Allegation of art theft.

[Sunshine Swirl]

Today I was accused of stealing a Vector and claiming it as my own.

I am very hurt and upset about this.

If I use someone's vector, I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS say, "xyz vector by someone".

If you look at my airship vector, it is very different than the one I am accused of stealing.



I spent hours and hours vectoring this, because I thought I would use the airship in multiple Role-play thread pictures here. Since my character is in Canterlot and I felt like riding in the fish airship instead of the hot air balloon or train.

Mine was done in Inkscape (not Photoshop like the other artist). Gradients are pretty hard in Inkscape, so I only used one on the lilac cover over the fish balloon.  (top to bottom gradient.)

I did not put in the small yellow circles around the eyes.  The fish "eyelash" on mine are different because I was in a hurry after spending a whole afternoon on such a small piece so I just quickly curled them without much thought as to where the anchor nodes should be.  I did not bother with the scales on the tail of my fish. I did the antenna/flag mast by hand as the reference I was using had the top cut off. I did not do gradients on the tail fin, nor on the lateral fin.

If there are similarities, it is due to using probably the same reference shot. The airship from the scene where Rarity christens an airship in Canterlot. We both used that reference because it is one of the only references of a full on Airship. Here is the specific reference I used. It was recorded from Japanese TV (hence the timestamp)

SPOILER: Click to show

All said and done, the airship by Misterlolrus is a much better piece of art than I drew -- I'm flattered to be compared to him/her. 

But I STOLE nothing.

I am spending hours (days) of time to do nice artwork for this Role-play board and being accused of stealing makes me want to go elsewhere.

What should I do?

[Ashti Sandburst]

Well. Instead of using the same airship than in the show (or the vector), what about making a custom one instead? I can help you with it and it would make the next one more legit.

[Sunshine Swirl]

First off - here's my take away from the whole experience and advice to artists:

1. You're probably pretty mad being accused of taking another artist's work. Back away from the keyboard. Just take a deep breath and take time to calm down.

2. Tell the accuser that you did indeed draw the challenged piece.

3. If they still claim you stole it, then calmly offer to show your work.

Try not to be hostile. It might be an honest mistake on the behalf of your accuser.

That's my advice.

I'll be honest, I didn't do step #1 very well. My accuser was pretty blunt and instead of thinking I typed a lot in the shout box.

Next time I'll try to follow my own advice a little better. ^_^;;

---

Okay - so several people contacted me about the nature of Vectors as if vectoring itself is somehow theft. I wanted to take a second since I was already up on my soap-box to talk about vectors.

Well, the point of Vectoring is to capture the look and feel as used in the actual show. Rarity, with a pink coat and short green mane wouldn't be Rarity.

That show-style Canterlot Airship was a lot of work (6 hours). It would have been much easier (1 hour) to do a Zeppelin of my own design.  (side note: A week after posting this, I actually did design my own airship from pencil sketch to inked version in 2 hours, so it did take a little longer than expected. Airships like they use in the show are really complex.)

Also, I wasn't accused of "stealing from the show" -- we all do that any time we use a setting ("Canterlot") or a character ("Twilight Sparkle"). That's what Fan Works are all about. I was accused of taking another fan artist's vector, and claiming that it was my own.

Vectoring is a big thing in this fandom. The MLP Vector Club has thousands of members and we all take hours and hours recreating items we enjoy in the Show.

The idea is to create fan work "symbols" with the look and feel of the original. Those "symbols" can then be remixed into comics, or illustrations in unique ways.

My creation was an "Airship" symbol, plus a "Rainbow Falls" background symbol, plus two hand-drawn original characters. By using symbols from the show, the viewer can recognize the setting and world.

That unique arrangement, contained only symbols I made, settings I made, and OC characters I made. It's a legit piece of art in the style of MLP.

The accusation was that I "stole" one of the symbols from another vector artist. I already showed I didn't and things are okay now.

For folks that haven't made a vector, or aren't sure what one is, here's an example:



This is a Swan Hat I made for Sunshine Swirl.

You might recognize it. In fact, I hope most people do. A hat like this one shows up on background ponies in the show a few times each season.

I really liked it, so I re-created it in Inkscape. It's about 60 anchors, 120 curves and 20 objects

I'm not claiming that I came up with the idea of a Giant Blue Swan Hat. The folks at DHX did, and I LOVE them for it. That swan hat is one of the many reasons I love the show.

But that particular swan hat was recreated by me. It's slightly different than the show version. (my swan is smiling, its tail is slightly fuller) and I spent quite a bit of time making it look like it came out of the show.

I would never claim that it's an "original creation" but it is certainly a legit piece of fan art that a lot of time and love went into creating.

[/soapbox]