The Case Against kristianabel22

[enigmaticblues]

On April 30, 2012, reni_m reported that kristianabel22 had plagiarized a piece of fanart by adavidoff1 in the Merlin fandom. (See original report for screencaps and links.) In addition, the report includes screencaps of art based on another fan's photographs, as well as art based on others' manips. (Please be aware that the manips are NSFW and contain nudity

Comments

[myaibou]

Okay, can you help me out here, because as a writer primarily, I find what constitutes plagiarism in art very fuzzy and confusing, and I do dabble in fan art a bit and my daughter draws and just opened a DA account, so I want to make sure everything's kosher for both of us.

Is drawing from a screen cap from a show plagiarism? If not, how should it be credited?

I grew up practicing drawing by drawing from promo photos and the like, and my daughter is learning from drawing screen caps and promotional photos of her favorite characters from her favorite shows. In university art classes, we drew from copyrighted photographs, including Ansel Adams and photos of Marilyn Monroe. Is this plagiarism? I never thought it was, but now I'm confused. I told my daughter she could post her drawings she does from screencaps from the show itself, but not from art other people have made. (She draws and colors them in pencil, freehand. I draw in pencil and color digitally, also going from screencaps. It's obviously fan art and not wholly original, just like fan fiction is not wholly original.)

Because drawing is by its nature more immitative than writing, the line just seems fuzzier to me. Thanks for any clarification!

[reni_m]

You bring up a great point. It's a very, very fuzzy line. And as someone who comes from the fine arts world I know stuff like this gets confusing. Copying someone's photographs, which aren't yours, and then trying to sell the produced image is where most copyright lawsuits take place. An example of this is the artist who created the HOPE campaign posters for the 2008 election.

While other artists may not agree with me, I see nothing wrong using a promo photo or screenshot to practice drawing and creating work. And I don't feel you need to credit when it's commonly known in fandom that it's a promo image. However, if you're using fan photos taken by another user, I feel that's where you should ask/credit.

In my case I included the promotional photo art as examples of the painting technique he uses which duplicates an image almost exactly. While I see nothing wrong with his technique (others may disagree with me on that point) what separates kristianabel22 as a plagiarist is that he takes other artist's fanwork and original compositions without permission, paints over them creating an identical image, and then posts it as something 'new' and original when it clearly isn't.

[myaibou]

Gotcha. That seems very logical to me. And like I said, I already did tell my daughter drawing from screen caps was okay, but copying other people's fan art or drawings was not, so that was kind of where my gut was on it. But since art is not my area, I wasn't sure if my gut was correct.

And since you mention selling, I've always been kind of surprised that fan art is often sold, either online or at conventions, or for commission, or whatnot, and that doesn't seem to be a problem, but fan fiction ALWAYS gets a smackdown when it's sold. Personally, I'd never try to sell either, but I'm not nearly a good enough artist to even attempt to sell my fan art anyway. My fiction, however, I think the quality is there, but it isn't mine, so I can't sell it. But I never did understand why selling fan art is okay when selling fan fiction is not.

[reni_m]

Selling fanart is another one of those tough topics. While there are tons of articles saying how there is a double standard, none can exactly pinpoint why it's ok for visuals and not ok for written word.

[tikatu]

There are people who sell fan fiction. They write tie-in novels, which are licensed by the copyright owner, who gets some of the profits. When you think of it that way, selling your own, unlicensed fan fiction, is taking profits away from the copyright owner and the licensed writer.

Fan art doesn't necessarily have a parallel to the tie-in novel.

[myaibou]

But licensed tie-in fiction doesn't work the same way. A writer doesn't go to the copyright owner and submit a story the way a writer of original fic

[tikatu]

But a small publishing company can ask for/pay for the rights to write/publish tie-in novels. It's happened in my fandom, Thunderbirds. In fact, when the current license expires for this particular publisher/author, a newly formed, fan-run publisher is likely going to apply for it. (They don't like the work that the current writer/publisher is producing -- even though the books have won awards.)

This is the current publisher.

