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ProfessorCirno posted:Like on one hand yes it sucks when you hire on artists and they end up being garbage but they've already taken up time and budget that you can't get back so you end up sorta having to use their garbage...
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Oct 30, 2015 20:22
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Especially sucks when a hefty chunk of your commissioned art all from this one guy turns out to be traces from Touhou fanart. Like what happened to Jenna Moran.
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Oct 30, 2015 20:25
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Evil Mastermind posted:There is never a reason to use Poser art in a professional RPG product. There is, actually: as a placeholder in a work in progress release, when you haven't yet finalised the art and just want a draft piece there to take up page space. 
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Oct 30, 2015 20:28
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I'm more inclined to forgive OPP for this particular plagiarism slip up because they really come across as generic medieval dudes doing generic medieval things, unlike that time when WW published a blatant trace job from the cover art of one of the greatest action video games of all time. The poser art is just plain embarassing, though.
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Oct 30, 2015 20:33
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Kaja Rainbow posted:Especially sucks when a hefty chunk of your commissioned art all from this one guy turns out to be traces from Touhou fanart. Like what happened to Jenna Moran. more on this please, plagiarism owns
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Oct 30, 2015 20:39
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I don't have any examples but apparently one of the artists for Nobilis 3rd edition used traces from Tohou Fanart almost exclusively. She had to hold the release back and get new art.
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Oct 30, 2015 20:48
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Error 404 posted:This sounds pretty funny, you mean like they "Hey, boss, you know we're supposed to pay for a license for this, right?" "Nah, they'll never catch us, and it wouldn't be worth prosecuting if they did." No one has contempt for the rule of law quite like a lawyer. ProfessorCirno posted:Like on one hand yes it sucks when you hire on artists and they end up being garbage but they've already taken up time and budget that you can't get back so you end up sorta having to use their garbage... Literally mainstream American comics. Like, they get paid at least a market rate, instead of the chump change RPG artists get most of the time, and they still have artists not following basic instructions. This isn't a systemic thing, this is a bad art director thing. And of course no White Wolf product or spinoff has ever had lovely art direction.
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Oct 30, 2015 20:55
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stuff all the time?
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Yeah, one of the Chinese artists that Eos hired used extensive tracing, some of it from Touhou fanart and some from other stuff like vocaloids, and Jenna had to find replacements for quite a lot of pieces. The Exalted guy responsible for Steam Observation Prana is probably from the same neck of the planet, honestly.
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Oct 30, 2015 20:55
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ProfessorCirno posted:Like on one hand yes it sucks when you hire on artists and they end up being garbage but they've already taken up time and budget that you can't get back so you end up sorta having to use their garbage... As grassy gnoll said, Greg Land gets away with worse on a weekly basis. This is not to detract from whatever voodoo curse or garbage-rear end business practices the Exalted art folks are laboring under.
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Oct 30, 2015 21:24
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Daeren posted:As grassy gnoll said, Greg Land gets away with worse on a weekly basis.  (I can't find the super-dumb White Queen volleyball one, but holy poo poo is it worse)
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Oct 30, 2015 21:27
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Even if he wasn't tracing, the hand in that panel is terrible.
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Oct 30, 2015 21:29
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FMguru posted:Yeah, and the usual two excuses don't cut it this time. The game is two years late so they can't blame tight deadlines, and the KS was fully funded (at almost $700k) so it isn't like they were constrained by their tiny budget (plus, they bragged about what a deluxe and gorgeous artifact the finished product would be). Lots of products have come out with jaw-dropping art several notches higher than Ex3 (The One Ring, anything for L5R 4e, Guide to Glorantha, FFG's 40K and Star Wars games, etc.) so it's not like they were promising something utterly undeliverable. I'm glad you mentioned L5R because goddamn, if you want some beautiful books...
