Am I stealing? Borrowing?....What did I do!?
polycounter lvl 18
We have had a couple threads around recently dealing with the grey-area of stealing, borrowing, inspiration....etc of art from other people. I am starting this thread up in hopes of getting input from some of the more seasoned artists and questions from some of the newer people how to go about properly contacting a current artist or former artist for permission to use their work and where the lines are between theft, inspiration...on and on.
All comments must be civil and geared towards the discussion. Any finger pointing, accusational commentary, dragging up of old drama, etc will get your post deleted as well as gain you an infraction. This thread is meant to help those who think they did right yet get accused of theft and those who are wondering where the line really is.
Hope this gains some good discussion and please, STAY CIVIL.
All comments must be civil and geared towards the discussion. Any finger pointing, accusational commentary, dragging up of old drama, etc will get your post deleted as well as gain you an infraction. This thread is meant to help those who think they did right yet get accused of theft and those who are wondering where the line really is.
Hope this gains some good discussion and please, STAY CIVIL.
This discussion has been closed.
Replies
Its not fair when people take your work and don’t give a toss about you or any effort you might of put into it.
The amazing thing is I'm a very relaxed guy, and most of the time if somebody wants to use my work for something, I let them, provided they still "Thank" me in the readme some place.
But when you take somebody else’s work and don’t give a toss about the author, be in either in the mod scene or professional, you deserve to be laughed at and should be ashamed imo.
"IMO" don't ever use somebody else’s work unless you talk to them FIRST. Never ASSUME that the people will let you and always do your best to find out if its ok. If you cant get in touch, just forget about using it and look elsewhere.
Its better to be safe than sorry.
When it comes to inspiration and reference I don't think its stealing to get ideas from other peoples work but the line is crossed at ctrl-c, ctrl-v. I think its all to easy to barrow "ideas" when dealing with characters and can be considered stealing much more easily.
With concern to environments I think its near impossible to detail things without consulting referance. Most of the time that kind of ref comes from real world objects and not really other artists work, unless you're looking to imiate a particular style.
So quick recap. viewing ref is ok, but never include it in your work. Don't knowingly copy another artist unless that is the goal. And CYA whenver possible.
I've also been working from concepts I found online that are not my own, nor am I asking the artist for permission. If I were going to do it for financial gain I would definitely ask before making it, but as it stands its just for me to do some shit for my portfolio without having to waste time designing everything about what I want to make.
I do, however, suppose that brings up the issue of using concept artwork to better my portfolio. Which in turn is bettering my life if i get a new sweet job with the work I did. Since I used someone elses concept to do that work for my portfolio and land that job. To me, though, the artist was credited and I made it 'my own'. It's hardly ever a direct rip.
Good thread.
*IMO
What I mainly like to do, is to draw, and not modeling as many here may think. And due to my "fear", i don't show any image of my skeetch book, drawings, etc. I do not want they steal my ideas and designs.
Some works of mine were used as wallpapers in some cell phones portals without my permission (the plant i did is one of them). I quickly call them to remove my work. Are things that happens constantly, and are things we can't do much against them.
For textures, i always use my camera to grab photos. I use the internet and websites like pbase, for references. The textures found on the internet are not very original, they are used by too many people. I've seen the same texture used over and over again, and the same library models too.
I guess if you're making something that just looks totally original and hasn't been seen before it could be a good idea to not show it off until you have enough to say "this is mine," but there are very few examples of that I'd say.
However, I'm not trying to defend people just stealing stuff flat-out; that's crap that people were just using your works as cell phone wallpapers without permission, but that's actually illegal.
It goes back to "it depends" in a lot of situations. I got the basic idea for the look of a comic I made from Sin City, but it looked significantly different. I also did some mock-ups of how it could look as a game, and they're all on my site. Recently that game "Mad World" was shown and it looks very similar to what I was thinking for the game, but I don't think they saw my site and thought "let's steal that idea!" And even if they did, they're doing a lot more with it than I have.
