Exposing a thief?
Hello polycounters.
I have been noticing this user by the name of Moonser posting on several sites.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1578795#post1578795
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/129468-3D-2D-Artist-looking-for-Job
here's a link to his portfolio.
http://moonseer.portfoliobox.net
Any individual who has actually put a portfolio together can immediately tell that the portfolio is massively suspect, surrounded by all the common mistakes of an art thief. Inconsistent work, no work flow, massively varied with a multitude of styles.
so I was looking for some help in exposing this individual, because I have hit a bit of a dead end.
Here's what I have so far.
He appears on the theif busters over at deviant art
http://thief-busters.deviantart.com/journal/M-221028475
This painting on his portfolio
http://moonseer.portfoliobox.net/gallery/image/20976#10
If you notice in the bottom right corner you will see some artifacts common when someone with little talent uses the stamp tool. But why? To cover up the real artist's name ofcourse
http://image.blizzgame.ru/assets/GalleryPhoto/1/_resampled/SetWidth850-Undead-Warrior-By-Rained.jpg
Would much appreciate some assistance. If you know who really did create the work he has shown as his own.
Perhaps I am wrong here, but I do not like people who steal people's work and credit it as their own.
I have been noticing this user by the name of Moonser posting on several sites.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1578795#post1578795
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/129468-3D-2D-Artist-looking-for-Job
here's a link to his portfolio.
http://moonseer.portfoliobox.net
Any individual who has actually put a portfolio together can immediately tell that the portfolio is massively suspect, surrounded by all the common mistakes of an art thief. Inconsistent work, no work flow, massively varied with a multitude of styles.
so I was looking for some help in exposing this individual, because I have hit a bit of a dead end.
Here's what I have so far.
He appears on the theif busters over at deviant art
http://thief-busters.deviantart.com/journal/M-221028475
This painting on his portfolio
http://moonseer.portfoliobox.net/gallery/image/20976#10
If you notice in the bottom right corner you will see some artifacts common when someone with little talent uses the stamp tool. But why? To cover up the real artist's name ofcourse
http://image.blizzgame.ru/assets/GalleryPhoto/1/_resampled/SetWidth850-Undead-Warrior-By-Rained.jpg
Would much appreciate some assistance. If you know who really did create the work he has shown as his own.
Perhaps I am wrong here, but I do not like people who steal people's work and credit it as their own.
Replies
I've been able to find some of the work on other sites ( http://rmart.org/40348 ) but they're all in another language, and it's not really proof that they aren't his. There is a signature in that image, but again, it could be his.
You can't right click on his images to save them, which is also odd. So what I've been doing is taking a screenshot, pasting it in photoshop, cropping the image and then putting it through a reverse image search. So if you really want to get some more concrete evidence, I suggest you do that. I don't really have time to continue myself.
http://moonseer.deviantart.com/
That is what I have been doing. Found out that the undead warrior image wasn't his. I also came across the same problem of it being rather tiresome to track down this work.
@Bibendum
I understand by if you click on any of his posts you will see this
"Hi,
My name is Miller
I'm an experienced artist in:
- 3D Modeling
- 3D Texturing
- 3D Animation
- 3D Rigging
- 3D Sculpting
- 2D Interface
- 2D Design
You can check out my portfolio at:
http://moonseer.portfoliobox.net/"
He is crediting one person (himself) to doing all that work. So if his deviant art page is telling the truth (unlikely) then he is ripping off all the artists who are working for him. Besides if he was the head of some group of talented artists like that, why the hell is he using a free webhosting service?
I also saw the part where he says he never requests payment up front and is always willing to take an art test. This business method would never work with a portfolio full of stolen art, promising you can do anything and everything in any and all styles, unless he had other people making the art for him (ie: a studio, or whatever)
Why is he claiming he did it all himself and also claiming he didn't? Maybe people are hesitant to work with cheap chinese outsourcing studios so he changed his sales angle to portray it as an individual? Who knows? His english sucks maybe this is just getting lost in translation.
Why does he have a free web host? Probably because he's running a cheap chinese outsourcing "studio" which may just be him running shit out of his house recruiting artists on the internet. Again, who knows.
http://www.sheeren.com/Portfolio/
if you push f12 in chrome, it allows you to browse their html and you can find the image links in there.
I appreciate you are playing devil's advocate here, so why did he poorly photoshop out some one's signature?
http://dd.zifugame.com/info/gameinfo/role/
All seems to be from Chinese mmo games. Which is probably why they are hard to track down.
Edit: Why don't you just email the guy and ask him what projects he's allegedly worked on? Let him give you the list himself so that you don't have to track this shit down yourself.
Ask him if he's an a studio or an individual, if he says he's a studio ask who are some of the artists he works with...
The simplest way to find out if someone is a fraud is to just talk to them, just don't be dumb about it, don't phrase shit like you're obviously looking for dirt ("WHY U PHOTOSHOP ALL THE SIGS OFF? HUH?")
F... me, there is a thing like that, and with so many names??
One day someone will think its good enough to steal...one day...
Some of those accusations are really reaching. Apparently whoever is running that list considers taking screenshots and making demotivational posters to be art theft.
Lumping normal internet business (screenshots, cropping images for avatars, 13 year olds tracing images and doing recolors) in with full-blown plagiarism diminishes the seriousness of true thieves and plagiarists.
Somebody needs to tell that art-thief-list person to stay in their damn lane and quit it with the jihad.
Say what you will, but if I take a picture and someone 'Demotivates' it, they better tell me they're getting my hits cordially rather then 'rip and don't tell'.
For example, you know that 'Awesome' smiley face? Well, yeah, there were legal running on that image from the original artist.
Also, I don't see anything wrong with trying to clean up the community, you might think it's elitist, but maybe if people uploaded LESS crap on your servers, then you wouldn't be trying to nickel and dime them just to make ends meet.
As for how the scam works when you are paid after, actually alot of people do it.
let's say you want a model of a cow. He would simply find a picture of someone else's cow 3d model, send that to you for approval and then once paid would either send you nothing or send you a stolen model, most likely off of a free 3d model site.
I draw a major distinction between that and criminal fraud via plagiarism and the damage it does to the original artist.
Not getting credit for some demotionvational poster cranked out by a middle school mouthbreather is one thing. Having some con artist use your art repeatedly in criminal fraud, and suffering the damage from that coming back and impacting your own reputation is way more serious.
Lumping the two together does a huge disservice to those who have suffered the corrosion of their reputation and marketability from being victimized by frauds and plagiarists.
And you're honestly trying to defend the entirety of a group that is smearing people as "art thieves" for posting fucking game screenshots? Or paintovers? If you seriously agree with that ridiculously-broad interpretation, there are a fuckload of "art thieves" here at Polycount.
Like I said before, that list has some genuinely worthless frauds and liars on it, but it also looks to be run by some equally clueless children on an irresponsible internet jihad solely to provide them some purpose in life when they come home from Algebra 1 on the middle school bus. And until they start making more responsible distinctions, I think it is keenly irresponsible to encourage or praise them.
I'm asking if anyone knows where this art comes from. I have had a difficult time tracking it down, although have clearly discovered the vague area where he is getting it all from.
I have contacted him privately over at the unity forums. he hasn't responded even though I know for a fact that he has been on since then and made yet another topic.