Nov 07 2007
Anime Fandom: A breeding ground for art thieves.
Since people have voted on my poll that yes I should do a rant, well I guess I am doing one. I’ll try to keep this civil as possible (although it’s hard when I currently want my landlord to get run over by a speeding bus.) I don’t know much about other fandoms, (furries, star trek, disney etc) but why is it that only in anime fandom I run into so much fucking art theft?
The ORIGINAL fanart on the LEFT was done by this great artist. The one on the right is a thieving bitch.
Aside from the Myspace retards and IMVU morons who paste this crap in their profiles and crash your browsers, the bulk of them seems to be on Deviantart. Even though Deviantart has some pretty strict rules about posting copyright images that you DID NOT CREATE, they seem like they gang on people adding anime songs to their flash movies more than someone who uploads someone else’s art and claims it as their own.
There’s actually various categories of art thieves. It’s no longer “take a pic and plaster it on your DA” account. Most of my examples are using Naruto because - surprise! - that’s where the bulk of the art theft lies. So let’s begin.
The Porn Whore: This person will steal random hentai game images and plaster them all over his (or her) gallery. Most people who have half a brain realize this is not their actual art and usually ignore these idiots until DA catches them breaking a shitload of pornographic image rules. (Sorry guys there’s no sex in the DA room!) Some examples of these morons can be found here and here. (Warning Very NSFW not to mention disgusting.)
The “I didn’t Draw this” Crowd. These people know they are thieves and openly admit it to give them a “disclaimer” that “hey it’s okay to take someone else’s art as long as you don’t claim it it’s yours!” They will steal whatever tickles their fancy. Be it official scan from some art book (that they prolly “found on google”) or a fanart they ripped from some poor Japanese fanartist’s site. Some examples can be found here, here(nice MS painting there), here (well at least she colored it) and here (I don’t know how many sites I’ve seen rip this pic.)
The Deviantart is my new Myspace! Crowd: These morons couldn’t tell the difference between a carrot and a banana if it hit them in the face. They feel they have to make an account at every site that they deem is “the new cool” and immediately post a shitload of random pics they find on the web. Sometimes they’ll admit to not drawing it, others they will just post it as if “hey guys check out this new anime I’m watching *posts screencap*”. The biggest shocker to me is the people who are even dumber and can’t tell the difference between FANART and SCREENCAP. (but I will get to this section in a bit.) Examples of the myspace whores are here (why shugo chara!), here (you are not forgiven for bad cropping and art theft you bitch) and here (he’s pissed because you ripped off someone else’s art you jackass.)
The Screencap Whores: These idiots fail to realize the point of fanART. FanART involves taking a pencil and producing a picture with said pencil. It does not involve taking a pencil, shoving it up your ass and giggling in glee as you screencap Naruto kissing Sasuke for the 1000th time. The other type is those who, in addition to taking a screencap, will do things like change hair colors or cut heads and put them on bodies of screencaps of some other anime. Needless to say, these people never learn how to actually draw and all they do is piss off real artists, or those who enjoy REAL fanart. Examples of these buffoons can be found here, here, here (I love when they use this to make their OCs lol), and here (did you mean to say TRACE UP?).
Trace Whores: So on the topic of tracing, these guys love it! Ok ok, so technically maybe they actually drew it, but they drew it based off an existing original image. I mean it’s one thing to look at a photo or sit in the park and then draw it. I’m cool with that. It’s another, taking an official image, mimicking every detail and then PROUDLY displaying it hoping someone will kiss your ass. Hey we all do this when we first begin drawing, hell I did it like a million times when I was 10 by pausing scenes from the Lion King. Unfortunately when you post it to a place where a lot of people put hard work into drawing their passion for an anime or manga, you look like a complete jackass with no sense of originality. It pisses me off to no end when at anime cons they actually try to SELL these things off! It’s like going to Kinko’s, making a copy of a DVD cover, blowing it up and going BUY MY POSTER LOL! Examples of these copycats can be found here, here (you’ve done a great job tracing BY YOURSELF!) and here. Also as a bonus, this one admits to “using a google image as a reference. So wow like using someone else’s fanart and copying it makes it more okay than using official art eh?
