I agree completely Quadart. I definitely see your point and I definitely feel that one should have permission/give credit.
hey – wow, you could left her name off of the title and we would still know who it was…look exactly like her. Can’t wait to see some renders of this one.
I strongly agree with Quadrant also using software and rendering isnt cheating its simply using good tools. It’s not “cheating” when HR giger uses a good airbrush is it?
Dont be ABSURD. The problem with this image is they Artist took almost 1/2 of the piece from photos and didn’t mention it. Saying you did hair is PS isnt the same as using a straight up photo. And this kinda stuff makes ALL CG artists look bad. Were not into ripping people off were trying to make our visions come to reality and into using the very b est tool to make it possible.
Plagiarism is a tough subject( legally ) and its pretty apparent a few haven’t a clue about it and should refrain from indirect insults acting as if they do. Now I’m not defending the guy but nor am I against him, as I said this seems to be a pretty common thing in digital art. But I digress, if what he has done is to be considered plagiarism then frankly the entire art world should be shut down!
Starting with pixologic, as their spotlight tool encourages and make plagiarism more accessible, you think its ok to take a pic of someones face( or any other pic ) and glue it onto your mesh as a “texture” is ok. But to take “pieces” of a pic and glue/blend them onto a pic of your mesh is plagiarism…really. Not to mention the thousands of traditional sculptors like myself who have sculpted our favorite hero or villain from a scene, poster etc because we liked the design/pose/look. News flash, just because me, you or anyone else may build our pieces from ground up to represent a scene or pic we like of a particular subject does not make it ok so to speak. If its a representation of an existing piece in any medium by someone else then technically it is plagiarism.
EX: If you see a pic of batman that you love, and sculpt a batman statue as he is in the pic essentially that is plagiarism and can be argued as such in a court of law. Though it usually does make it to court because said artist/company/right holder knows it would cost more money than its worth and most judges would throw it out anyways. But Look at all the people George Lucas has gone after for simple “one off’s”. Where all they did was take a SW character
The artist of this piece SHOULD have given a shout out to Todd Pitt if those were his picks. He didn’t, and if you want to thrash him for that then that is understandable, though I doubt Todd Pitt would GOS either way, but please refrain from screaming “plagiarism” unless you fully understand it which it is apparent some don’t, we are all guilty of it to some degree.
An amazing job on this piece…What has he done that differs so much from others Top Row work? Used Photoshop a little bit more than the next guy?
This goes for you wanna be Top Row moderators/ Police… Shut up with the childish whining.
If the OP had stated at the outset the piece was a photographic collage of work by a noted photographer, then I don’t think the moderators would have even allowed it to remain posted, let alone graduated it to the top row.
Muddpitt–obviously you are one of those, of whom you speak, that seems to be confused by the term Plagiarism, as you can’t seem to be able to distinguish the difference between plagiarization and derivative works. Plagiarism specifically refers to literary appropriation opposed to visual appropriation (even though it is loosely excepted to do so), but since the term “plagiarism” tends to ring the Pavlovian bell with the general public I decided to run with it to describe a particular copyright infringement.
Being a freelance illustrator working for the major publishers in this country, I do know my fare little bit of U.S. Copyright law as it pertains to the visual arts–it has come in handy a few times. Clients can unwittingly drag the unwitting down some pretty costly highways.
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the “wrongful appropriation,” “close imitation,” or “purloining and publication” of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions,” and the representation of them as one’s own original work.
So that would apply here, surely.
It covers works in the visual medium, not just the literary medium.
Yeah, I’m one of them…family of lawyers over here, but hey what do I know, I mean you are a freelance illustrator. I actually have had dealing with claims of plagiarisms( copyright infringement ) from well known artist whos characters I had sculpted. Not in any “scene” or “pose” that they had done( save one ) but just sculpted their character.
You do not need a third grade education to see its a fine line between the two. Now the TC “could” fall under the definition for plagiarism( in the casual sense of the word )…OR the definition for derivative. There is no middle ground regardless of you or anyone elses opinion. You can come in here and scream its plagiarism, but frankly its foolish and hypocritical. My original point on “ART” as a whole still stands. Derivative is what someone uses to hide behind from any responsibility from imitating( copying ) someone elses work or ideas, seriously lets not kid ourselves here.
Funny how you ignored my zbrush spotlight point. But I’m gonna run with it anyways…are you in threads crying foul when someone use the spotlight feature to texture their model? When someone who has done a portrait/likeness sculpt of an actor etc, uses the same picture they used for reference to essential “paste” their face/texture/color etc…?
Here is an image I created in Zbrush - little photshop on the ears.
No photoshop I swear!
Regarding the posts by u3190 and hotknife, I’m sure the people who were prematurely pushed out of the Recent Threads rows because of your childish attempt at sarcasm will be very appreciative. 