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Oct 30, 2015 21:34
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moths posted:I'm pretty sure fair use doesn't extend to person's likeness in your art without permission, as demonstrated by Amy Grant v Dr Strange. Amy Grant sued Marvel not for use of her likeness - because the photographer owned that image, not Amy Grant - but for defamation (for associating her with the occult). They settled out of court. Generally: -You can take a picture of anyone in public and the photo is yours, to do with as you please -You can make imagery and talk about and criticize public figures, including using your imagery to imply bad things about them, although the rules in the UK are different from the US and it's much easier to sue for defamation there -You can make a derivative work from any work, including photographs of real people, irrespective of who they belong to -You can make an original work depicting anyone you want, defamation notwithstanding. The laws are very broad, on purpose, because otherwise you'd be squashing a hell of a lot of really important artworks. Convention, though, is that you shouldn't gently caress people over, shouldn't blatantly steal their ideas, and shouldn't phone in your artistic efforts and then act like you did something worthwhile. You can easily stay within the law and still be a lovely artist and get a bad reputation for ripping people off. Art directors really do have a responsibility to be very clear about what they're paying for, check artists' portfolios and references, ask for sketches, works-in-progress, etc. and generally not be loving lazy as hell when managing art commissions. When a product has terrible art in it, it's not just on the artists - it's on the art director for not doing their job. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 21:50
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Leperflesh posted:Amy Grant sued Marvel not for use of her likeness - because the photographer owned that image, not Amy Grant - but for defamation (for associating her with the occult). They settled out of court. This. There is (and should be) a line between being illegal and being a dick move.
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Oct 30, 2015 21:56
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Drawing from references is not plagiarism. However, I want to see all examples of artwork where what was delivered was hilariously different from what was requested, please.
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Oct 30, 2015 21:56
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i really don't blame the artists for crappy art because the vast majority of RPG publishers pay so little. When you're paying poser prices, you should expect poser art.
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Oct 30, 2015 22:23
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Wasn't there a lengthy article or blog post by one of the Pathfinder editors, detailing how he'd put out a call for a female adventurer in mountaineering gear, and the step-by-step process that saw him shove in some boobtastic wank-art at the last minute? It had a whiff of self-justification to it, but was a documented example of the problem.
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Oct 30, 2015 22:53
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Loxbourne posted:Wasn't there a lengthy article or blog post by one of the Pathfinder editors, detailing how he'd put out a call for a female adventurer in mountaineering gear, and the step-by-step process that saw him shove in some boobtastic wank-art at the last minute? I also want to see this article if anyone has it.
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Oct 30, 2015 23:06
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I'm pretty sure that infamous Exalted cover wasn't originally meant to feature an anime sorceress in 80s Playboy lingerie.
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Oct 30, 2015 23:13
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We keep telling people that the Idol and the Child of the Sun are black, quite a dark black, but quite a few artists continue being confused by this notion.
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Oct 30, 2015 23:18
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Oct 30, 2015 23:21
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That's not stealing, it's just drawn from reference.
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Oct 30, 2015 23:24
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Bosushi! posted:I'm more inclined to forgive OPP for this particular plagiarism slip up because they really come across as generic medieval dudes doing generic medieval things, unlike that time when WW published a blatant trace job from the cover art of one of the greatest action video games of all time.
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Oct 30, 2015 23:52
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That piece of Exalted art being traced or stolen or whatever is actually a massive boon to the line, because it distracts everyone's attention away from how completely godawful the 100% original fiction on the opposite page is.
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Oct 31, 2015 00:10
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Ferrinus posted:That piece of Exalted art being traced or stolen or whatever is actually a massive boon to the line, because it distracts everyone's attention away from how completely godawful the 100% original fiction on the opposite page is. I believe the Red Army called this maskirovka.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:04
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Loxbourne posted:Wasn't there a lengthy article or blog post by one of the Pathfinder editors, detailing how he'd put out a call for a female adventurer in mountaineering gear, and the step-by-step process that saw him shove in some boobtastic wank-art at the last minute? I believe you're referencing the hilarious WIP video of the making-of Chandra Ablaze. edit: n/m, not as funny as I remember it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gojcuqdVVdA Gerund fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Oct 31, 2015 |
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Oct 31, 2015 04:28
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How do you not just straight-up get sued for this?
