I won't bother with copyright. It's already mostly impossible anyway. If you make illustrations these days you can't prevent their distribution. Only situation

I won't bother with copyright. It's already mostly impossible anyway. If you make illustrations these days you can't prevent their distribution. Only situation worth bothering with copyright is if a major company/high paid illustrator lifts your work, and even then it's tenuous (look up "sail lin call of duty floof"). The way to make money as an independent is to make distinct/unique content people can immediately recognize as yours and open up donations (patreon). You can also time gate access to new work to some extent. If there's a better model, I'm unaware. Copyright disproportionately protects large firms, not individual creators. There are exceptions, of course, but they are far from the norm. Hell, most big companies I've worked at have clauses that say I assign them all rights to all work I make while employed with them. Those are fun to deal with. Short of massive success, I would be better off as an illustrator if copyright were entirely dismantled. I trust attorneys on a case-by-case basis. So far the ones financially aligned with me have been swell.