Portfolio etiquette and copyright concerns

AtomicToyRobot

Hello all,

I have a concern about what I am showing on my portfolio due to a critique I received the other day on the Polycount
Linkedin page. I posted my site for review and some of the points I received as critique, brought some concern:

"The amount of work you have based off copyrighted works, I ask myself immediately did he do just a one off for each of these companies or is it all fan art." and "If you are focused on 3D, texture the work and show something not based off another artist/companies concepts and IP"

Now my logic behind doing 3D models of known characters is when being hired as a 3D artist in a studio I am not being
paid to model characters I am coming up with but to model characters concept artists come up with. I figured if I show
that I can model characters as close to how they are supposed to look it will make me look more appealing to a studio
needing someone to be a part of their style.

Since I had completed a few models before posting for any type of review it thought I wasn't in any wrong doing. Now
however I am concerned that my original logic may end up hurting me in the end. Now granted this is just one critique
and I haven't received many yet. So I am posting this question on here to see what the general consensus is for this
situation. I'll provide a link for your viewing please let me know if I was misguided in my actions.

Looking forward to your responses
www.vinbaratta.com

metric meditation

In my honest opinion, Art is art... and you can do whatever you want to express your art as long as you do not steal other people's work and claim it as your own. Certainly it is important to document your work and state what parts you did or did not work on. Just as it is important to state where you get your inspiration from. If you are doing fan art, then do fan art. if you are producing art that reflects a certain style and company in the hopes to get hired by that company, then do so.

violating copyright is about stealing someone's work... art work, intellectual property etc etc and claiming it that it came all from you and you made money off of it.

Don't worry about the people who criticize you... "make good art" (Niel Gaiman)

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DWalker

In general, it's best to get permission, especially for well-known characters and those from especially litigious companies. Some companies - such as Blizzard - encourage fan art, as long as it's clearly identified as such, and many of the talented concept artists on DeviantArt are willing to let people create models based on their concepts.

Also, always post a link to the original concept.

ZacD

Just credit and source the orginal artist, fan art is pretty accepted as valid. As long as you are not selling anything or presenting someone else's work as your own, you shouldn't have any issues. I'd also suggest making sure your portfolio isn't just fan art.

Fwap

When I used to do sound design for video games, to make a portfolio without having previously worked in the field meant taking a game trailer and replacing the sound, I always made sure to put in big print on the video that it was a fan project, and I had no affiliation with the company who owned that trailer.

I had heard of a few stories about people going in for interviews and the interviewer had thought otherwise with someone doing a game trailer sound over.

So yeah, Plaster that shit with "Fan Art" or something.
Trust me, from the way they told that story, you don't want to end up in a similar situation they where in.

JordanN

I thought about this before. Just give credit and never profit from it.

Although that may not always be enough. That Chrono Trigger fan remake comes to mind.

I also once had a game dev teacher tell us not to put copyrighted works in our portfolios. Oh well, I only kept it to one character and even then, the same character is up on the official developer's website.

ATaylor

An interesting thing as well, is that fan art can become quite popular within certain groups of people which can be a good way to get your name out there. A friend of mine, for instance, did some Hotline Miami fan art a month or so after its release and it became very popular with fans, became a very popular search result on google (the first image) and was even posted on Eurogamer a while back.

The other thing I'd like to say is that you should also do lots of other things other than fan art, or perhaps expand the universe in an IP, as to simply put the guy who made say Master Chief made him better than you would, but say you made a new Covenant alien or something then that'd be something different.

Hopefully that's helpful cause I am a bit fatigued right now.

ysalex

It's not that big of a deal, just cite your sources and credit those who deserve it. In this case it's kind of putting the cart before he horse.

Mostly though, I don't think this portfolio will find you a job, as a character artist/animator anywhas. There are mechanical problems with you animation , and your 3d work doesn't show an ability to compete at a appropriate level. The wireframes are okay on some of the models, but the lack of texturing on any piece makes it look like you aren't comfortable in this area, which is 1/3 -1/2 of what your job will be. They are low poly models, so it also belies a lack of ability to create high-poly models , which again is an important skill in many of the available jobs.

I would suggest picking one - either animation or character art, and following though on learning only that. Drop the other from your portfolio.

Anyways , just all opinion of course.

Deforges

After looking at your portfolio I would recommend that you do remove the logos off of the works. A lot of other artists put up logos and it indicates that they actually worked on the project like on here http://racer445.com/


It can be misleading and it's just to not do it.

hadidjah

Everyone else has already pretty much covered it, but I very much agree: if you like doing direct or adapted versions of existing art, just make it amply clear and get permission whenever possible. I do a lot of adapted work for the same reason - I'm just a terrible concepter and feel much more comfortable adapting existing ideas.

I'm not sure how common it is, but in addition to linking to both the individual artist and company (if they're separate entities and I've managed to track both down) in text, I only use put the company logo(s) on the work if it's something I was paid to do for the company, and otherwise just indicate that the IP is owned by them and mine is a fan art/contest piece/etc.
You should make sure your name, e-mail and website are on all your pieces, by the way. People who download them may rename them or only grab bits and pieces, and will have no way to track you back down.

I ran your portfolio by my buddy as well, and I hope you'll forgive the bluntness, but his observation was that by doing works based on well-known IPs, people will immediately be able to see when and how you're off-model from the original, professional piece. This is pretty dangerous as it's something people browsing tons of portfolios won't bother to unsee for your benefit, they'll just go "Oh, he got this, this and this wrong," and move on. I would really suggest doing some more neutral studies of humans and animals (no need to concept your own, just grab some stock photos or whatever other photo/video reference you can find) to perfect your topology and forms, and then moving on to adaptations once you're confident you can nail the concept.

I hope that helps, best of luck to you!:)

AlexKola

Look at how much mad exposure the Ninja turtles fan art series made for Dave Rapoza. I'm pretty sure he sells his prints of these as well. I'm not sure where the line is here.

AtomicToyRobot

Thanks everyone for voicing your opinions I really appreciate it, I would also like to thank everyone that took the time to critique my current work. The feedback does mean a lot to me, hopefully in the future I will be able to present some work of higher quality and more variation. Thanks again all.