Just rambling mostly, but I think you shouldn't literally just steal people's work or parts of it, but otherwise if you're inspired by something then I don't think that's stealing it.
hahaha that should be on a bumper sticker.
Bromel & Brown, you might want to be a touch more careful with the flickr/google images. Here we have to document what site it came from and who owns it before we can begin to manipulate it. For a while we had a house rule that if you could change it enough to be indistinguishable from the original we didn't need the documentation to back it up but that changed when we switched law firms (and someone asked). Personally I wouldn't ask and I'd just keep doing what you're doing, just don't slack it and start butchering things (I don't think its in your DNA).
If it really is indistinguishable then it shouldn't matter. But technically it does, and its the technicalities that people look to exploit when they're after large sums of money that's not actually theirs. Its the technical holes the business end looks to plug, whenever called upon... (so just don't call on them).
Now if the author would have maybe taken 3 minutes and colored them in via PS instead of using the actual photo, it might have been able to make it his own..
I agree with Adam you need to make sweet 2d love to them pixels, you can tell if you made sweet 2d love or you just fucked it.
I like what Adam said up there about using images, then making sweet sweet 2d love to them....mmmmmm love.
We all get stolen from Blaizer, while it's terrible and all that, it's even worse to live in fear of it like you seem to do. That's a rather sad attitude.
Let them plagiarize, what are you afraid of, copies will always be cheap copies and never as good as the original and god knows potential retards have hundreds of other great artists to steal from already. And the people that matter WILL know who did what and where it comes from.
I think artists that really worry about being stolen from need to do their best to be contactable, putting an URL or email in your images etc. Just because an image is originally on your website which happens to contain your email address, doesn't mean that image wont end in 2367 other places on the internet ultimately making it hard to trace back to the author.
If your work gets still stolen for commercial purposes after this (there are bad people like that afterall) then just kindly as them to take it down.
As for borrowing, I think it has all been said again and again for years...
If you don't know, always try to contact the author first. Artists can be an overly sensitive lot and some will not see what you do as compliment.
If you get no reply, imo go ahead, give credit where credit is due, keep in mind the author might ask you to not use his work later. If he does so, no big deal, take the stuff down, if he's all pissed, tell him to chill and get a life. Hobby/fan/non commercial stuff isn't worth a change in anybody's blood pressure.
If you are an artist and the victim of plagiarism or straight stolen work, ask yourself if the whole issue is really worth any attention.
I've had stuff from my website layout and skins and textures 'stolen' and used in other crappy goth websites or mods often enough over the past years... that stuff is all so below my 'care' radar, not worth a thought.
My cat throws up regularly, now that's something that keeps me on my toes.
Ultimately, nothing is new in this world, we all draw inspiration, steal, plagiarize, idolize and borrow from somewhere and change and warp it to the muddy point we can tell ourselves we did something original. Where that muddy point or line is, varies for each one of us and again it varies with time and age. Best thing you can do is stay tolerant and openminded.
For commercial work, keep your hands off anybody else's work in general. Use it only for loose inspiration. You are not to make money of somebody else's work... that's simply not legal.
Is the ripped image necessary to create your piece?
I'm not very good at modeling organic pieces, specifically human beings. However I've always wanted to take someones basemesh and sculpt it into something my own.
The question would be, is this condsidered a faux pa to include something like that in a portfolio or a website? I would include a note to credit the person with creating a basemesh or SDK. Also, to just make clear I wouldn't be useing basemeshes etc for any commercial work (should that ever come up).
Lastly, on my own personal note, I would hope that by the time I'm doing commercial work I would have the skills to make my own human basemeshes etc. But this was more of a general question because I see so many people use other peoples released bases.
I think it's save to say that if you used someone else's basemesh for portfolio work, your work isn't good enough yet to be in the portfolio.
I don't think there's a problem with using a basemesh to do things tho, it's fun to bring in a good mesh into lets say ZBrush and be able to go nuts on it.
