Does it really happen? Or am I going to work of watermarks for nothing?
Personally, I never put watermarks on my works; but now I started to, because someone grabbed a bunch of art by other people and tried to sell them on an amino app or something. I dont do it for myself but for my commissioners.
Other than that, there's this girl that copied my OC and made a very similar looking one but im too shy to say anything so I just. mweh..
I've had both my art and characters stolen, and had someone call me the theif bc my character has brown hair and brown eyes
???
One of my (now ex) "friend" stole one of my ocs like bruh you serious?
Then they proceeded to sell designs i gifted to them (reminder, they were personally designed to their liking and FOR FREE as a gift) and they made ME look like the bad guy that it was my fault we stopped being friends and i was practically forced to leave DA cause they sent their army to stalk my account for them :"^)))))
i've never had any problems with my characters (just fanart) until i started drawing/posting gem OCs because of fuckin course......lol
there's been a few occasions of others just recolouring my gems to claim as their own.. one told me it "wasn't a big deal" because it was "basically just a recolour [and] i credited you", even though it's explicitly written on my profile/faq to NOT DO THAT. they *still* haven't taken it down lol
others flat out use my gems as bases (using certain body parts like arms or legs to franken-draw(?) their gems) or turn them into bases. thankfully most of them ask first but sometimes they don't.
I have seen very close copies/recolors/characters that are obviously 'inspired' from some of mine. As far as for outright character theft? Not as far as I'm aware.
Even so, I watermark pretty much everything that isn't a reference.
Yup. It hasn't happened with art yet, but I had someone copy/paste my entire character profile once and try to RP it as their character because they liked it. I was, of course, furious and they didn't answer their PMs. Eventually, one of my friends found the chat room that they were in and I confronted them publicly about it.
My favorite part was that they were apologetic and didn't know any better because the group of 10+ people they were with supported them stealing entire characters to RP with. Of course I shamed them the most for saying that ignorance is an excuse and not gently correcting them from the get go. Lead by example and all of that. I helped them set up a new character for themselves.
It's made me paranoid to put fully detailed character bios up anywhere, though. As far as art goes, I absolutely recommend you watermark anything and everything. The only things I don't have watermarked are the ones that can be grabbed from DA already without watermarks.
OH BOY I have one girl who I've had since 2011, and she is CURSED. She's been stolen so many times, sometimes out of malice, sometimes because people are idiots. It got to the point I just retired her because it was so ridiculous, but recently I revamped her and I shit you not... 3 days later she was stolen.
I've also had problems with people taking my art and using it as icons/faceclaims, which watermarks and sorta prevent, but then it's a whole other issue if someone starts impersonating you.....
tldr; jesus christ yeah
My OCs haven't been stolen that I know of, but people use my role play character, Vaxir, all the time. She's been ripped off in-game, traced, and even had people use her in their role plays >_>
This is a late response but
Shade
bless you for trying to help the person. you didnt have to do that, but you did, and i'd just like to give you a big round of applause for it. sometimes its hard to realize what youre doing is bad when you have a bunch of friends telling you its ok, so its always really nice to have someone come in, say its not ok, and try to help.
Almost ever happened to me, maybe it's just because I'm not a popular artist / my art skills aren't the best and people won't really look at my art and think "oh! I'm going to steal this drawing/character!". However, I'm not really aware if someone did that again in the past and got away with it?
I remember that a person copied an old design from me and sold it, but I let it go because I never really used that character and it wasn't a big deal. I however reported the user, but besides that I haven't gotten in any similar situation.