Let's get the fun stuff out of the way:

-Due to the second disc of Apocalypse Now being horribly scratched and keeping me from watching the second half of the movie (why split it Coppola, WHY!), I got to make the mistake of a free rental of The American. I swear, I didn't know George Clooney banging a prostitute could be so boring.

-On the other side of the coin, I liked Easy A far more than I probably should have.

-As an addition to my Art Theft Tips journal nightlink.deviantart.com/journ…, I've discovered a site called Tin Eye www.tineye.com/ that searches for matches of images based on... the images themselves. It's far from comprehensive (there's a couple here that I know are stolen images, but it gives me nada), but still useful for providing that all important proof to nab these wieners.

-Besides Penny Arcade and PVP (I'm not going to bother linking, you should be reading them already), I've been enjoying Nedroid nedroid.com/, Menage a 3 www.menagea3.net/, Chainsawsuit chainsawsuit.com/, and the occasional Kid With Experience jessfink.com/kwe/ (updates sparingly, but boasts the finest banner I've seen).

-I've convince RainbowJava to start up a weekly sketch challenge to stretch our drawing skills. We're going to shoot with alternating suggestions every week of different characters, and post them here for all to see. Anyone who'd like to participate is welcome to join. The inaugural week's subject is The Comedian from Watchmen. Here's hoping we don't give up after a couple weeks!

NL

DA's skin thing is acting stupid, so here's the Frontpage 3:

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DEVIANTART FRONTPAGE 3(or more)
Every journal entry from now on, before I finish, I'll be taking a look at the deviantart front page, and select at least 3 images or writings to feature here. Show some love. Oh, and I encourage anyone to start up their own journal feature like this. It ain't about pageviews, it's about appreciation.




Last journal entries' featured:

-Quick note, anyone who has Manga Studio Debut, you can upgrade to EX SUPER CHEAP here: my.smithmicro.com/email_web/ma…

The deadline is today, and you save $200.

-I report art theft quite often, but over the weekend, for the first time I defended someone who was falsely accused.

The couple of people who suspected had good intentions, but incredibly failed to do any research to prove their suspicions. Without getting into too many details, the issue was raised because the watermark didn't match the user's deviantART name. That does not prove art theft though (I've signed my real name and my deviantART handle before). The kicker was that one of them started adding letters to the watermark (which were not there) to match a different account here to a person that hadn't been active since 2007 (not to mention didn't have the artwork in their gallery, kind of a dead give away).

I'm going to go ahead and offer a list on red flags I see when I suspect art theft. Some of them don't point 100% to skulduggery, but can be clues.

-WATERMARKS
Yes, the case I just talked about proved it isn't a completely reliable method, but still useful. Art thieves (not thiefs) are essentially really stupid. They will usually make quite a few mistakes when submitting stolen work, namely using work with a clear copyright plastered over the image.

If it simply doesn't match the user name, a little more research needs to be done. Check the person's profile and gallery, and see if they ever refer to themselves with a different alias (they could just be using their real name or a handle from a different site they're more active at).

Glaring mistakes are watermarks that lead to someone else's devART page or official companies like American Greetings, Disney, etc (though the staff can be slow to remove if the art isn't from devART).

-WAYYYYYY DIFFERENT STYLES
Not to say nobody is capable of learning vastly different styles, but it is suspicious when a new and completely different looking drawing is submitted by the same person every two minutes. This is the most common one I run across.

-GOT SOMETHING TO SAY?
Here's my general rule of thumb: When an artist clearly spends a great deal of time and effort creating a quality piece of artwork, they generally have more to write in their comments than "lol hahah, it good." For fun extra points, ask them what materials they used. If they respond, "gee, i dont know, markers lol," put them on your suspect list.

-I DON'T KNOW HOW I DREW THIS
Easy red flag. Sometimes we click the wrong category (especially when we're offered past choices and don't look at it closely), but a whole gallery of digital pieces submitted as traditional artwork? Not too many make that mistake.

-GENERATION GAP
Hmm, to put it simply, did the user go from "completely sucking ass" to "omfg, I need to hire you for a project!" in the span of less than 4 days? Nuff said.
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So what can you do to prevent your art from being claimed by someone else? My rule of thumb, stop doing fan art and create something original! No, I don't mean a recoloured Sonic the Hedgehog, create your own characters. It's no surprise that the only art of mine that someone has attempted to claim was during my Teen Titans phase. Few are as inclined to take crazy Lincoln, an Amish/Chinese odd couple, or a talking cake. Fan art is targeted, especially out of canon pairings (and besides, fan fiction writers need to move on when they turn 15).