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Oct 31, 2015 05:13
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Rand Brittain posted:We keep telling people that the Idol and the Child of the Sun are black, quite a dark black, but quite a few artists continue being confused by this notion. It's shockingly difficult to get art commissioned of people who aren't white. Apparently when you provide reference material consisting of a bunch of Arapaho, Cheyenne, Melanesians, and one tanned Turkish dude, most English-speaking artists will laser focus on that vaguely white guy, then just stick a few feathers and beads on there and call it good. I would love to find a few artists who can actually draw people of color for the next time I commission art, but that is no easy feat.
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Oct 31, 2015 05:17
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Pope Guilty posted:How do you not just straight-up get sued for this? Cost versus benefit, not technically illegal, and WW did what they could to alleviate the problem after it came to light.
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Oct 31, 2015 05:20
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Kestral posted:It's shockingly difficult to get art commissioned of people who aren't white. Apparently when you provide reference material consisting of a bunch of Arapaho, Cheyenne, Melanesians, and one tanned Turkish dude, most English-speaking artists will laser focus on that vaguely white guy, then just stick a few feathers and beads on there and call it good. I would love to find a few artists who can actually draw people of color for the next time I commission art, but that is no easy feat. Your best bet is to find an up-and-comer rather than looking at who does art in the industry currently. The artists embedded in the TTRPG and Marvel/DC comics circles are mostly people who've been there for ages, and they have a very narrow idea of what good work looks like and stick to it. New artists who haven't worked in the industry can be just as talented as the people who've been there forever, and they bring in a very different set of values and biases. Also, new blood can often be very excitable about getting their work published in a book, which is fun to work with. For examples of some people who are doing great on the diversity front, Maddi Gonzalez, H.P. Heisler/Clove, and Crossy (Crossy's portfolio is a bit sparse at the moment, here's some of their work: x, x, x) have all produced simply fantastic work for my games (Inverse World, Fellowship, Breakfast Cult). Kaitlynn Peavler is also very good, if you can get her. She's quite busy and has issues committing to long term projects, but if you just need a couple pieces here and there she's great. A fair bit of her work is also free to use in published works, which is nice. If you want to go looking for new blood, there's a lot of skilled artists on tumblr, if you know where to look, but blind hiring is rough. I've had much better luck asking artists I am already friends with who they'd recommend. Artists know other artists. Every artist has a dozen others they respect and look up to, and odds are pretty good at least one or two of them will be looking for work. So if you can't hire any of the above people because they're too busy working for me or something, you could always ask them who is looking for work. They'll know somebody. FOR EXAMPLE, before publishing this post I asked Clove for friends who I should plug and immediately got two excellent suggestions: Cataegory and Ruby. They've both done really good work for Six Feats Under, and they are both open for commissions. I highly recommend them.
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Oct 31, 2015 07:49
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gnome7 posted:If you want to go looking for new blood, there's a lot of skilled artists on tumblr, if you know where to look, but blind hiring is rough. Boy, isn't that the truth. It's maddening how difficult it is to find specific things or categories of things on tumblr compared to, say, DeviantArt. Looking through someone's tumblr-based portfolio is particularly excruciating. Tumblr really does seem to be where the talent is these days though, for reasons I'm not tied in to that community enough to get. What is the appeal of tumblr as a platform for artists, aside from the "it's where everyone else is" networking aspect? Speaking of talent, I love that second picture of Crossy's. Where's it from?