All figurative art is plagiarism, only the westerners wrote history on it and laws and made it legit.
Ah, you’re lawyer-like by associative osmosis. Gotcha.
I ignored your Spotlight example because it was irrelevant to the gist of the point I made in my first post. I’m not concerned with source indistinguishable (poor quality in a lot of cases) photomaps projected on low poly meshes. I also do not and have never used Spotlight nor do I use photomap projection in any other 3d app. I didn’t express any concern about murky, nebulous gray thresholds of copyright infringement as it relates to plagiarism, or any possible legal ramifications there either. That would be the OP’s problem not mine. I used the word ‘plagiarism’ to accurately describe a particular circumstance. You decided to go off on a myopic tangent. So again, I was referring to the overtly blatant plagiarizing, stealing, ‘borrowing’, or swiping (whichever one of these descriptive terms floats your boat), of another artists work, directly (in a quite easily recognizable fashion), to complete another work. Hell, why not take the entire photo and just paste a digitally sculpted replica of Scarlett’s nose in the PS doc and state (or not state) that beside the nose the rest was “done” in Photoshop. 50%, 95% ‘borrowed’/stolen, what difference does it make?
No, I don’t do fan art of any kind, let alone knock offs of licensed products by big buck companies employing armies of aggressive copyright lawyers–not quite that stupid. In a lot of cases a small time infringer will just get a ‘cease and desist’ letter.
Yeah, I’m sure everyone gets the drift that there is nothing new under the sun, even some third graders I presume. Every form of art in some way mimics another. Harold Bloom wrote a book on poets about the topic, the title says it all “The Anxiety of Influence”. After all, aping is what humans do best. I’m not interested in gray area excuses for swiping peoples work, reaching deep down into archetypal thematic similarities, or describing the use of half assed photomaps on low poly meshes.
I’ve been following this thread for some time now and would just like to say its getting a bit out of hand…
I understand the points of view being shown and I agree with most of them BUT its starting to turn into a grudge. I don’t see any moderator around and these last posts with photoshop are really bringing it even lower.
I would suggest, if people are so bothered by the way Zbrush decides what goes on top row to create a separate thread and discuss it there instead of bashing the author’s original post.
I agree that the image has a lot of Photoshop and the parts that he seems to have done aren’t that well accomplished BUT he didn’t ask for top row and I’m sure he didn’t ask for people to bash him like that. How about giving him some constructive criticism on how he can improve his art and respect the other artists that he took his work from instead of doing this?
We are all artist and we should be in this together guys!
I missed this thread.
I don’t particularly like sculpting here but its ok, a typical zbrushing with lot of details, pores etc. If animation is the only purpose for 3d sculpting, I don’t really agree, having a hammer and seeing only nails around… :lol:
But what I see here is a so and so hair modeling and a projection of a photo via pp on it. Sorry. Lets stay in 3d world as possible.
Oh, I just realized that this is a top row. Oh my… Unfortunately I rate only *5 on what I like and nothing on what I don’t. So nothing here.
CastorPT :What you said is very correct.And many ones are just very interested in finding some bad sides of that image.
Its the fact that , the artist didnt ask for the top ROW.and i think more than the Awsome creativity, its a bit of fortune for US to get that,He got it,now please just leave him as this will help on his way.
Actually i think Everyone imitate something,Humans are not possible to produce any new thing.
In someway cg works are actually a repetation of orginal one to make it more good looking,and i think he does it.
It is rather silly, we are all artists as said already “We are all artist and we should be in this together guys!”. I can undersand why people are angry, but let us be polite to one another and respect ZbrushCentral.
I come here to look at art, to connect with artist and be inspired…
not to read insults and depricating comments.
p.s The way the TopRow is picked is to me anyway, simple. What looks “good” in the little preview. This way ZbrushCentral can have a nice looking “gallery”. If you click on he Gallery button, and go to the main section every little Thumbnail looks very pleasing to the eye.
A form of marketing for Zbrush. =)
p.s.s Be construcive and polite, or do not say anything at all. The same as in CGTalk.
Actually I was trying to bring a sense of humour to this lynch mob that seems to be forming.
Head over to 3dtotal where the guy has a portfolio of images that are of a very high standard, he’s obviously got talent and is capable of good work.
So a few people here feel they have been misled because the author didn’t lay out a complete road map of how the image was created. I don’t believe he did it to intentionally mislead or fake. And if I was him I won’t come back to this thread to justify myself in the face of such overt crit.
We understand and respect the opinions on both sides of the issue here. The debate has raged quite a bit out of hand, though, detracting from the positive and helpful tone that we want to foster at ZBC. For that reason, this thread is being closed until further notice.