I Made That Part 2

Back in November of last year, I posted about randomly finding my cartoon family image on someone's personal blog. It wasn't a big problem, but it was one of my first encounters with my artwork being used without my permission or proper credit being given.

For whatever reason, that cartoon family illustration has had fluctuating levels of popularity and I recently found it on two more personal blogs. This site had it being used as an example of a bride-to-be's family - as before, it wasn't being used for personal profit or gain, so it wasn't a real concern. This blog used it as part of the blogger's Christmas list - again, not a problem...but in this particular case, I'm not sure I'd have been heartless enough to ask the blogger to remove it even if it was being used for personal gain.

My friend, James Provost, a technical illustrator that I've previously written about, is a contributor to TechnicalIllustrators.org; back in April, he wrote a great entry about further protecting your images with Metadata - you can find it here. It's an easy and effective addition to your files that could be the difference between your image getting you hired and just remaining a nice picture with an unknown creator sitting on an art director's computer.

Truth be told, I haven't gotten around to doing this yet, but I'm about to and so should you.