We're talking about having harmless fun, so whatever's fun for you and doesn't hurt others is good enough
I always try and stay away from being too greedy when taking "inspiration" for stuff I do myself, though. Not out of copyright fears, just out of the fact that I'd know the idea wasn't totally mine.
Textures... I try and stick to what I have available that's completely legal, but like Brome said, if there's a result on google image that's perfect, I'll nab it. It's always modified heavily but... that's not really an excuse, just covering tracks. On the other hand, if someone took a photo or texture I'd made and edited it and used it as an overlay or something, I'd be cool with that.
I've had meshes stolen a couple of times before - which in itself is odd because I'd hapily release most of them on the basis that there's a "thanks" or "original author" somewhere, if asked. An odd one that happened recently was a bust basemesh for sculpting I released turned up in it's original unsculpted form as someone's model. I was at a bit of a loss as to whether it was theft or not... the vertices had been pushed around but the mesh was mine and they were claiming it as their own. I had released the mesh with the intention that people would use it to sculpt with and create their own thing, but I guess that also left the option open to just flat-out steal the mesh. Thankfully, the mesh was ancient and it sucked, but it got me thinking about this sort of stuff at least.
My take is mostly that if someone steals your work or ideas without credit and benefits from it to get a job or something... they're gonna get found out and it will end up biting them in the arse.
It seems to me a lot of studios want to see that you can do work from someone elses concept. In this case I wanted to do a few characters from a european comic I'm a big fan of. I have TRIED to find out how to contact this person, and have been unable to so far.
There are several issues here. I want to use the characters to model off of, but only for my personal portfolio. I would give them full credit for design.
I want to include the concept art on the webpage with the model, but I believe it's illegal for me to place one of their images (either from a book or web) in a location that they did not approve.
If I found just the perfect image online, I doubt employers would really want to click back and forth between links to compare. I think there may be legal issues there as well.
I could just go find another artist to work off of, but there are many published artists that I would love to model in my portfolio.
Does anyone have more information about this kind of scenario?
So, here is my question, Dekard used the example of The Desforgeries guy, so where is the line between, "Inspired By" and Strait rip?
I did a quick Drawing to illustrate:
If he had done something like this, Would he have been reamed as hard?
It's obviously inspired by the Gladiator Image but, the pixels are fresh. Is this still Stealing?
but if the bad, was the orriginal and you did the acceptable one, then it would be close, and the acceptable would be bad.
hmmmm
Pretend the "BAD" example did not exist, rather the artist made the "ACCEPTABLE" image using the "GOOD" ref.
Is this Stealing?
The "BAD" image is obviously stealing because he simply smudged the existing pixels around and tried to profit from another's hard work.
One thing that does show is how easy a person with talent can create something some quickly
But are you crediting the concept artist, or are you just leaving it up to the viewer to assume you came up with the design yourself? if so, that's unacceptable IMO.
If the Vogons were used as inspiration, (which looks to be the case from my perspective), that wouldn't be considered theft. But blatantly copying and pasting parts of the Gladiator render into his own art, is what makes the author's work "theft."
I believe that if a person can site a specific piece that inspired their work of art, then they should do so. If inspiration comes from a number of places that happened to have gotten squished around in their mind over time, (becoming one rather nasty mess of useful and useless gunk), then it would probably be fine to skip the details. I suspect that confident artists would be proud to site their inspiration (if there was one), rather than leave it up to speculation.
A:ask the original artist wether its alright to show this publicly
or
B: clearly give credit to the inspiration whenever you show the artwork publicly.
If you actually want to use any part of someone elses artwork(as a layer or copy/paste, etc) in your artwork then I think it should be a given that you try to ask permission to do that.
thats my take on the issue anyway.
Doesn't help when they later decide to drag you to court. Professionals always get a release before incorporating someone else's work.
"all art is plagiarism, it's just down to you how far you go to cover it up... Now get the fuck out of my sight you cheating bastard!"
