I agree. I am a digital artist and would be very disappointed if someone else claiming to be an artist traced my art, added horns, took credit and was paid for it. Using reference is great, but if you can lay one on top of the other and they are exact but for a shirt, that is artistic plagarism. This bums me out.
One image, I'd shrug and go: "could be a co-incidence, they're drawn in a fairly generic style, yadda yadda" but a whole host of images like following the pose, the outlines? No.
No need for that. I grew up with a father who's actually educated as an art-painter and he has worked most of his life as an illustrator. I'm not the next Michelangelo myself, but can draw well enough to create my own graphics. I have also done quite a bit of animation, so please, just because people disagree with you there's no point rising the aggression level. I think everyone can see that most of those images were probably traced, but definitely not all of them 100% especially if you look at the first figure. Yes, their poses are identical but look at some of the details like the shoes, how the trouser folds around the boots, the heads etc. My guess is that the artist has done a rough trace and then "filled in" his own details. Yes, it's probably a bit shady but if you start attacking every comic-book artist who has ever traced anyone else's work you won't be left with that many innocents. Photo-tracing is for instance incredibly common when people are in a hurry. (A photo is also someone's intellectual property). As I stated earlier the artist's biggest offense is probably leaning so closely on one single source...
Disney has the money and talent, but they still decided to copy scenes from the past. Why would a successful company do this? No, if there's something to learn from Disney and Matrix, he should have copied from the japanese.
Stealing Stealing is stealing. It's just plain wrong. Whether it's tracing art or copying a game- it's wrong.
I've seen two apps steal sound effects from other games. One was a badly-translated match-3, but the other was a very prominent, popular app which stole music from a PC game.
As a musician, one constantly borrows a sound or idea or tempo as inspiration for the birth of a new idea. A true craftsman will alter the borrowed part until it is unrecognizable from the original piece. If one is an artist, he will breathe life into the art and create something new and beautiful which is a credit to the original piece, not an insult. When a musician is told they inspired a new song, most take that as a heavy compliment, but as an example, what Vanilla Ice did to the Queen/Bowie single 'Under Pressure' was flat out stealing, compounded by the fact that he claimed it was his original idea. I'm not sure if the artists shown claim originality or not, obviously it would be hard for them to. I've read this thread and heard alot of people use the word inspiration. I think its a fact that this crosses beyond what one would call inspiration. The original artist was not only responsible for the appearance of the models but also for the form and the lines. The second artist copied those same forms and same lines and changed only the appearance. It would be like Ford taking a Cooper and painting it and slapping on some trim and calling it their own. Now having said all that, I will say there's alot about this business that we don't know or understand. These artist are sometimes given stock drawings and told to finish them. They use unfinished drawings of forms and add the elements that make their character. Both of these artists could have been using the same stock figures to complete and so to us it looks like one is copying the other. Of course we will never know whether that is true or not. Well, that's my take on this whole thread. Thanks for reading.
CygnetSeven-- of course there is something to be said for sampling, covers, and just homages to artists. But as far as we know, the tracing done here is clearly copied. As for the music/sounds that were stolen- they were direct copies.
My FREE tcg Shadow Era is spending $30,000 on original art. I know the value in investing in quality artwork will payoff greatly in the long run
One problem is that people are much more likely to buy a clone instead of anything original. Even the most original games out there (e.g. Eliss) did not sell as good as a GTA/Halo/younameit clone. Most people don't like surprises. You simply barely sell stuff if you make too creative games. Plus: If you copy someone's stuff you should at least be open about it. Give credit, attribution. Be fair.
It is a common mistake to blame too much creativity for a game lack of success Usually, those games you're talking about are unsuccessful not because of too much creativity, but because of not enough basic videogame quality check (fun, replayability, interactivity, variety, etc). There is literally never enough creativity
My game is orginal (see my Sig), actually, it's not doing too bad so far, but I think that's a lot down to Apple featuring it. I am forming the impression about the AppStore though, that it may work out better, to lower production values, and churn out lower quality games, but faster. Not sure about copying stuff though, seems kinda lame..
Frankly, after reading that I feel a lot more negative towards Humble Gaming. Sounds like a really lame attempt at some spin-doctoring...
Hey, well that's...totally unconvincing. The fact that they failed to credit Falcoon at all before being caught red-handed shows their true intent, and now they're backing away like crazy with them saying that Slide To Play got their facts wrong. It's pretty obvious now that they just tacked on the whole 'tribute' thing and made it free as soon as they realised that people were catching onto them. I was not completely convinced either way at first, but this just shows their guilt.
I thought that the art looked familiar. At first I was thinking that it was the same artist that did the Kongregate cards, but then after logging in and looking over my old Kongregate cards I realized it wasn't the same artist. So from there I simply Google searched "Arena 9 card artist," and the first result was the SlidetoPlay piece. I was, and still am very dissapointed in the fact that the Arena 9 artist flat out ripped off Falcoon's character's poses, and would like a statement from the developer seeing as how I probably blew about $13 to date on booster packs primarily because I wanted to see more of the artwork. Had I known this sooner, I wouldn't have spent a single red cent. However, this doesn't make me want to shut the door on playing the game. It is actually a fun game, and I will continue to play it, but will not be spending more money on it until they make a statement on this issue or correct it.