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Oct 31, 2015 08:18
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Kestral posted:Speaking of talent, I love that second picture of Crossy's. Where's it from? That piece and the first one were both drawn for Fellowship, my next game book. She is the playbook art for the Harbinger playbook. I've told Crossy they should really put those on their portfolio, but they drew those like 8 months ago and the portfolio page I linked is only two months old, so that's already "old work." I don't really get it because it's still GOOD work, but it isn't my portfolio to curate. Kestral posted:Boy, isn't that the truth. It's maddening how difficult it is to find specific things or categories of things on tumblr compared to, say, DeviantArt. Looking through someone's tumblr-based portfolio is particularly excruciating. Tumblr really does seem to be where the talent is these days though, for reasons I'm not tied in to that community enough to get. What is the appeal of tumblr as a platform for artists, aside from the "it's where everyone else is" networking aspect? Tumblr makes uploading posts super easy, the reblog and like features are solid, and the tag feature makes following and finding fandom work very easy. A lot of skilled artists start out drawing fanart, so tumblr becomes a natural flocking ground because fandom work spreads like wildfire there. While places like DeviantArt or LiveJournal revolve around building a friends/followers list, where you only see stuff posted by people you've gone out of your way to follow, the Reblog system that Twitter and Tumblr use lets people share every little thing they find cool or interesting. So a popular person shares a thing they like, and then a chunk of their followers will also share it, and this repeats on down the line. And every so often a new share becomes a new follower, because they want to see more stuff like it. It's a powerful positive feedback loop.
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Oct 31, 2015 08:50
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FMguru posted:Yeah, and the usual two excuses don't cut it this time. The game is two years late so they can't blame tight deadlines, and the KS was fully funded (at almost $700k) so it isn't like they were constrained by their tiny budget (plus, they bragged about what a deluxe and gorgeous artifact the finished product would be). Lots of products have come out with jaw-dropping art several notches higher than Ex3 (The One Ring, anything for L5R 4e, Guide to Glorantha, FFG's 40K and Star Wars games, etc.) so it's not like they were promising something utterly undeliverable. Comparing Onyx Path with AEG or FFG is... well. Onyx Path just isn't on the same level of art direction, as far as I'm aware. Even if you presume the kickstarter budget gave them carte blanche to hire cool artists, they don't have the same level of relationship with talented artists. One thing that's interesting, though, if you compare the art credits between Exalted 2e and 3e, there's practically no crossover. I think the only returning artist from 2e is Melissa Uran, though it's possible I missed somebody. Of course, a lion's share of the art in 2e came from big studios like UDON and Imaginary Friends. And though keeping big studios on that on a consistent art direction was a complaint of previous devs, most of the iconic Exalted art that isn't Uran came out from those studios. I don't know if the price of those studios went up or their availability went down, but it's interesting to see that there's almost no relationships maintained between the editions, except for Uran, who has been a White Wolf mainstay for ages now. grassy gnoll posted:Literally mainstream American comics. Like, they get paid at least a market rate, instead of the chump change RPG artists get most of the time, and they still have artists not following basic instructions. This isn't a systemic thing, this is a bad art director thing. American comics also pay poo poo for the amount of work generally delivered unless you're a very reputable or "hot" artist. This is why comic companies turn a blind eye to comics artists reselling original pieces or doing sketch work or art books featuring their characters. It's hard to make a living as a comic artist if you're doing an ongoing. Doing a full page a day at the quality level expected by modern comics fans is a high level of skill, honestly, and not something a lot of artists can hack. Look at how often most full-page web comics update - usually two or three times a week. That's a more realistic view of what most artists can accomplish. Developing the ability to do work at that speed requires developing a particular process and takes a level of mastery beyond the ability to do good art. Yes, Greg Land swipes. Everybody knows he swipes. But he can also do a page a day reliably, and so he'll keep getting work unless somebody finds bodies in his basement. It's like how Dan Smith art populates most Steve Jackson products from the '90s. He swiped too, and blatantly, but he was always on time with the piece they needed at the price they wanted. Halloween Jack posted:I'm pretty sure that infamous Exalted cover wasn't originally meant to feature an anime sorceress in 80s Playboy lingerie. Here's the story. I feel like I bring this up a lot, but here's how I heard it. Hyung-Tae Kim was a Korean artist that got a lot of notice around the same time the original edition of Exalted was released for his work on JRPG material like Magna Carta, doing very stylized fantasy designs that were pretty distinctive and striking, if not realistic or... egalitarian, let's say. His work became pretty well-regarded with Exalted fandom, particularly those on the White Wolf boards. So the White Wolf dev crew was like "well, why don't we try and get this guy, the fans love him", and though it was a bear to do so, they were able to commission him. Apparently the earlier pieces were this submissive elf wizard pin-up, and they had to go through several passes to at least try and get the more powerful sorceress pose they were looking for, and eventually said "good enough" with what they had at the time it was taking and the deadline they had. Mind, they never worked with him again, but Kim went on to become the art director for Blade & Soul, so presumably he's rolling in more dollars than White Wolf could ever dream of. So it goes.