So now for some honorable mentions that I found for which are not fit for any one category above.
This image I recall was a set of images that I once saw on danbooru/sagbooru. That’s not Sasuke, in fact it’s Naruto using a disguise technique…but the person uploading this wouldn’t know that, because they probably stole it off a site that didn’t have the whole sequence. Unfortunately I don’t know where the person who uploaded it to sagbooru got it, so I can’t report them. DA always wants proof - on the other hand art theft sticks out to me like a sore thumb.
This person, who appears to be very popular, while she isn’t an art thief, I’d like to call her a style thief. If you look at all her drawings, they are almost identical to the art style of Koge Donbo - the mangaka for Pita Ten, Digi Charat etc. I looked at her earlier works, in which they portrayed her original style - but as you go forward, her style looks more and more close to this and this. Another example of a person who mimics a mangaka’s style is this guy. His works are pretty good, and while his original art (which isn’t ninja or naruto related) actually has his own style, the person mentioned prior, claims that her characters are all “original”. While I think that drawing in the style of a manga or anime is rather uninteresting, I don’t have a problem with it unless the person starts spewing “original original” bullshit. You’re NOT ever gonna be original when you completely ripoff someone else’s art style (and then trying to make it into some kind of fucking franchise.)
———
It really bewilders me why people want to steal fanart. I mean sure they get their inner attention whore pleased, but then once they’re discovered as a thief, it makes them look 10 times worse. Rather than improving to draw or trying to improve, they steal, use screencaps, paste porn. Wry? (Why can’t they just keep all their stupidity on myspace which I avoid so dearly.)
The problem is a lot of anime fans are getting younger. Since the internet is much more accessible to brats these days, going online is the new IN (back in my day…*shakes cane) and being popular online also appears to be the new in…so I guess if ONE of their friends can draw well (and believe me some of these 13 year olds on DA have better pen skills than grammar skills) they feel the need to do the same..and since not everyone has an eye for art, the only thing they can do is steal in hopes that they will convince everyone they are better.
It’s just things like this sometimes that make me hate anime fandom, and conventions and all this other shit. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember and I’ve only been drawing anime for about 8 years. I enjoy doing this and I want to continue and sometimes it’s the drawing aspect of anime fandom that keeps me watching new shows. But when you get these idiotic thieves, especially those who steal your work it can get very discouraging. Thankfully I have not been a victim of art theft yet (or at least none that I found) probably because I plaster my name in nice readable letters on every artwork that I submit. (Or because my art doesn’t look like it’ll give anybody “popularity” status on DA 
)
Either way, until the day my art has been stolen, I suppose I’ll just continue drawing - and reporting the idiots who steal art. (It’s great too when you tell them not to steal, they get mad saying they didn’t, and after reporting them their account is banned the next day. 
)
37 Responses to “Anime Fandom: A breeding ground for art thieves.”
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But the second you post some screencaps, watch out!
hai i droo this screnecape myself i luv this show ok bai
I think they are banned because not they “stolen” (they are copied that is a different thing, one of my pet peeves is how the word theft is being used about things that are simply copyright infringement) but because there is the mentality of guilty until proven innocent around the Internet sites.
This has been something that bugs me too, even as a non-artist and one who doesn’t frequent art sites.
Anime is one of the great breeding ground for fanart and so if you go to any forum or image board you’ll find hundreds of fanart images just sitting there for the taking. Usually however, credit gets lost somewhere in the transition - maybe because they never signed their work, or whatever, but sometimes I wonder:
How ethical is it to be posting up this kind of fanart? I always tend to dig in my fanart folder and throw up random images to go along with whatever post I make, but sometimes I wonder if these people are supposed to be credited. Although, most of the images I use don’t have explicit credit demanded / on the image, sometimes I wonder if it’s just because I found it along with 100 other images on an image board or AnimeSuki.
It must be weird for those people who surf the net and randomly see their artwork up on someone’s blog…
I don’t think it is wrong to imitate a mangaka’s art style. Imitation is part of how we learn. Kishimoto always said very openly he was heavily influenced by Toriyama and there are countless other examples. Once we’ve studied and absorbed the elements we admire from our mentors’ styles, we can eventually learn to create something new. DeviantArt is by and large a forum for amateur artists, so I don’t think tearing down people who are trying to create is necessarily an admirable enterprise. But I agree with you that blatant theft is just plain idiotic — it teaches nothing.