[myaibou]

Okay, for some reason my comment got truncated and editing didn't work. Here's the full comment:

But licensed tie-in fiction doesn't work the same way. A writer doesn't go to the copyright owner and submit a story the way a writer of original fic would go to a publisher. The copyright owner grants a license to the writer and THEN they go and write the story.

The parallel in art would be a copyright owner going to an artist and hiring them to do art for them, for a book cover or for promotional posters or whatever. But that's different than an artist doing their own fan-based work and selling it independent from the copyright owner, which is much closer to fan fic than to media tie-ins.

Although I would say that sometimes stuff that I would consider basically fanfic does get published, and if I'm not mistaken, that's when the work has entered public domain. There was a Darcy's POV book written about Pride and Prejudice, and a very notable example is Wicked, a "prequel" and alternate take on The Wizard of Oz (although I'm not sure of TWOZ's copyright has expired and if it's actually in the public domain or not.)

But of course, all this is just a tangent from plagiarism, which is my real concern. I want to make sure my daughter and I are both not committing any acts of art plagiarism inadvertently.

[enigmaticblues]

Fanfic does get published if the work is in the public domain. You see that with fairy tales, for example, or Jane Austen's work, or even The Wide Sargasso Sea or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Even those examples are transformative in nature, though. They're telling the story from another perspective, or take place before or after the novel does, or make a twist on an old tale.

My (very) limited understanding of art is that artists are encouraged to make reproductions of masterworks to practice their techniques, and that's fine, as long as they don't try to sell it as an original. I think a parallel could be made with fan art, where someone takes a promotional picture (which is public) or perhaps a candid, and tries to reproduce it to practice, versus taking someone else's art, something they've created, and then trying to claim it's yours.

[myaibou]

Yes, that also makes a lot of sense to me. You can't practice writing by copying word-for-word another writer's words. That's transcription, not writing, and there is nothing creative whatsoever in that process.

But copying someone else's art does help you improve your own art. Your eye improves, your technique improves. And your work isn't going to come out as a carbon-copy of the original. It will be something different.

So, if you don't sell a work drawn from a screen capture or promotional photos, but you post it online, like on DA, is that okay? That's not plagiarism (since you're not taking a duplicate copy and calling it your own but it is actually something you created, even though it's from another source)?

[enigmaticblues]

I would say that drawing from screen captures or promo pics is a different matter entirely, because that's sort of public, and you're actually drawing it. I would always credit the pic or screencap if you didn't take it yourself, but it's a little more akin to using a model.

[myaibou]

Good comparison, thank you.

[tikatu]

I think part of what would determine if something were plagiarism or not in the art world is how derivative/transformative it is, and if people were making money off it by selling and distributing prints. Not only that, but where you got the original from would come into it. Did you get it from another artist? Then yeah, I'd say it was plagiarism. The work you and your daughter are doing as practice are likely not going to be seen as plagiarism.

Here's an example of fan art that was actually printed in a licensed book. It wasn't commissioned for the book at all.

Here's another, far different piece of fan art. Note that there are no prints to be had.

Here's an artist who finagled her fan art into a job doing comics for Disney. Yeah, that Disney. Again, no prints, and if you look at her deviantArt account she hates plagiarists.

[enigmaticblues]

This is my take on it.

Essentially, fanfic is utilizing the intellectual property of someone else in a transformative way. Those characters were created by the originator, and they cannot be used for profit by anyone who is not the originator or licensee.

Fanart, on the other hand, generally utilizes actors who are public figures, rather than models. Someone who is painting a portrait may pay a model or get a volunteer, or they may be commissioned to draw or paint a portrait. Take the above work. The original artist was using David Tennant and Billie Piper as models, but the drawing was their own. If you were to try to take the characters and write a story about them, though, it's a different matter.

Is there a double standard? Yes, probably there is. But I think there's enough of a difference in the media (hand drawn art versus story) to allow for it. (That said, I would be uncomfortable selling fanart, but that's just me.)

[myaibou]

Yeah, I think I would be, too (if I were good enough to in the first place).

[myaibou]

Thanks, everyone, so much for your answers. I'm on this community because I think combating plagiarism is very important, so I was very uncomfortable not having a good sense of where that line is in regards to art. This really helps clarify things. (And mostly echos my gut feeling, but I didn't want to rely on that alone.)