What process files can I show to prove my artwork was made by hand?
My students keep a sketchbook page, a photo of the work in progress and the layered file at three stages. It is plain and it works when a teacher asks. For you the equivalent is the thumbnail sketch, the rough, the line work and the color pass, saved as separate dated files.
Cite
Creatisimo, "What process files can I show to prove my artwork was made by hand?", https://creatisimo.net/topic/what-process-files-can-i-show-to-prove-my-artwork-was-made-by-hand/, accessed 2026-11-14.I am a freelance children's book illustrator and I work in Procreate. Twice this year someone has questioned whether a finished piece was drawn by me. Once it was a print site that labeled a piece as AI, and once an art director half joked that the style "looked generated". I was able to resolve both, but it cost me a stressful afternoon each time.
I would like to be ready next time. What can I keep, from now on, that gives a reasonable person a way to see how a piece was made? I already have the layered files and the sketches, but I do not know what is actually convincing and what is not.
Specifically: do time lapse exports help? What about saving versions at each stage? Is it worth turning on Content Credentials in my export, even if the tool I draw in does not support them natively? I am not trying to win an argument with software. I just want a calm, honest paper trail I can send to a client in two minutes.
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- Clara B.Member ·
My students keep a sketchbook page, a photo of the work in progress and the layered file at three stages. It is plain and it works when a teacher asks. For you the equivalent is the thumbnail sketch, the rough, the line work and the color pass, saved as separate dated files.