A Monster Prom poster got hijacked for a Papa Roach concert

Artists online are no strangers to having their artwork stolen and repurposed. Most times I've seen artists work taken without credit it's been by art aggregating accounts or by individual personal accounts that just don't care to credit creators. This is the first time I've heard of a rock band pilfering digital art. Or, at least the venue the rock band is playing at, it sounds like.

Last week, Papa Roach posted a photo on Facebook promoting its Saturday night show at the South Side Ballroom in Dallas with a familiar pink face and fin ears. If you don't know Papa Roach offhand any better than I do, maybe you'll at least recognize this song in all its 4:3 aspect ratio glory from 2009.

Through the social media grapevine, a screenshot of the concert poster and the original poster, drawn by Ástor Alexander, wound up on Twitter. Vlad Calu of Those Awesome Guys, credited as the publisher for Monster Prom, posted a side-by-side making it entirely obvious that the poster uses Alexander's work. The original artwork is from a poster being sold on Monster Prom's Yetee store. 

Julián Quijano, creative director at Monster Prom’s development studio Beautiful Glitch, tells Kotaku that the theft has mostly just instigated some new in-jokes for the team. “The whole thing just gave us some good laughs, silly puns and a funny story to tell,” he says.

In fact, Quijano had a bit of insight on how it might have happened in the first place. “I used to work in nightclubs for a couple years, and clubs and venues always do the same: their graphic designers have to do some poster designs per week for each party, concert, whatever. What ends up happening is they just Google some random cool images to alter a bit and add the info,” he said. “So this is probably that: a venue that improvised a poster and their graphic designer found our poster to do so.” 

Fortunate for the venue that Beautiful Glitch is so accepting of their last resort to hit that deadline.