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

[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

[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.

[amorettea]

If you use a reference to get the anatomy right, that's fine. If you basically copy a picture because you don't have enough imagination to create an original composition, that is plagiarism.

There are lots of Madonnas, but if someone looks at your picture and thinks, huh, they copied the Madonna of the Rocks by DaVinci, then you are a thief. If they say, huh, it has some elements of that other picture but takes an interesting new take on it, then you are an artist.

[myaibou]

If you're doing a pencil drawing from a photograph, is the different medium "a new take," for example? I mean, it's not like it's a duplicate of the photograph, although the poses are the same.

And what if you are doing fan art of a cartoon and are deliberately trying to do it in the style of the cartoon (as opposed to copying someone else's unique style in their own fan art)?