy, facial expressions, etc., and yet their colouring techniques are crude, choppy, and while some lines are smooth, others are jittery and jagged.

Compare this: lelecloud.deviantart.com/art/O… which has nice anatomy and line weight, but the "colouring" has a clear novice-mistake of straight scribble-lines to simply FILL an area without mind of the fact that using straight lines creates a choppy, sectioned look.

to this: lelecloud.deviantart.com/art/S… - look again that the anatomy and expression look pretty good, but check out how uneven and jagged the lines on the tip of the tail are.  Also note how different the styles between the character in the foreground and the detailed walls of the background are.

to this: lelecloud.deviantart.com/art/N… - Great anatomy, great fuzzy-fur-look, but... that colouring again.  Look at how boring the background is.  Look how she thought it was a good idea to shade sharply on the shoulder and belly - don't you think that someone who has such a grip on anatomy should have a better idea of how sharp those sections of shading are?  She had some good shading on previous pieces, but this one is... meh.

to this: lelecloud.deviantart.com/art/G… - Wow, the colouring and lines looks so SMOOTH.  Oh wait, there's white spots where she cut and paste the picture, and the lines are actually kind of scribbly.

to this: lelecloud.deviantart.com/art/S… - Wait, whoa, how did we go from such smooth colouring to this blotchy, faded work?  And see those paint spatters in the background?  This seems to be a favourite background for her - seriously, they're all over her gallery.

Another part of what makes this artist difficult to pin as a fraud is the fact that these all are TECHNICALLY her "original" creations, because she really DID draw all of them from scratch... by tracing.  So they're not EXACT replicas, but they're also clearly copied and no credit is EVER given to another artist for where the original content is coming from.  A lot of people think that by tracing a picture, or colouring it, it's "theirs", but the truth is - art doesn't work that way.  I've known some people who can colour wonderfully, but suck at actually drawing, so they colour other people's work - AND GIVE CREDIT AND ASK PERMISSION FROM THE LINE-WORK ARTIST.  Heck, if you go way back in my gallery, even I went through a period of colouring other people's works, but I always gave credit where credit was due.  That is completely different from just blatantly not crediting someone at all when using their works, almost line-for-line.  That's what we call theft.

Check out this person's gallery and make sure your art isn't in it, and if it is - DO NOT confront the art thief.  Report them directly, otherwise they'll take down your content as to not be caught, and then the authorities in charge of monitoring such business will be presented with NO evidence of your complaint at all.  If the authorities tell you that you should resolve these kinds of things by yourself, tell them on no uncertain terms, "I wanted you to see the transgression first because I was worried that by confronting them, they would just take down my pieces and then there wouldn't be any evidence to provide as a source of conflict, especially if the confrontation escalated."  This is an important thing to do if you notice that the artist you're complaining about looks to be stealing from other people as well, and if they are, point that out in your report as well.  It's important that the authorities take these sorts of transgressions very seriously, because if they steal from you, what's to stop them from stealing from someone else?