Six months ago, I made wallpapers of the Red Hood logo based on my own interpretation (a.k.a. I-am-not-even-sure-what-it-looks-like-so-I-made-it-up-based-on-various-comic-frames) of what DC showed in the Red Hood and the Outlaws series. I also posted about it on Tumblr and Twitter. Here it is:

And just today, this showed up on my Tumblr dashboard:

It s a Red Hood iPhone/iPod case being sold for $38.15, and it’s using the logo I made. Don’t believe me? Here, let me overlay my Red Hood logo on top of it:

It’s exactly the same shape and color, right down to every jagged corner and the subtle gradient on the iPod wallpaper version of the logo. The only differences are it’s on a black background (mine’s on gray), it was moved up to look more iPod-y, and it has that “iTodd” text at the bottom. You can see the logo has fuzzy gray pixels around it f you zoom in closely, which shows whoever found the logo separated it from its original gray background.

I wouldn’t be so worked up about this if someone used this logo for a free wallpaper, avatar, or some other creative thing that is for personal use or offered for FREE download. I probably wouldn’t mind much either if it were a logo with a “canon” appearance that everyone knows about (like Superman’s or Batman’s).

This is different, though. This is a fan’s interpretation of a logo that has not been clearly displayed in full (at the time of its creation in February 2012, at least).

Tolerating this kind of theft is almost like saying stealing someone else’s fanart of Thor for a t-shirt you plan to sell is okay.

Anyway, I sent a message to Red Bubble about the matter. I’ve honestly never heard about them before, but their website says they are an online marketplace for artists and a “a respectful, supportive and encouraging community of people who are passionate about art and creativity.” I just hope they do something to resolve this and remind people that being creative is not about taking someone else’s work off the internet and “tweaking” it a bit before putting it up for sale.

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P.S.

Before anyone else decides to post a something as mean and insensitive as the comment above, please take some time to read this post by cornflakepizza on Tumblr. She is not connected to me or this blog whatsoever, but she still defended me (and other fan artists) when someone shot me a mean, ALL-CAPSed reply on Tumblr (the reply was promptly deleted after it received a lot of flak).

If you’re too lazy to click through, here, let me shove it in your face:

“NO. STOP. YOU ARE THE REASON WHY FANARTISTS HATE TUMBLR AND STOP PUTTING UP THEIR WORK.

You clearly have no respect for artists. You seem to have no conception of the amount of time put into digital art and design. You have no idea how much work goes into ACTUALLY FUCKING DRAWING THINGS, which you seem to stupidly equate to your “tracing” over other people’s work and slightly changing colors in photoshop. This would be laughable if it weren’t so fucking disrespectful. Where the fuck did you think that bat symbol you “found on tumblr” came from? It didn’t just pop into existence on its own.

This has NOTHING to do with who “owns” a piece of work. It is already REALLY FUCKING OBVIOUS to everyone that the fanartist doesn’t “own” their work in the sense that DC Comics “owns” characters. No. This has to do with RESPECT and CREDIT and not being a dense, rude jerk when someone kindly asks you to stop making a profit over something they created and quite possibly slaved over.

I am really fucking tired of people taking advantage of artists who publish their work on tumblr for the enjoyment of fellow fans by reposting art without any credit, or changing the source link on posts in order to trick people into following them, or, as in this case, literally using other people’s work to make a profit. It is sickening.

Everyone: PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS CASE ON REDBUBBLE. Do not support someone who steals work and treats artists like this.“