female | POPPY GRAAL GFX

Hello! Just have a few things to say regarding watermarks and people stealing personal customs. What I’m about to say applies to specific artists I’ve seen recently. If you’re not an editor or artist and you’re just looking for a head/body upload, feel free to keep scrolling.

I apologize in advance for my thoughts being so disorganized, but I think you’ll get the point.

Regarding Erasing Watermarks and Stealing Customs:

I cannot stress this enough, but if you are going to edit one of my original heads, LEAVE ONE OF THE WATERMARKS… aka where the head says “Poppy,” or whichever artist’s watermark is on the upload. Adding your watermark is fine if you’ve edited it, but don’t erase the original artist’s name. I permit people to edit or “transform” my work, if that’s what you would like to call it, but don’t erase my watermark and slap on yours. Not cool, babe. I spend hours on some of my heads, just for people to erase my name in 2 minutes. Not. Cool. Babe.

I’m also not trying to argue editing is not “transformative.” Still, when someone pays for art or a head explicitly designed for themselves, other people don’t automatically get the right to take what belongs to them. Think of stealing uploads like this: 

Your friend dyes their hair black with a cool purple highlight in it. She has curly hair, and you think the colors look gorgeous on her. Since you liked it so much, you went to dye your hair the exact same color with the same purple highlight the next week, without telling your friend. The only difference is that you straighten your hair. So it’s transformative, right? You can argue it’s “transformative,” but that is not the issue. You still blatantly copied their idea, and all your family and friends know you copied it and who you copied it from. Yeah you can do it, but it’s not a good look on you, is it?

The same goes for pixels. It’s super easy to tell when someone uses the exact pixel placement and colors from another head, especially when you’re stealing from a well-known artist (speaking about well-known artists in general).  

Let’s think of another example that came to my attention, shall we?

The Mona Lisa is obviously a very famous painting, and yes, it has been recreated and transformed in so many ways. But nobody recreated the Mona Lisa and didn’t at least give credit to Da Vinci. Nobody steals artwork from a gallery to scribble over the artist’s signature and write your own. Get my point?

I’m not saying this to try and discourage anyone from editing or making art/uploads. I don’t even know if the person this is directed towards will read this. Maybe something will get lost in translation. I will admit when I started editing, I made the same mistake of copying a head without permission, but I took the criticism and learned from it (this was literally 10 years ago (2012), so don’t come at me. (Wow, I’m old…)).

There are hundreds of public Graal websites and a wide variety of heads you can choose from to edit. The majority of the artists that run these public websites even encourage edits and give you permission to edit the customs. The issues and angry confrontations or comments you receive only arise when you steal and do not adhere to the artist’s conditions. Nothing bad ever came from being respectful towards the artists and respecting their wishes to keep an upload to oneself. I’m simply asking that these people stop taking what’s not theirs, especially if it was a commission for someone else that was not intended for you to use.

I also want to look at this issue from another perspective. You edit a head that you stole from someone who commissioned the head from a well-known artist. You decided to post your edited version on your website and didn’t give any credit whatsoever. Now what? Does that mean you’re trying to take credit for it? It seems like it, since you plaster your name on the back of each head and erase the other names. I don’t understand what you’re trying to get out of this. Credit? Graal… fame? Everyone knows you didn’t make the upload from scratch. So… why wouldn’t you just respect the artist’s wishes and leave their watermark on it? I can’t speak for all uploads, but most of the time, the watermark is on a death frame you see for half a second. It’s barely even noticeable. So just leave it, please. It’ll even save you the effort of copy/pasting over it.

As I said, I’m not trying to discourage anyone from making art. I’m not trying to start drama, because ohmygosh graal drama is so not worth it. I’m just trying to make a point. Some people may read this and think I’m overly obsessed with graal uploads and will tell me to chill out, lol, but I’m not mad for me, I’m mad for a friend. I do not care much if someone steals one of my uploads – I don’t have any uploads I keep to myself anyway. If you ever see me around Graal, you’ll usually see me wearing heads I already have up on this site or heads I’m testing to post here in the future. Anyway, if it wasn’t clear, this rant was just my thoughts on a situation where a friend of mine had a head they commissioned stolen and was later posted on another website. It’s one thing to take a head someone edited for free, but it’s truly unfair to people who PAY for custom heads and have them stolen. Get your hands off their work and edit customs you have permission to use… or get a head commissioned yourself. It’s much more rewarding to have something original.

Obviously, I won’t directly expose the person or their website because, as you can see, I disagree with people who do this. I don’t want to give them exposure because others may think this is okay and follow in their footsteps. This rant can also apply to many other beginner artists, so I’m just going to leave it as a general rant to people who steal customs and erase watermarks.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I genuinely appreciate everyone that visits my website and uses my uploads, stolen or not. A special thanks to gfx editors that give proper credit, I love seeing your creations and how you make them look so much better and more unique than the originals!! 🥰 You guys make it worth it to keep making scratch customs ❤️ With the amount of support I receive from you all, I don’t see myself quitting anytime soon.

With that being said, If you have ever edited and posted an edit of one of my heads on your site, I’d love to promote it here! If you want me to feature you/repost a post of yours, don’t hesitate to reach out! ❤️ I would love to support other artists to the best of my ability.

Now please enjoy another head I took hours to complete. God forbid someone takes my Mona Lisa and replaces my watermarks with theirs. /s

SCRATCH FEMALE HEAD

Feel free to use or edit any of my work, but please leave watermarks, give credit, and read the Terms of Use!

CREDITS: POPPY

DO NOT SET TRANS

Troubles uploading? Please contact me on Classic: Poppy (Levi)

If you have any ideas for what I should create next, please comment or contact me. Thanks!! ~ Poppy