what i learned after my art was "stolen" on instagram
the other day, i was browsing my instagram when something snazzy on explore caught my eye. it was a recent pixel art i did called "midnight city" but when i clicked it, i noticed it was posted without my permission OR credit on one of those edgy teen accounts with obviously no original content. their “aesthetic” really didn’t match with mine so i was confused to see my art sitting there with a bunch of weird, unrelated tags.
anyway, i won't get into too many details but the account had about 16k followers and that’s more than i or like, half of the artists within the small retrowave art community i’m in have. they knew EXACTLY what they were doing.
when people rip off your art, it can be really discouraging in fear you won't get credit for what you put out or it will be represented negatively. i understand there's no guarantee to that (and everyone should), but here's my issue.
it takes a lot of confidence and time to express your IP through any medium and to have that manipulated without your consent is counterintuitive to the culture. i'm still trying to establish my art identity and to have my work practically reduced and degraded is pretty lame and gross actually. if people just learned to post their own work they wouldn't have to rely on the work of others, mang.
overall this experience has made me want to do a lot more and explore different techniques within my art style. if this happens to you (or if it has happened before), just remember that it's YOUR style and no one can really take that away from you, even if they try to run with it. with that said, you can expect a lot more content from me in the next few weeks.
P.S. "pixels” is art too.
---
i sent a (professional) DM to the person to remove it, which i'm certain they ignored, and also reported it to instagram. the post was removed within a few hours for copyright infringement. i would have preferred if they just poofed and lost their waste account because i don't want them to do that to anyone else but if you're curious about the receipts, hmu.
