Month: April 2015

Overarching

Spearcarrier

I have a little over a month until Arch Anime Con. It’s time for me to set making resin charms aside (take too long) and simply concentrate on getting my artwork and everything ready. Because I’m not making resin charms as much, I’ve been making stickers. I used to be the biggest sticker collector… I love stickers. With each new batch I’m making I have the hardest time putting them into the sell box. I wanna keep them.

Most of the stickers are being listed in my etsy shop as I go, of course. I’m seriously considering taking down the OOAK Leaf Shop. It gets NO action. None. It’s just a space eater, and I hate space eaters. I am considering opening a little online book store… just something small. But I’m not sure I want to go overboard with that. Government regulations are insane, especially when it comes to publications. You’d think I was running moonshine.

The purty ladies running Arch Anime have me a little concerned. It’s only a month away! They’ve listed my name in the appearing list, but they haven’t really updated the site much at all. That’s a little nervewracking. If they cancel at the last second, the hotel is going to charge me munnies. I don’t have munnies. Waaah, please update your website ladies…. I mean, I’m sure they will. I just hope they do soon.

I also volunteered to hold a panel. It would be my first panel, but not my first public speech or even classroom setting. I was a damn good substitute teacher where racial prejudice didn’t preside, a very in demand private tutor, and well… I won’t bore you with my lifelong influences that would have put me directly in the line of fame and fortune if I hadn’t chosen family and children. So I’m not nervous in the least, if they let me.

The panel would be about webcomic making. I decided to offer to do this after a brief discussion with a prose author I work with. I found myself defending the art of webcomic writing, listing why it can be a lot more involved than prose writing and even takes you a step beyond script writing sometimes. It’s a blend of the two. I realized, hey. I should talk about this and do something at the con. Why not?

They haven’t gotten back to me, so I probably won’t be doing it. I sent them a message last night with my new phone number anyway, just in case.

One of the girls that works at Kroger tuned me into an anime last night that I think I’m going to get sucked into: Fairy Tail.  The husband and I watch tv together as family time, so I’m sitting here wanting to gorge on episodes and… can’t! I can’t! The agony! Waaaah…!

So I guess I’ll get back to work. If you come to Arch Anime, please stop by and see me! My hair is still a meter long, so you can’t miss me. And don’t forget, I’ll be filming and putting it up on Youtube… so be sure to come in costume.

This Copyright Shit is For the Birds

Spearcarrier

Today is my son’s birthday.

For various drama reasons, I vowed a couple of years back that my children wouldn’t get anything personal from me ever again. This includes mailing a card from my mailbox in my front yard. I’m not really their mother anyway, they often told me over the years, even though I was there their entire lives. Okay fine.

For my son’s 22nd birthday, though, I decided to get a little personal. Usually I order a gift card for them through giftcards.com and go about my business. This year I uploaded this picture of Linettebusiness card (to the right) with a zombie note. Basically I gave him the desire for brains for his birthday. (Someone has to do it, might as well be me.)

Without telling me, the card company cancelled my order. I found out today, after the fact. I called them about it.

The woman was very stern to me after putting me on hold for a while. She told me that the order was rejected because, and I’m going to quote, I had “taken a picture off the internet.” They had strict policies about stolen artwork.

I told her, but it’s my artwork. MIIIINE. My character, my creation, mine. The comic is mine, the domain is mine, I publish myself, it’s mine. It didn’t matter, I was told, because their automatic system checks for image pings and if an image has had 10 or more backtracks on the internet they cannot even use it.

Furthermore, she told me, they had emailed me the night I’d uploaded the card to let me know.

Which was bullshit. What I’d gotten from them was a note telling me the card  had been mailed, not a note telling me the card had been rejected for wanting to use my own artwork.

I tell myself that at least the angsty old bird was honest about her assumption that I would feel the need to steal something from myself. When I tried to have a personalized credit card through Credit One they were very rude to me about it and didn’t have the balls to lay the claim directly at my feet. They just pushed me around a lot and made me wish I’d never gotten a card through them.

Still. Who cares if my artwork has had 10 backtracks on the internet? Of course it’s had 10 backtracks. Seriously. IT’S ON A FUCKING WEBCOMIC SITE. And only 10 backtracks?

So what if I was making a personalized card using a photo of a family member that I’d gotten from a family shared website? That would certainly have more than 10 hits, because the entire family would be sharing that shit.

Also other artwork I’ve uploaded to that site with more views was approved. So. What the fuck ever.

I’ve been using giftcards.com for a couple of years now, but I think for Christmas I’ll be shopping for a new service. And I’ll be careful to use artwork I haven’t uploaded anywhere yet, just in case. I am my own artist, I do my own stuff. I’m sorry if my stuff looks so professional you confuse it for mainstream media, but honey… if it were mainstream media I wouldn’t have to use your lousy service. And I most certainly wouldn’t.

It’s just another reason why this copyright situation has gone too far, that artists can’t even use their own artwork without getting accused of being criminals.