I heard another quote once that is really good and it goes: "real creativity is covering up all your sources!"
C'mon peeps, everybody here is influenced by all sorts of pop culture.. in many artists the influences are so obvious.. but it's those artists that can cover up all their influences and make something 'unique' that makes everybody go WOW!
I think that anytime you use somebody else's work as a starting point, or as a 3d modeller you use pre-existing concept art you should mention where you get them from. Not mentioning where you took the art from and non-chalantly waiting until somebody points it out is lame. Be honorable!
If the BAD didn't exist, then your version would have been acceptable from a design point of view, its almost like you've designed another creature from the same universe/race.
At the end of the day, you didn't entirely rip off the guy, you just used the same skin tones and its different enough to call your own. Maybe a bit of hue shifting here and there might differentiate it enough to further separate it from the original.
But if it came down to the BAD and the ACCEPTABLE? images, the ACCEPTABLE? image would be far more acceptable in my opinion. The fact that it was painted from scratch and it looks significantly different from the original.
-caseyjones
hey Dekard, thanks for finding that one... I knew it was a famous one.. and obviously, better said than what I remembered of it!
To take the idea from other person because we are useless to use our imagination is very bad. Can you be proud of making yours something not yours? because you modified it a bit? that's terrible!!
I would never copy/steal something not mine, it's a matter of pride. To create is more fun than steal, you close your eyes and you work in your mind
The fear to be "plagiated" is something very complex to explain. There are too many good artists in this world to be afraid of
One funny thing i have been said on CGTalk 2 times, is what i copied myself, with people posting saved images and saying "you copy the person who did this". They don't care about names, and for the same rule, they also don't care about making something similar because they think people don't know the original artist. In all the years with internet connection, i have seen terrible things about plagiarism and people using the work of others to get a job or simplily to accelerate their work and get paid.
I hope you understand my fear
All not is plagiarism, original ideas exists and fresh and new ideas always appears. There are always people who use the same ideas and perfect them, or making new ideas from oldest ideas.
we are so influenced by what has already been created, that we don't use imagination and we tend to do similar things of what we like. "We only see with our eyes and not with our mind, artists should see with their mind too", this is something i have been said since i was a child. We have now a bad joke saying: "you are not chinese, don't copy".
To Mix is what almost all people do.
Take as example the USA comics, almost all are SUPER heroes (the result of a society with fears, they need heroes!), same idea with different/similar designs or forms and with lycra dresses ^^, too many animals associated to men with super powers (bat-man is a mix example). Greeks mixed a lot in their culture falling i what i consider like ridiculous. With all this i come to say that there are only a few that are original, and if I have the fear of being copied, it is quite justified. I think i have my own original ideas and i have my fears, very normal. That is sad... yes, but it can't be helped. Bad experiences makes you to protect yourself in excess.
I wrote too much heh, ignore my bad grammar please :P
cheers
There are no new ideas out there. Deal.
Any author or writer (good ones, anyway) should and will tell you that there are no new stories, just the same ones with new characters and places and such. I don't remember who, but one authour narrowed it down to there existing only 6 possible stories. Another author (a more bitter one, I guess) said there's only 1.
My point is that this applies to art too. No, you will never come up with something that hasn't been done before. What's important is how you make what HAS been done before somehow interesting and seemingly unique. Making another space marine? It's been done, but if you find a way to add elements that are very UNIQUE and make it look like something people think they've never seen before, than good job! That's a succesful design of something that's already 'been done'.
As for this relating to plagarism, yes, whether you realize it or not, you ARE going to steal from other artists when creating your work. It can either be conscious or subconscious, but it'll happen. What you must do is be aware of this and think how, "Ok, so I know that *this* inspired me, but how can I make it something from *this* but much more?"
The negative of this is if you blatantly rip elements off of other people's work and don't change and grow from the design so it's obvious that you just stole away. This is bad, and yes, I believe it will come back to you one day, and as already said, 'bite you in the arse'.
