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Statutory damages for willful copyright infringement go up to $150,000 per offense. Instead of complaining to a content thief who obviously doesn't care, the artist should be looking for a lawyer interested in taking this on for a cut. Then the donors to the kickstarter will at least know where their money went.

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Except that it doesn't seem to be original work. So how are you going to maintain that your derivative work was fair use, which relies on being non-commercial, while suing someone for damages? Especially when the one who "stole" your work seems to have a better case for fair use.

"it doesn't seem to be original work"

You mean it's a depiction of an existing character from a game or something. That doesn't mean that it's not original artwork. I'm sure that would be a relevant issue in court, but that's why we have trials.

"which relies on being non-commercial"

As other posters here have pointed out, this is not true.

Her derivative work is not fair use. So she doesn't need to argue that. And the other person has NO case of fair use.

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