CCYoshi> While a lot of bloggers use fanart in their posts - yea it’s technically wrong, but deviantart is a place I see as like a “gallery” and these people are taking someone else’s art and putting up into said gallery for others to see. It’s like stealing the mona lisa from one museum and then sticking it up in some other one o_o
reslez> Yea like I said the guy who imitates Kishimoto, I have no beef with him, most of his “imitation style” is only for Naruto fanarts. His original work does have some of his original style to it. I just don’t like the girl who totally imitates Koge Donbo and acts as if her style is so fucking original and everyone should go buy all the merchandise she uses to market off this style.
Glad you decided to post your rant, very nice read.
I haven’t been on DeviantArt in years, but good god, some of those examples you posted are terrible. The edited-screencap OCs are hilarious in a sad kind of way.
My dango art is 100% original (part of the time)
“It’s like stealing the mona lisa from one museum and then sticking it up in some other one.”
I am sorry but that is not the same, the closer is “It´s like copy the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and then sticking it up on some public gallery”.
As for the “technically wrong” … sorry but its the same crime as watching unlicensed anime since its no different that downloading raws or watching subs, I point this out because this is about personal moral values, “technically” there is no difference of posting someone else artwork or posting a anime episode, you are in breach of copyright by doing so.
As for artwork … he he, look at “One Piece” and “Fairly Tale”, VERY similar style (of course they are brothers and learned from the same person if not mistaken), in terms of style you have no way to say someone stolen it … the only issue about that is when you try to pass out something you did as done by someone else (and doing that is called “fraud”).
Wow, nice post there. As an anime artist myself and since I used to be in the Naruto fandom, I can really relate to that XD I agree with most of what you wrote except the part where you bashed “imitation artists”. Well, like one previous commentator said, I think that trying out different styles you see is a way to improve your own art. I myself do that a lot of times, when I see an image I really like, I analyze it for the part that attracts me and see what happens should I try to add it in my style XD What I currently have is a big jumbled up mess though LOL Mine is really a generic anime style but, well, compared to one of your examples at least, I’m willing to dish out a long list of artists that I got inspiration from XD! Funnily I have to admit I feel slightly annoyed when people go “Oh it looks just like a Ken Akamatsu drawing 8D”
If I were you I would’ve put another category “Assholes who see lineart and colour/raep them without permission” XD! Well it’s not a widespread art theft sub-disease but as a lineart artist I just encounter it too much LOL Maybe I’m just a prick who is over-protective =X But you should really see what some brainless idiots can do with my linearts…
I’ve seen someone who vectored screencaps and sold the stuff in real life at an anime convention. To this day, I still regret not having falcon punched her on the spot or gotten her kicked out of the Artists’ Alley.
Ah DeviantArt, the reasons why I don’t visit it anymore.
Atashi> Oh noes! I’d regret that as well, god what a bitch
Cheryl> I’ve seen a few lineart thieves but most of the time they’ll at least be like “this is lineart by xXxx” rather than “I DREW AND COLORED THIS LULZ PRAISE ME”. But as a lineartist I can see that you’d get pissed off, I did see your DA and it seems like it’s a real problem for ya! :O
My art isn’t different because I strive for a unique style. It’s different because I fail at duplicating the techniques of the professionals I copy from.
well in my opinion, everyone first tries to “copy professionals” but they eventually develop their own unique style that they are satisfied with. While copying professionals is considered a feat by some, there are people who can easily mimic what they see - even if they aren’t an anime artist. Some people just have a talent for doing that, which is why when I see people mimic a style 100% I’m like “yea so what? You’ve accomplished absolutely nothing through your copying - you just end up looking like those cheap $5 cashmere scarves they sell at new york city culture fairs - looks like the real thing, but in fact is an immitation.”
hah! i choose the right pic because narutard sux ballz! huhuhuhuhu!
