Last week I got a message that my work had been stolen and sold on eBay. Yep, stolen. So I hopped over to investigate and did everything that any normal person would do - rant in despair, endlessly report them, and lay wide awake for a response from eBay. Luckily I managed to get the listings taken down but then lil’ old me decided to have a look around to see if it was sold anywhere else...

And wouldn’t you know, it was.

So I just gave up in the end. I couldn’t just keep on reporting them so I just stopped looking. I was pissed. How dare they profit off my work?!

This idea then popped into mind and so I scribbled throughout the night in both anger and determination, and the illustration right at the top is the end result. It’s a message to all of those people out there stealing people’s work and using it without their consent. This isn’t going to stop me from creating! In fact it makes me more determined!

Along the way I’ve learnt some very important tricks in order to protect your work*:

Watermark the shit out of your work. I wish I had done this earlier instead of just trying to hide my signature in my work. Make the watermark so obvious that people can’t ignore it, but not so much that it ruins the piece.
Post it everywhere you can, so if some dick does steal your work you then have proof that it’s yours.
Keep all of your sketches and workings, just in case!
If you have the money - sign up to ACID (Anti Copying in Design) a company that specialises in copyright. They will provide you with lots of help and have a database you can upload all of your work to.

Have you ever had your work stolen?
Because I feel you. It sucks. But we can do this!

*well, protect it as much as you can. Because there will be that one bastard that will go to great lengths to steal your work.