Being A Creative On the Web

This is the first post I’ve actually written here in a long time. I won’t be long, but as some of you may know, yesterday was a particularly…interesting…day for us.

To start from the beginning, we have to go to the beginning of this week. I uploaded the Korean Emoticon Graphic and although I always try to put out good work that is helpful/funny in some way, I had no idea that the graphic would blow up like it did. It has become the most popular post on the site with over 4,000 shares at the time of this post.

It showed me that going viral is unpredictable and really can’t be forced. But if you put out good content that people like, the better chance it has of happening.

On the flip side, something happened that happens with many, if not all artists on the web at some point. Your artwork shows up somewhere with and credit to you is completely absent. Someone told me that the graphic had been shared on Drama Fever. However, the graphic was cropped, and no link was pointed back to our Facebook Page or site. I’ve known about Drama Fever before, and another artist, MyKoreanHusband, does comics for them from time to time, so I was a little shocked about it because it wasn’t a site I would have expected it from.

Anyways, I was understandably upset, and voiced my frustration on Twitter and Facebook and was able to get a large group of support from a lot of bloggers in the Korea niche. I was also able to get in contact with the owner of DF, and I’m happy to say that everything has been cleared up, and that it was mostly just a misunderstanding as the photo was actually picked up from somewhere else (the other site had actually cropped the image in 2, although a link back here was posted) and the proper attribution was forgotten.

Mistakes happen. I don’t hold grudges. And if two parties can come to an understanding of what happened, all can be forgiven. Speaking with the owner personally confirmed my previous good opinion about DF so don’t hold it against them.

However, with many other artists, the situation doesn’t end up like this, and you have the original creators of the artwork actually going to court over things like this because the offending website won’t take the images down. It is one of the most annoying and frustrating things as an artist and it’s a big problem today with people who are sharing things on the internet strictly for their own benefit (they may see the creator of the artwork as “competition”).

So yeah. We are actually going to have a few posts from time to time posted on DF so sometimes what seems to be a bad thing can actually end up as a good thing. Hyo was also great throughout all of it and was good at keeping me calm and told me to just wait until they responded to clear it all up. She can be a real calming presence for me.

Hope you guys have a great weekend! Look for a new Dom & Hyo comic by Monday 😉

 

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