I love this site — makes me realize there are people out there who KNOW what I’m going through.  But I feel a little funny about posting this as the copycat, an artist for a company called Paper Popsicles is um, not so talented and so this problem isn’t as glitzy as most of the stuff I see posted here.  Still, I need some advice because I put side-by-side pics up on my Facebook fan page and this “company” aggressively reported me to FB for copyright infringement!  Now my whole post to my fans complaining (and attempting to educate) about image theft is MIA.

Here are just “some” of the stamps they’ve copied (My originals on the left, hehe):

So my questions are — poor technique aside: are these “copies” of my art? Obviously they were not traced, but just as obviously, they are taking my illustrations and trying to change them enough so they don’t get sued.  I never wanted to bring the law down on them, but this is actually the second company who has done this (the other one nicely took down the copied art and it ended there.)

Is it “fair use” to put up side by sides on FB or other public forums?

Thanks for any advice!

Maurie J. Manning

Hello everyone!

My name is Dirk Erik Schulz and i live in Berlin, Germany.

I work as a freelancer and make some fanart. Sometimes I post them on Deviantart for my own entertainment, but not for comercial use.

my page: http://themrock.deviantart.com/

A visitor of my page has sent me a note about an indonesian Designer, who has took 6 or maybe more pics of my stuff and removed my signature.

He just added some blood details and changed colors, but my overall ‘fanart’ of an copyrigthed character is still visible.

Here the proof with his t-Shirts , my original pics and an example of how he took it:

And here is the thief his Facebook account:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=560335251#!/dibby.Flash?ref=mf

and here the gallery with all stolen pics on t-shirts:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=560335251#!/album.php?aid=6390&id=100001041878136

He even tries to sell the designs to other Shirt shops.

Thanks for the help, dudes!

~Dirk

A few weeks ago a friend sent me this photo that he took of a “Jungle Ape” t-shirt he saw for sale in London, recognising a couple of my illustrations, but suspecting I had nothing to do with it. He was right. And I’m sure Bathing Ape, who they’re also blatantly biting, have nothing to do with it either.

Jape T-shirt on the left, my stuff on the right

So a quick search for “Jape” or “Jungle Ape” came up with an alarming catalogue of lazy theft. First of which was their logo (and t-shirt design) lifted from a stencil I did back in 2005, and coupled with the Bape “Baby Milo” face.

Followed by countless other t-shirt designs. So far I’ve counted over 70 which have used my artwork, which they’ve nicked from my Flickr, Fotolog and Stencil Revolution galleries. Here are a few examples…

Behold the sloppy thievery (click for large view)

A quick glance at some of their designs shows that they’re also ripping off Jamie Hewlett, Friends With You, FlyingFortress and Jean Julien to name but a few.

Here’s their European distributor’s page. Why not see how many more rips you can spot!

With Jungle Ape having originated in Thailand (with online stores cropping up in Europe), I’m not sure what the chances of getting any of this resolved are…

I thought this was an interesting view point about copyright & fashion:

she brings up a very good point about the high class labels realising that the people how are buying the knock off are not their target market so it really isn’t effecting their sales. But she doesn’t talk about what happens when labels are knocking off & selling to the same market…

Here is a synopsis for Blue Sky’s new film Rio. In a Nutshell you have a naive male bird who has been raised by humans in a zoo. He is rare…the last of his kind, and has never had any experiences outside of his safe, predictable cage.

“Blu is a rare species of macaw resident at a zoo in Minnesota who believes he is the last of his kind. When he learns that another macaw was spotted in South America, and that she is female, he leaves Minnesota and travels to Rio to find her.”

Awesome. Great. Sounds fun right? Adventure…romance…parrots. Heres the new teaser trailer.

Now.

On the 11 of May 2010 several official announcments came out with the upsetting news that Pixar’s animated project Newt was officially dead.

Here is the original announcment on the Pixar blog.

http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/exclusive-newt-is-cancelled.html

and a couple of quotes…

The rumors that Newt was in trouble began in February with a web commentAnimation Guild Blog, which has been host to some anti-Pixar comments in the past. made by Disney Legend and animation industry insider Floyd Norman saying that “Newt is dead”. I didn’t give any credence to Norman’s statement at the time and, in fact, opted not to post about it because I couldn’t confirm that it was actually commenting on the

Rydstrom says the film is about the last two blue footed newts on this earth, a male and a female, who are thrown together by science and can’t stand each other. Newt, our lead, has been in captivity since he was a tadpole. He’s lonely.

Brook is the name of the last female Blue-Footed Newt. She is in the wild and has no idea she’s the last female of her species. She escapes all sorts of dangers in her day to day life,

The 3-d animation industry has a long history of rip-offs and close coincidences. Dreamwork’s Antz to Pixar’s bugs life, Dreamworks Madagascar to Disney’s The Wild and Dreamworks Shark tale to Pixar’s Finding Nemo to name just a few. These are more forgivable, the plots differ even if the animals are the same. This however…seems to have gone too far. What do you think?

Ok, I was in Hot Topic today, and I saw a very familiar necklace… It was apparently a necklace that was very similar to DestroyX’s Skull Hands necklace minus the “x” and the heart, and it was green.

YTWWN SAYS: This is a pretty big call to make, not against artist using photos as reference but if this post is true, that she claims it was her husbands hand? Also to note she is legally blind which often means they can see somewhat but very poorly… really don’t want to beating up on a blind person just because they may have traced one image….
—————————-

Blind artist Lisa Fittipaldi, claims that she became blind in 1993. She has appeared on Oprah and in publications such as People Magazine promoting her paintings. What caused me to question her story was the fact that a painting that she first made public in 2001 looks identical to a photo taken of Angelina Jolie’s hand that was included in an article about the actress in the December 2000 issue of Premiere Magazine. An image of the painting was included in a profile of Ms. Fittipaldi in the October 15, 2001 issue of People Magazine. I have included scans of images from the articles for your perusal. Please note that when both hand images are placed on top of each other, the outlines match up perfectly. It does not seem possible for this to be a mere coincidence.

Left: Angelina Jolie's hand holding an apple. Right: Painting by Lisa Fittipaldi - The artist claims that this is a painting of her husband's hand.

Looks like someone was feeling a little uninspired when they made their website. It’s just madness to rip off such a well known/visited design!

I wonder what Matt has to say about this?

I came across a job advertisement for a design position at a BigFish studio in Australia. It straight away triggered memories of looking at Nebojsa Cvetkovic portfolio. If you take a look at her Graphisms drawings exhibited in Cultural Center Grad (Belgrade, June 2009.) You can see the common theme through her work.

Zara, not the first time they’ve stolen designs. This time they ripped off artist Anne Patzke aka Trenchmaker (deviantart)

This hippo T-Shirt is quite clearly a copy of her image: http://trenchmaker.deviantart.com/art/whassat-45809422

Zara’s shirt: http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/4284/wtf2z.jpg