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Oct 31, 2015 11:47
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I can heartily recommend Claudia Cangini - she did the playbooks for Legacy (examples here) and was punctual, responsive to feedback and more than willing to include diverse characters in the art.
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Oct 31, 2015 11:56
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Of course, a lion's share of the art in 2e came from big studios like UDON and Imaginary Friends. And though keeping big studios on that on a consistent art direction was a complaint of previous devs, most of the iconic Exalted art that isn't Uran came out from those studios. I don't know if the price of those studios went up or their availability went down, but it's interesting to see that there's almost no relationships maintained between the editions, except for Uran, who has been a White Wolf mainstay for ages now. Someone on rpg.net, I think it was some OPP employee, mentioned that ever since UDON started getting big in the video game industry, commissions for tabletop RPG art are handed to the least skilled artists. So, essentially, the style and skill of UDON anno 2E is simply not available to OPP.
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Oct 31, 2015 13:29
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Loxbourne posted:Wasn't there a lengthy article or blog post by one of the Pathfinder editors, detailing how he'd put out a call for a female adventurer in mountaineering gear, and the step-by-step process that saw him shove in some boobtastic wank-art at the last minute? EDIT: Yeah it definitely was the Gunslinger because I remember the reaction to that article being sarcastic since I wasn't found of her artwork to start work. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Oct 31, 2015 |
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Oct 31, 2015 15:39
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LatwPIAT posted:Someone on rpg.net, I think it was some OPP employee, mentioned that ever since UDON started getting big in the video game industry, commissions for tabletop RPG art are handed to the least skilled artists. So, essentially, the style and skill of UDON anno 2E is simply not available to OPP. Sounds legit.
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Oct 31, 2015 15:44
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Comparing Onyx Path with AEG or FFG is... well. Onyx Path just isn't on the same level of art direction, as far as I'm aware. Even if you presume the kickstarter budget gave them carte blanche to hire cool artists, And it's not like AEG hasn't had a couple Poser screwups also...
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Oct 31, 2015 15:45
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Flavivirus posted:I can heartily recommend Claudia Cangini - she did the playbooks for Legacy (examples here) and was punctual, responsive to feedback and more than willing to include diverse characters in the art. Loved the art for Legacy. Love the game too, but the art further solidified it in the top tier of PbtA for me.
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Oct 31, 2015 15:47
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Alien Rope Burn posted:American comics also pay poo poo for the amount of work generally delivered unless you're a very reputable or "hot" artist. This is why comic companies turn a blind eye to comics artists reselling original pieces or doing sketch work or art books featuring their characters. It's hard to make a living as a comic artist if you're doing an ongoing. Doing a full page a day at the quality level expected by modern comics fans is a high level of skill, honestly, and not something a lot of artists can hack. Look at how often most full-page web comics update - usually two or three times a week. That's a more realistic view of what most artists can accomplish. Developing the ability to do work at that speed requires developing a particular process and takes a level of mastery beyond the ability to do good art. Anecdotally and secondhand, so take this with a grain of salt, but: Jeffrey Moy used to be the main penciler on Legionnaires, a Legion of Super-Heroes spin-off book. He isn't getting any work in mainstream comics today (which is kind of a shame IMHO, as he had a really clean, bright, energetic style that I thought fit the medium really well). When someone asked him about this he reportedly explained that he was getting more money doing cheesecake pinups and porn commissions than he was being offered in the comics industry. Unless you're a Big Name Artist - and there are only a handful of those - comics pays poo poo for the quality they expect.
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