I've Avoided Publicly Addressing This But I've Been Having My Work Traced And Redistributed For Months.

I've avoided publicly addressing this but I've been having my work traced and redistributed for months. Even after trying to resolve this in private, I was told that the user would stop only to find more instances of the same behavior persisting. I feel like the only thing I can do at this point is to ask others to not support this individual in the future.

Please avoid commissioning/buying designs from/working on projects with the user melkquette/melkquett3/melkqtt.

Below are examples of my work overlaid the art that they uploaded. Please note that these aren't all of the examples but a select few where it's clearer to see.

In November I found their commissions page advertising their artwork using traced pieces of mine. Many of these were uploaded throughout their social media accounts with captions stating that they were created for other users. I also found traced art as part of larger collaborative projects like games or being sold as adopts. I don't allow people to trace and upload my personal artwork, so I emailed Melkquette about this matter hoping to solve this in private.

Melkquette stated that they stopped using my art months ago and weren't able to update their pages since they were offline, but intended to take responsibility.

In that same email, Melkquette wrote this would stop, though they also denied directly using my artwork for projects/commissions and stated they only referenced.

When I pointed out that this was untrue based on the examples provided in our emails, I didn't receive a reply.

For additional context, the assets below were intended for a visual novel project as character visuals, traced over my art. The screenshot was provided from a project development Discord and directly contradicts the idea that unoriginal assets wouldn't be produced/were never produced. This same example was also shown in my initial email where I requested they stop.

Despite responding untruthfully, I was willing to accept Melkquette removing the uploads and no longer using my art as the solution. Most of the posts were taken down with a few exceptions, and they deleted their commission information page that held many of the stolen artwork as samples.

However, I later found this piece was uploaded in January this year, around two months after I privately requested for the misuse of my work to cease. This was created for another user who was not told that this artwork was traced.

Since then I've found additional pieces that were traced from different sources. Upon identifying the originals, any artists I found were privately contacted about this matter. But it also shows that if not using my work, Melkquette continued using the art of others and didn't care to remedy the core issue at hand.

Recently, Melkquette remade their commissions page with a new set of examples that still includes traced work. Note that this user previously stated that they haven't had the opportunity to update their pages due to being inactive after being caught in November, but this is a newly created webpage that's still advertising their work using mine.

I've been told by different users that even though they recognized my style within these uploads, the use of my older personal art to Frankenstein these pieces made it harder to identify that it was traced at all. As a result, there's been a demand for their commissions based on the idea that their art simply resembles mine when that isn't true. I've had to send tickets to take down uploads of this kind of work, and it's unfortunate that others have been spending their hard-earned money on commissions of their characters/ideas only for the art they get to be unauthorized.

I produce much of my art for clients and friends. By allowing this to continue, it disrespects the third parties who own the characters in the original work. Having to tell strangers to take down unauthorized tracing also brings additional people into a problem they didn't ask to be part of in the first place.

I don't want anyone to harass this user, which is why I'm electing to only post this on the smallest platform I have.

If I can't be respected and they won't hold themself to using original work, I'm hoping that this is substantial enough evidence to dissuade anyone from working with them. I only want people to be aware and to lower the demand so that this happens less - that's all.