Well yeah, they put credits 90% of the time, but it’s still quite friggin’ annoying.. Anyway, dA policy says that even if credit is given, without the artist’s permission it cannot be posted so I kicked quite a few sorry asses already LOL Gawd, why are the people who steal my linearts NEVER good at colouring!? At least it wouldn’t be so painful if the “finished product”s didn’t look like a 5 year old learned how to hold a marker by colouring it T_T;;
This is a great post that I think alot of people should read. My best friend and I are partners in art fandom (she’s an amazing artist and I’m just a photoshop crack whore) but we’ve had our share of art theft. She’s gotten her art stolen and reposted as hers (leading to us having to put ridiculous watermarks on her artwork) and me? People have taken my (crap) graphics and claimed them as their own.
It’s really frustrating and discouraging for someone else to take credit for your own work. My friend ended up quitting putting her work on the internet.
But I have to speak in defense for those kiddos that copy other people’s styles (since I’m one of them XP). God knows I can’t draw for *crap*. The extent of my abilities is copying a similar style. And if you think about it, the entire manga/anime community is about copying others. Someone came up with the idea of big eyes and pink hair and pretty soon everyone else followed suit.
Haha, because then it would be a collaboration piece.
oooo I never knew all this was happening until you brought it up, very great post
hino..no point in scolding them u know… it’s juz a waste of breath to scold pigs without moral value… most ppl wif one look will know it’s a bitching art thieft
I’m pretty tolerant to tracing or people basing their characters off already established ones (as long as they credit and/or admit their influences). But I draw the line at sales because that’s theft with intent to profit.
嘘はすぐにばれます。
盗作する人達とは関わりあうだけ時間の無駄ですよ。
嘘を見抜く力があること言う事はそれだけの知識を持っているということですから
ヒナノさんのアニメ＆漫画の知識はたいしたものです。拍手
もし、日本で盗作したらあっという間にばれて袋叩きにあうでしょう。
あ～怖い。
Mmmmm…
Delicious Deviantart drama, I must eat it.
Hehe! I’m thirteen ^_^. And I do trace images from manga off the internet, too, but I could never bring myself to put it on Deviantart :/. I only trace it, because one of my friends suggested to me that the best way to learn how to draw anime is to first trace, then take an image for referance, and draw without tracing, and then finally just draw. But, seriously… these art-thief stuff is getting kinda ridiculous. -_-. I know a fifteen-year-old girl in my school who had a bunch of art stolen off her. She really is an amazing drawer.
Most of what you say her is very true but about queenies stuff i think she only stole the eyes and then she added her own stuff ( yes i love queenie soo im taking up for her) Im “learning” how to draw and you have to start some where right? Even mangaka copy because the base in which mangaka draw some one had to start stealing it and make more books like it soo i wouldnt flame on ttraceing as long as you give credit to the person who did the original and make a link to it. Im starting by learning how to do gaia then moving on does that make me a copier aswell for not having any drawing skill and using Gaia as a start? * while your flaming style thevies*
Er I don’t know anything about Gaia so I can’t really comment on that. I don’t think tracing someone’s art, then giving them credit is right. What if the artist doesn’t WANT you to trace their art, credit or no credit?
I have no problems with people trying to copy styles - for fanart. It just bugs me when they rip off a distinct style and then say “i drew original work!” Well no you may have drawn original characters..but they look like they were drawn by _____….
Good post.
Deviant art has been going down the crapper for some time now. Nowadays you have to whore yourself out or practically be a professional to get any significant notice at all and the amount of art theft has gone up a great deal. I had an account there for a long time, but I stopped updating because of how terrible the Admins / general collection of idiots over there has become. It’s worse than the myspace circle jerking.
Then again I’m bias since I used to collaborate with a large number of artists on there and so many of them left because of just what a cesspool it became in the past 12-18 months.
Although most people don’t realize it, art-theft in general is a big problem — not just for hobbyists, but for professionals as well. It goes hand in hand with the “everything is free on the internetz” mentality and it is far from being just bratty kids — adults are as likely to do it as kids (though for obvious reasons, fanart is made up of a younger segement of the population.)
Things like Google images makes it even worse by not really emphasizing that almost without exception, every single image shown is subject to copyright laws and may not be available for general use.
Oh yes, I agree fully. DA has really some weird peeps.
And we had this whole noting “YOU’RE ART IS AWESOME”-thing going round right now too! That was a note linking to a spam/fraud site. Bah!