So keep looking at other artist's work and keep stealing away. But you had better make sure to steal in a damn unique and inspiring way!!
(p.s. Sorry for the wall of text :P Anyone still with me...?)
he's right.
the Designers Republic (they did the graphics on wipeout for those not in the know, and many other things besides) say:
"shit copies, tallent borrows, genius steals".
A good creator never releases his sources, but it's always best to build upon something with only the idea in mind, not use the actual material. Using someone elses materials blatantly for me is theft and un-acceptable, also if you get found out -- !
To me the "acceptable?" image is fine. A little too inspired by the original image (I understand the point being made, though), but fine.
The "bad" image is unacceptable from the point of view that I can still clearly see the sourced artwork, the inconsistency of the fidelity of the pixels, and so on. At the same time, though, I can see how someone with little to no art background might not be able to notice the inconsistencies mentioned and see it as original, inspired by, or the stealing of an existing idea.
Personally, "bad" is manipulating existing artwork. You get no points in my book. That's theft to me.
If the "good" image was indeed inspired by the Vogons, that's acceptable. He stole an idea. As I'm sure did the original concept artist behind the Vogon design.
The truth is that everyone steals an idea from somewhere. The key is to do a good enough job to not reveal your source.
Acceptable with out bad, is fine as it only used the idea from good.
Acceptable with bad existing is a pint over/fan art of bad.
Beyond that example the basic principles still are true.
For textures using photos/textures as your base and changing minority(clone stamp/healing brush and hue shifting) it so that it better fits your needs is still ripping it off. Using other peoples photos/textures as overlays on something you created is fine as long as none of the individual overlayed textures are easily noticed for what they are.
-The Reality, what we see.
-And the work of others, what we like. <---
The source is always apparent, you can't hide it when is quite obvious. Games tend to copy reality, Do the artists steal things from reality? copy, borrow, steal... is practically the same with different words. What i see very bad is to get "inspiration" from others, copying it or borrowing it, call it whatever you want.
There could be a third one, another source that surely is ignored, it's the world inside your mind with its machinery. That's what we call imagination (have you got your imagination dead?). Anyone have surreal ideas? have you ever dreamed something like real, but not present in reality? can you imagine a different form of life, a new alien, different from all the stuff created?
Only non creative persons say that "everyone steals ideas from somewhere", and i'm totally disagree. I can give form to my ideas into my head without taking a shit from reality or from others, like mud. If the unique thing you can do is to "steal" from others, that does not mean that there aren't people who can create without stealing. It's like to say: "it's impossible for me, so for all people too! because we are all humans".
Look at giger... or look the predators, are they original? unique? the creator, Did he steal the idea from someone? from somewhere? did he hide the source? i don't think so, because a predator is basically a human with an ugly face, with a haircut present on humans too. The source is in the imagination of the creator. Alien is a good example of a "world inside" a creative mind.
The truth for all of us, is always what we like to see/think. I don't steal from anyone, that's my truth. Think what you want
don't be silly. Everyone does steal ideas from somewhere. Yeah OK it's different from game assets that are meant to be realistic, but people like giger are inspired by the human form, he's basically "stealing" from nature. Another word would be inspiration.
So what you are saying is "only non creative persons say that they are inspired by the environment around them". Well, that doesn't make any sense does it?
Stealing ideas and working them into the fold is almost the same as being inspired by something. In fact, it probably IS the same thing.
yeah, look at giger...
"His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dal
I can see where Blaizer is coming from and find disappointingly unsurprising that it is upsetting people. People are so quick to defend an action that they do themselves, and yet will condemn it when someone does it in a way that offends them. It is almost like saying "well I only stole a tv, you stole from a bank!" To anyone against stealing, it shouldn't matter, theft is theft.
Many people believe that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but when ideas and original high quality artwork make your paycheck imitation suddenly becomes a threat to your lively hood.
