Plagiarism of my own artwork [large images]
Hey guys, I really really need some help here. I've found myself in an awful situation and I'm quite stuck. The person in question, katelinmr , and I used to speak on a regular basis. I've helped her with her artwork on a number of occasions, creating tutorials and the like. I considered her a very close friend of mine, and we have many mututal friends in the Harry Potter fandom, which is why I'm finding myself unsure of how to proceed with a number of accounts of her plagiarising my artwork.
In the comparison pictures I use as evidence, I have done nothing to the images other than resize them, change the opacity in order to superimpose, or flip them. I have done nothing that would change the position or shape of the lines at all.
On 4 June 2010 katelinmr showed me a piece of her own work that she had drawn for this year's HP UK meet-up, but had not yet posted online. This is the picture in question, subsequently posted 7 July 2010. I immediately recognised the design of the snake as being very, very similar to one I had used in one of my own pictures, posted 2 August 2007, only reversed.
I said as much to katelinmr and linked her to the picture on DA. She told me she had spent hours looking through artbooks for a reference for the snake, and when I requested to see them she immediately ended the conversation and posted an entry on her livejournal announcing a hiatus on account of having to re-draw the picture and then sent me an e-mail with some pictures of snake heads attached. After a short period of time on the same day, I received a rather aggressive e-mail from katelinmr stating that she was going to post the picture no matter what I thought about the snakes and voiced her regrets that our friendship could no longer continue due to my lack of trust.
I discussed how to respond with some friends, and they suggested I just leave it in order to prevent wank, and then, sadly, they suggested I check the rest of my gallery for other instances of copying or theft. I knew as soon as it was put out there which image I had to go and look at, and it turned out to be worse than I'd thought.
I took my own image, that I had done for someone on Gaia and posted 7 October 2008, which had the same general pose and facial angle, and superimposed it over katelinmr's picture of Pansy. Other than the eyes, the faces were identical. As you can see from the picture below, the curve of the cheek and the chin fit exactly, the nose and mouth fit exactly, the eyebrows fit exactly.
After posting a screened entry on my livejournal asking for some advice, on 8 June 2010 I sent katelinmr an e-mail confronting her about the possibility of her having traced my artwork, and attached this picture. I received no reply, so I confronted her via GoogleChat on 9 June 2010, where we discussed the picture. She informed me that a friend of hers from home, who does not post any artwork online, was the one who drew the face for her since she had been having problems. katelinmr said that her friend was currently on holiday and that I could question her when she returned, if I wished, and then sent me the sketch that her friend had done, shown below. The sketch and the final lineart that katelinmr presented me with here nothing alike, as shown below. katelinmr 's lines are in brown and her friend's are in black. Very faintly underneath the sketch you can see where the final outline is.
At this point we reached a stalemate, since I still believed that it was traced and katelinmr insisted on her innocence, so I compromised and requested that she give me some anonymous credit in her notes when she posted the image, which she did. I have never questioned her friend about it.
That appeared to be the end of the matter, and we have not had any contact since other than brief exchanges of comments on livejournal, so I felt that was the end of the issue.
On 1 November 2010, however, it was bought to my attention by dysonrules that the same thing may have occurred again. That day katelinmr had submitted an entry for the Glompfest happening on serpentinelion which bore remarkable similarities to a picture that I had submitted to the hd_smoochfest, posted anonymously by the mods on 31 May 2009, and subsequently revealed and re-posted on DA 6 June 2009. I also suspected some tracing, so along with creating an image where katelinmr's picture is compared alongside my own [please note the hand, which she gives special credit to someone called “Christopher” in her community post], I have superimposed another of my pictures over one of the panels. My picture, Bond, was posted on DA on 16 January 2008.
Please can someone offer me some advice on how to proceed? The fact that we have mutual friends and post in the same communities makes this very difficult and I would like to sort this out with the least fuss possible.
Thank you.
[Apologies for the large images, I've had some problems posting this]
In the comparison pictures I use as evidence, I have done nothing to the images other than resize them, change the opacity in order to superimpose, or flip them. I have done nothing that would change the position or shape of the lines at all.
On 4 June 2010 katelinmr showed me a piece of her own work that she had drawn for this year's HP UK meet-up, but had not yet posted online. This is the picture in question, subsequently posted 7 July 2010. I immediately recognised the design of the snake as being very, very similar to one I had used in one of my own pictures, posted 2 August 2007, only reversed.
I said as much to katelinmr and linked her to the picture on DA. She told me she had spent hours looking through artbooks for a reference for the snake, and when I requested to see them she immediately ended the conversation and posted an entry on her livejournal announcing a hiatus on account of having to re-draw the picture and then sent me an e-mail with some pictures of snake heads attached. After a short period of time on the same day, I received a rather aggressive e-mail from katelinmr stating that she was going to post the picture no matter what I thought about the snakes and voiced her regrets that our friendship could no longer continue due to my lack of trust.
I discussed how to respond with some friends, and they suggested I just leave it in order to prevent wank, and then, sadly, they suggested I check the rest of my gallery for other instances of copying or theft. I knew as soon as it was put out there which image I had to go and look at, and it turned out to be worse than I'd thought.
I took my own image, that I had done for someone on Gaia and posted 7 October 2008, which had the same general pose and facial angle, and superimposed it over katelinmr's picture of Pansy. Other than the eyes, the faces were identical. As you can see from the picture below, the curve of the cheek and the chin fit exactly, the nose and mouth fit exactly, the eyebrows fit exactly.
After posting a screened entry on my livejournal asking for some advice, on 8 June 2010 I sent katelinmr an e-mail confronting her about the possibility of her having traced my artwork, and attached this picture. I received no reply, so I confronted her via GoogleChat on 9 June 2010, where we discussed the picture. She informed me that a friend of hers from home, who does not post any artwork online, was the one who drew the face for her since she had been having problems. katelinmr said that her friend was currently on holiday and that I could question her when she returned, if I wished, and then sent me the sketch that her friend had done, shown below. The sketch and the final lineart that katelinmr presented me with here nothing alike, as shown below. katelinmr 's lines are in brown and her friend's are in black. Very faintly underneath the sketch you can see where the final outline is.
At this point we reached a stalemate, since I still believed that it was traced and katelinmr insisted on her innocence, so I compromised and requested that she give me some anonymous credit in her notes when she posted the image, which she did. I have never questioned her friend about it.
That appeared to be the end of the matter, and we have not had any contact since other than brief exchanges of comments on livejournal, so I felt that was the end of the issue.
On 1 November 2010, however, it was bought to my attention by dysonrules that the same thing may have occurred again. That day katelinmr had submitted an entry for the Glompfest happening on serpentinelion which bore remarkable similarities to a picture that I had submitted to the hd_smoochfest, posted anonymously by the mods on 31 May 2009, and subsequently revealed and re-posted on DA 6 June 2009. I also suspected some tracing, so along with creating an image where katelinmr's picture is compared alongside my own [please note the hand, which she gives special credit to someone called “Christopher” in her community post], I have superimposed another of my pictures over one of the panels. My picture, Bond, was posted on DA on 16 January 2008.
Please can someone offer me some advice on how to proceed? The fact that we have mutual friends and post in the same communities makes this very difficult and I would like to sort this out with the least fuss possible.
Thank you.
[Apologies for the large images, I've had some problems posting this]