When you say style theft, I don’t think QueenofDorks is that bad. I’m no real fan of Koge Donbo, so I haven’t studied her style very much but comparing to those manga/images of her I have I see the likness…but it’s still not that bad. Or maybe I just need to get my memory refreshed and raid my Koge Donbo books again ^^’
In my eyes, those who imitate Misato Mitsumi are a bit worse. Since I’ve seen more of those. Oh, and let’s not forget about http://aluciz.deviantart.com/. Where have I seen that style before? Oh yeah, Tony Taka. Gah! D:
Veggies> I noticed a lot of artists I used to have on my watch list haven’t been around in over half a year
I’m too lazy to update a webpage so keeping a DA gallery is easier for me and a good way of avertising stuff like my doujins.
Teh> Lol that guy tries but you can still tell he hasn’t quite perfected his copying skills yet!
Zoya> Yea google images cycles stuff from artists’ webpages, which is kinda why I don’t like to keep an art site…google will prolly find it and index it. At least DA’s stuff isn’t indexed in search engine imagesearches.
You know, I would love to know what an artist like YOU, Hinano, thinks of my “style”. Most of the people I know are either too dumb to evaluate anime art or too nice to say anything bad. Care to say a few words? *holds up a shield* XD!
I totally agree with all of your points. There was a time back over 4 years ago when most of the art that appeared on devart was credible and proper art. Over the years i’ve noticed more and more art that simply looks as if it belongs on myspace/facebook ect and not in devart. I’m disappointed that devart has arguably turned into a ‘fad’ site whereby people join just because it’s cool to have an account; i mean this totally contradicts the purpose of devart in the first place. Besides, for things like screencaps, i didnt draw this art, ect wasn’t that part of the point why devart introduced the scraps section? I wish more people would use the scraps section for these random pictures.
Cheryl I have nothing against you or your art style XD It’s very cute. While it may “resemble” something I might have seen somewhere, it doesn’t directly rip off any ONE style making me go “HEY YOUR ART LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE ____” which is completely ok with me. As I said I don’t mind when people mix styles and combine to then sorta develop their own. I just hate the people who pretty much draw identically to another artist and then use that style to promote themselves with their “original characters” which basically look like the artist they copied from just drew some original characters as well.
I mean, if we take it out of the anime context, i doubt that the creators of the little mermaid would be too thrilled if you drew a mermaid character to look exactly like ariel with different colored hair and said “hey i drew an original mermaid character ^____^” I think sometimes we need to take things out of the anime context and look at them from a different light to see the point.
Haha thanks XD;; Always wanted an un-biased opinion on it… Yea it really makes sense now that you put it in another way. Sorry if I misintepreted your words previously ^^;;
Stealing art is bad bad bad. ;-;
Well, I can say I belong to the stealing lineart crowd. ^^;
I so happen to suck at drawing, but my painting skills are about average, so I give it a try every now and then.
However, for the one colored lineart I’ve posted on deviantART, I explicitly asked the artist’s permission before I even started painting. So yeah…
Still, I’m trying to be better at drawing so I won’t have to snatch other people’s lineart. ^^;
I agree with Zoya on the subject of art style theft. I’m no artist, but I’m quite interested in the doujin artwork scene, and it’s rather sad to see that besides some big-name artists and the slightly odd bunch, the rest looks exactly. Fucking. The. Same. Empty moemoe eyes the size of my palm, radioactive-colored hair, grafity-defying boobs and skirts, you know the drill. The technique is top-notch, but there is no soul. It’s come to the point where I could look at two random images on Danbooru and not realize that they are, in fact, by two different artists.
Not fun.
I think arttheft like that’s bad - -
but for some style I don’t think it’s that bad =o for some reason nowaday it’s quite normal for having similar or almost the same style as other artist , as now there’re many professional manga artist that has the same style as ohter - -”
HOLD ON?!! I didnt know I did stole this! I found Photobucket =.= I think you got misunderstand. but I didnt steal gallery NaruSaku. but I was enter in Photobucket. I love picture. SO I change it. Acutally I forget put on comment “I found gallery in Photobucket”
Well you got accident. Yes Im ChibiKawaii12