I do agree that no one is above being influenced by other artists though, it is impossible to look at art and not be even subconsciously influenced by it. It is another thing entirely though to have another piece of work open while working on your own for direct reference to their design. I do think an artist can learn a great deal by using other art as reference (though it can be quite dangerous, you wouldn't want to replicate any mistakes that artist made and learn bad habits). "How do other people paint water?" "how does xxxx model hands, they always look and deform well" "what are the details that make his/her art look so finished and how can I apply those types of details to my work?" These are significantly different to "what is the color, skin tone, facial structure, and appearance for an alien that I can use to create another alien."
That's your point of view hawken. To know how works our world and take elements from it, for me is not to steal. It's like to make food using ingredients, to cook ideas in our mind. Other thing is to STEAL ideas from others, and this is what we are talking about.
Non creative persons seems to don't have the ability "to cook". For that reason they steal others ideas because the think they stole to nature... They lacks of pride IMHO.
i've learned all i know alone, i'm autodidact, i have never gone to an art school, and the unique influence i have had, was nature documentals. One of the things i read/watch, are a few mangas/animes and all are with girls now :P.
I didn't know who was giger till i had internet...
Someone needed a teacher, or copy artists, to know how to use a pencil? don't think so... since i was a child i was always painting walls in my house.
The few artists i know are from manga, like Dragon Ball (Akira toriyama), Video girl Ai (Mazakazu katsura), Saint Seiya, Gundam, Slayers, etc. I grew up watching a few animes and a lot of nature documentals, and i think i'm zero influenced by anime.
Being humans, we create new forms and designs, we make new ideas and we shape our world, just see cities (Barcelona, Sagrada Familia, Gaud
Saying that Giger was influenced by Dali, doesn't mean he copied his paintings. Emulation is not imitation. Absorption is not appropriation. I'm disappointed in the general attitude of this thread and the Blazier-bashing.
There is such a thing as going too far -- generally if it's close enough that a knowledgable person can pin the inspiration it to one specific piece of somebody else's work then it's too much. Or if you can tell that they've copied/copypasted/reused any part of another person's work (that you can tell is the important bit). If a knowledgable person can pin elements in your work that are consistant with the general style or themes of another artist's work and you're also adding enough of yourself or from other sources, you're probably in the clear.
Personally, I thought bits of the underground cavern/temple/thing at the end of Hellboy II was in dangerous territory with the extent to which it referenced the work of Zdzislaw Beksinski. I could point to one or two of his paintings were basically identical to some of the motifs they used, but I doubt anybody will sue.
On the other hand, if I like Phil Hale's paintings and I decide I want to do a painting of a man who is extremely anatomically correct with a very wirey/veiny body and with a strong directional lightsource -- that's pretty likely to be just fine. However, if I put that man flying through a blue/green air about to attack a black robot monster -- that's pushing it.
Where it goes from a mere credibility/creativity issue into a legal one is pretty sketchy to say the least.
What i only know is that i got some tools like pencils and rubbers and i do an use of them to express myself on a paper, to give form to my ideas. With computers the same, i use tools with my style to give volume to my concepts.
Surely there is someone that thinks like me. This world is huge and there are too many religions... heh
I grew watching Anime and nature documentals, i answered that. Nature is the best source of inspiration for me. Spain is a country without a comic culture or entertainment culture. Traditional artists like Velasquez don't inspire me. I just do the things in my way, giving my style.
Do you know Masamune shirow? Apple Seed, he takes inspiration from nature as he told in an interview, like insects. As him, i do the same, nature.
Those who are influenced by other artists do not have style. However, those who do not get influenced, creates a style of its own, identifiable by anyone. Everyone knows that a job is yours with just seeing the image.
Akira Toriyama for example has its own style, his way of seeing the world is different to anyone. One of the few things that defines an artist, is the style.
Things turned out like a bit personal. I don't want to be the center of discussion LOL
Wow.
Yeah, wow. That has to be one of the most foolishly arrogant statements i've seen posted on these forums, and that is saying quite a lot.