Let this help you in reporting (not harassing) art theft!

NL

DEVIANTART FRONTPAGE 3(or more)
Every journal entry from now on, before I finish, I'll be taking a look at the deviantart front page, and select at least 3 images or writings to feature here. Show some love. Oh, and I encourage anyone to start up their own journal feature like this. It ain't about pageviews, it's about appreciation.




Last journal entries' featured:

-So, I had no idea about Roger Ebert's cancer surgeries pretty much taking away his jaw.

I don't want to talk about that though.

I know the internet is filled to the brim with assholes and mental midgets, but man a good many of the comments on the news stories are just plain retarded. I'll isolate one:

[i]As "entertaining" as you people felt this man was, you can't ignore the karma in the situation. He spends his career passing off his opinion on what a good or a bad movie is, often very rudely and abrasively.....he's a critic! While i wish bad on no fellow man, one can't argue when someone who can cruelly denounce some guy's idea of art and constantly criticize loses his ability to spe(ak)[/i]

My god, he's no different than anyone else, jackass! Yeah, let's all give the makers behind Beverly Hills Chihuahua a nice hero cookie and pat on the head. So, by this guy's standards, my general dislike of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Twilight, and Lost in Translations (there's a variety for yah) should result in some horrible disease later in life? Also, I think this guy needs to look up the word "karma."

I give him points for decent grammar though.

I read Ebert's reviews every so often, usually only after I see the movie, or if I know the flick will be a turd (TRANSFORMERS!). Heck, just the other day I read his review for The Green Hornet, and while I actually really enjoyed it, I couldn't disagree with much Ebert had to say.

Reminds me of a story:

Jason: God, I hate Roger Ebert!
Shawn: Okay... Why?
Jason: He gave Saw a bad review!
Shawn: ...And that surprises you?

NL

DEVIANTART FRONTPAGE 3(or more)
Every journal entry from now on, before I finish, I'll be taking a look at the deviantart front page, and select at least 3 images or writings to feature here. Show some love. Oh, and I encourage anyone to start up their own journal feature like this. It ain't about pageviews, it's about appreciation.




Last journal entries' featured:

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-Gah, bad drawing funk. Haven't even attempted this week. Maybe watching more Dirty Harry will do the trick.

-*FREE DEVIANTART USER NAME TIP!!!*
Under no circumstances should your name be a famous copyrighted character's name with some numbers or blatant misspellings thrown it. Nobody is going to care about supahsaiyensonichedgehog1443's crappy base. Ever.

-I get a free pass on the name. While I did name myself after Link from Zelda, I found out later a "nightlink" is a term for night time transportation over in England. Also, I don't posts gobs of Zelda fanart.

-New Spider-Man costume looks pretty cool www.hitfix.com/articles/first-… ...I hope they don't explain how he gets it. Did't work for the Punisher, won't work for Spider-Man.

-I swear, just about every time I look at the front page here, I stumble on at least 3 "original" characters that are just recoloured (badly) Sonic characters. My first thought is about how silly they are, and my second thought is that I'm a freaking jerk, since the people posting them are like 11. Still though, one of these days I'm parodying them.

-Why isn't The Crow on blu ray yet? I've been hankering to watch it, but my dvd is MIA, and I know the minute I buy a replacement dvd I'll get the bloody first one back. That's what I get for lending movies. Heck, I haven't had my copy of Psycho in my hands since October.

-Finished Undead Nightmare over the weekend. It's not often I finish games, so I have to boast, even if it's technically DLC. You should have seen me when I beat Silent Hill 2 for the first time.

NL

DEVIANTART FRONTPAGE 3(or more)
Every journal entry from now on, before I finish, I'll be taking a look at the deviantart front page, and select at least 3 images or writings to feature here. Show some love. Oh, and I encourage anyone to start up their own journal feature like this. It ain't about pageviews, it's about appreciation.

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Last journal entries' featured:

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-Dear Anybody Who Does This,

Capitalizing The First Letter In Every Word In A Sentence Makes You Look Retarded.

NL

DEVIANTART FRONTPAGE 3(or more)
Every journal entry from now on, before I finish, I'll be taking a look at the deviantart front page, and select at least 3 images or writings to feature here. Show some love. Oh, and I encourage anyone to start up their own journal feature like this. It ain't about pageviews, it's about appreciation.

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Last journal entries' featured:

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Mature Content

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