The concept behind it is one of ownership. Probably not in the way most people think of it. I’m not saying people who do this are trying to pretend like they made the images. Hell, half the time they’re sharing tons of images totally unrelated to each other so the average person wouldn’t assume they came from the same artist. (Then again people can be led to believe almost anything so I wouldn’t totally rule it out, either.) The issue of ownership comes from the notion that this person’s tumblr, their facebook, wherever they’re collecting these images for people to find, is their site. They want folks to discover this content on their blog and they want to receive the credit for discovering this comic or image. Think of it more like a mixtape. You may know all the artists on it but the reason people put them together is to express themselves through a collection of somebody else’s stuff. The problem here is, when they strip away the source info, the creator of that material gets no real benefit for it being shared. Oh, sure, people are seeing their work and being aware of it. But does your doctor pay his bills by having you tell others how awesome he is when he finishes surgery on you? Of course not. He might get future referrals from clients if he does an excellent job but that itself isn’t compensating him for his time, his training, and every other expense involved in using his skills. And at least in that example you’re crediting him for his work. Little good it would do that doctor for you to walk around showing off your new nose job and never mentioning his name.

Personally I think of tumblr as a catchall. If somebody blogs something I want other people to see I reblog it. I tend to keep comments alive because sometimes I know I find new tumblrs via comments and reblogs of things I like. However I can see the problem with keeping them. Youtube comments, for example, are some of the most useless text ever committed to the internet. And the iphone client I use for tumblr hides (important difference: not strips) comments until I decide I want to read them so it doesn’t distract from the original post. If you’re interested in seeing the chain of an image being shared online it should be there to follow. Then again there are some sites that try to rebrand all material hosted so it points back to their site. Look up the original issues dealing with ebaum’s world if you’re so inclined. I know I get tired of seeing a watermark clearly slapped over another watermark.

This comes back to the concept of etiquette vs entitlement. Is a creator entitled to have their identity passed down with their content? I say yes, totally, reverse the situation and you’d want the same sort of treatment. Now is the creator entitled to decide what the audience does with that material? That’s a grey area. EULA don’t really hold up in courts and personally I don’t subscribe to the notion that I’m merely licensing my content, not owning. This is a line the digital age is crossing where middlemen and gatekeepers are finding themselves at an unenforceable impasse. You used to have to buy an album if you liked a song. Now you don’t even have to download it but can usually find it streaming from various sources. I’m sure plenty of people would like to put the genie back in the bottle if they could but keeping content officially offline just means it will be more easily available unofficially. Call that whatever you want, you’re leaving money on the table when it’s easier to steal your product than it is to legitimately purchase it. I like spending money on things I like because that’s how the system is supposed to work. I like supporting good content. The problem comes when gatekeepers try to make an audience jump through hoops by limiting how they can enjoy said content with crap like DRM or expecting people to buy the same material again in a different format.

Back to etiquette for a minute. If you’re running a site that reposts stuff from other people and you intentionally strip their credit info from the files, stop doing that. That’s a real dick move. Also, if you’re a content creator and you’re branding your images with a huge watermark that ruins having an online gallery, stop doing that. It’s really annoying to people who don’t steal and it makes you look hyper paranoid that everybody’s going to rip you off. I wish I had better answers on how to encourage better sharing online and better ways for creators to get paid for their stuff. All I can say is make it easier for people to pass your stuff around legitimately. Get on tumblr yourself and share it. Find the folks who do credit creators for their work and follow them back. There’s always going to be the percentage of people that will never pay for anything and I suppose there will always be people trying to take credit for somebody else’s stuff. It’s a better use of time and energy to find and establish communities of people that will support artists and that will dress down others for lacking proper attribution.

Come see me at SPACE 2012!

I’ll be in Columbus this weekend for the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (SPACE) in Columbus, Ohio. Table 65 – I’ll have the 2071 collections for sale, the poster by my buddy Gerry, as well as a few other things. Come by and say hi!

When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

The same holds for being bored, frustrated, and all the other negative feelings you can have about your work. Take drawing backgrounds for example. Everyone hates how long it takes and how boring it is. Perspective – total bummer, right? That’s when you need to find what you can love about it. I think Art Deco architecture is awesome so I started doing some studies on what elements I liked about it. Then I started putting those studied in my backgrounds. Don’t like learning some new drawing program? Try drawing a naked person with it. Or some fan art. Or whatever turns your crank and gets you over that creative hump.

Remember blogging? Yeah, I’d like to do some more of that but I’m disciplining myself to finish working on comics first before I burn any energy writing here. As for comics, 2071 has updated all of January so far and I’m pretty happy about that. Still working out the kinks of a regular workflow but we’re getting there. There’s something about the equilibrium of a weekly and daily routine.

Site changes include a couple of things. There’s the portfolio which should be self-explanatory. There’s also an events section where I’ll be listing all my upcoming convention appearances.

Don’t let the prices scare ya – I’m flexible depending on the piece you have in mind. And if there’s something specific you’d like done that isn’t listed feel free to ask.

Stuff we talked about:

I’m exhibiting at Mid-Ohio Con October 22-23. I’ll post my artist alley table info once I get it. Visit the convention’s site for more info.

I showed them a fun computer game I’d recently heard about, Kerbal Space Program. We discussed our love of BMAR which has sadly been on hiatus lately. We also expressed our love for synchtube and for Kolchak the Night Stalker (including a weird scene in the 2005 reboot where the original Carl Kolchak is digitally inserted into a scene with his modern counterpart) and the Russian Winnie the Pooh.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We also have a chuckle over some videos by Rob Liefeld. One where he’s talking about an infamous drawing he did of Captain America and another where he’s drawing while driving.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

EDIT: MP3 quality changed to reduce file size

Some of you might know him from his glorious bad movie night BMAR. Gerry is a man of many talents – video game design, comics, and most recently scrimshaw. He’s currently doing commissions and selling some of his rad art on Etsy.

Really I think this all comes down to how I’m going to be using this blog. I feel like I should be on here posting about the cool stuff I’m working on but I don’t have a routine for writing posts that doesn’t eat up my time to work. Then again I discovered yesterday that my daily work flow could probably be extended if I take more regular breaks so I should probably just retool my day.