Battlestains Redux

Years ago, 2005 in fact (it says so in the signature on the pic), I did an image/character piece on Concept Art.org for a challenge. I ignored the brief (dur) and did an image totally for myself. I was going through the ‘girls with big swords’ stage! It wasn’t a very good pic, awful in fact. The face looked pasted in probably because I was in the [bad] habit of doing the face in a separate file and actually cutting and pasting it in later, essentially to keep file sizes down (don't do it kids!). But I did like the metal arm and some of the textures on the clothes. It was on my website for a while, but I went-off it quite quickly and took it down.

About a month ago I got a mail from some kind soul on Deviant Art to say that someone had posted this image as theirs, and it was available as a print. I checked it out, and sure enough, there’s my pic, renamed from ‘Battlestains’ to ‘Vampire Assassin’. She’s not a vampire, but ho-hum… Now I know Deviant Art is ripe with this sort of stuff, apparently, but it hadn’t happened to me before (as far as I know), and I’d assumed it wouldn’t, because I’ve NEVER posted my artwork on Deviant Art. I’ve wanted to, believe me! Maximising your audience should be very important to an artist, but generally I’m always a bit reticent about ‘over-exposure’, so I’d put my ‘posting artwork on DA’ onto the back burner for the time being. I have an account there, but it’s empty. I made a polite but firm post on the ‘artists’ page asking them to take it down as it wasn’t theirs, and that I had informed DA. However I didn’t get a reply to my first message to DA so I tried again, but then discovered they reply ‘on the website’ not directly to you, and my sp@m box had a notification in it! I was informed that my request to have the image removed ‘was invalid’… ‘Invalid’! The message was 'generated automatically'... uh huh... riiiight...

Well, I've now been asked to go through a complicated legal procedure to ask the 'artist', or DA to take the image down. I only want the image removed. I mean... I DID IT, in all its bad anatomy, flat faced, awkward poseyness! SO I decided better time would be spent, for NOW, in doing up the image I at least liked bits of. So here's the before and after. It's still a bit poo, but at least it's polished poo. When I get back in touch with the lumbering monolith that is DA I shall keep you updated...

Before: 

 After: