OH, PSSHAW

Tchotchke - Come on, Sean (Ambar Navarro, 2023)

When an artist shares their work for free online, it can be easy to assume the art is free for everyone else to use too. So you grab it and include it in your own project, and all of a sudden an artist is mad at you, their fans are calling you out, you’re getting threatened with legal action—or even scarier, the artist’s publisher is threatening you with legal action. One-shot comics and minicomics are especially susceptible to this misunderstanding because often they are seen as viral memes instead of art, or treated as public property. But is this really the case? This guide will help you navigate using art you’ve found online. We’ll start with three basic questions: 1. Do I need to ask permission from the artist? 2. Do I need to give credit to the artist? 3. Do I need to pay the artist? After that, we’ll offer some tips on how to approach the artist.

I wrote an article for Cartoonists United! CU has a great collection of resources to help the art community, and I was really excited to contribute.

If you don't know whether it's safe to use a piece of art you found online, if you don't know how to ask permission to use art, and if you are unsure of how to approach artists, read the article!

And if you're an artist who frequently finds your work being used without permission, spread this around so more people know the etiquette around using art online!

This year's side 3D project for my classes - I decided that since I'm making a historically acurate model of a slavic woman in the early middle ages I might as well have some fun for my other classes and turned her into a fantasy character :-D!

Back off!

From an essay about Ryoko Yamagishi's Arabesque (1971):

Uh oh! Daddy's younger boss yelled at him today. GO BACK 3 SPACES.

This is the civit. They were conscripted to the ship’s defense by the Barbary Lion. After a lifetime living in a royal menagerie (and with the Barbary Lion), they crave violence, so honestly this whole “lost at sea” and “threatened by pirates” thing has been a real opportunity for them.

If you would like to know more about the civit and the violence it craves, check out my Kickstarter!