Tom Krieger- Professional plagiator
Tom Krieger calls himself a photoillustrator. According to his homepage, he is a professional freelance illustrator since 18 years, working for big german and international agencies and publishers. He created illustrations for food packagings, car ads and other products for various big german companies.
I found this very familiar looking image in the 6/2010 issue of "digit!" in an article about the Photoshop Convention 2010 in Munich. It is supposed to be a "virtual" cover for a car catalog and was used in a lecture about the workflow in an advertising agency.
Translation:
"From the idea to the catalog cover: From scribble, car shooting (courtesy of Robin Preston) and a (non-final) Illustration by Tom Krieger, a motif, which was created for the photoshop convention and not quite finished, emerges in workflow with Andre Price and Marius Schwiegk (both Jung von Matt)."
The original is Metamorphine by Android Jones. He just flipped it and painted over it.
Android Jones- Metamorphine
I informed Android about it and also posted it on conceptart.org here
As it turns out, it isn't . In 2007, Tom Krieger posted two images on conceptart. in this thread, trying to pass off manipulated photos as digital paintings. The observant members of conceptart.org noticed and even found the source pictures. This is in his portfolio, too. Agency: REDPACK Design GmbH, client: Hills, campaign: Animal food
source
cat food ad
He seems to make a living with his image manipulations, and considering his client list, I assume he is well off. No one but Tom Krieger himself can know for sure how much of his work is genuinely done by him and which sources are legitimate.
April 19th, 2011 - 19:23
’bout time this made it up here. There’s even a “how to” video made by Tom that shows how much of an ‘expert’ he is.
April 19th, 2011 - 21:03
Ooooh, man. If you’re going to steal from someone, Android Jones and his band of mates are not the guys to hassle! I wonder how long he’s been doing this, and if it’s really as long as his resume states, or if that is padded too. I have to guess it’s the latter, because it’s mind-boggling to think he wouldn’t have been caught by now.
April 20th, 2011 - 09:15
how much of his stuff use’s stock images? cos there nothing wrong with that.
April 20th, 2011 - 13:18
Graeme: Considering his history, most of the images he uses are not stock.
April 20th, 2011 - 22:23
Greame, the problem with the cat pic is not that it’s based on a stock photo, but that he tried to make out like it was painted from scratch (similar to the fake, after-the-fact “sketch” in the first piece). From the Conceptart.org link in the post:
“Some of you in other forums (or is it fori ?) cannot believe that its all digital painted. But as I said – it is !!
As my dog I made some seldmade photos of my now-runaway-cat for the hairy structure and overpainted all. The client wanted tis look of a young cat, but I´m not really happy about it because the cat looks not “warrior-like”while jumping on to a mouse….
Anyway the client was happy about all and thats okay for me…
The playing around with the unsharpness in the picture creates a very realistic look. For the hairs I made my own brushes. Layers over layers with differently transparencies.”
April 21st, 2011 - 20:40
what a complete douchetard..
April 22nd, 2011 - 22:44
The cats are not from the same photo. The angle of the tails are different. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t based on another photo, of course.
April 23rd, 2011 - 01:09
The cats definitely from the same photo, he just changed the angle of the tail. Look at the paws. He did make some changes to the head & tail but that is about it.
April 23rd, 2011 - 10:58
They overlap the cat images in the conceptart thread they posted above. They are pretty much spot on.
May 25th, 2011 - 01:26
I know this is pretty old now, but this threadless design is similarly using the cat picture: http://www.threadless.com/product/821/Jump. I don’t know who’s ripping of whom, or even if this counts as a rip, but it’s worth noting that picture is being used again.