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Site Update
It would benefit our community to go over a couple of art courtesy guidelines:
- Please don't provide other people's customs (without their permission) as examples for commissions, GCC requests, breedings, etc. If you are an artist and shown a custom as an example and don't see that custom in your commissioner's lair, ask the commissioner for proof that the owner permitted it as an example.
- Please don't provide specific images or artwork you do not own (without permission) as examples for commissions, GCC requests, breedings, etc. Using these as "inspiration" is becoming an issue because artists are being encouraged to copy these images. Instead, give the artist some description of your idea, keywords to look up on google, provide your own drawings, or stock images that have the appropriate permissions.
- You can easily generate a color palette from an image you like by using this site so providing an image for a color palette should not be necessary. This site also provides palettes for your use.
- Do not save custom images and upload them to outside websites if you don't own the custom in question on your account, or you are not the artist of the custom in question. This is becoming a problem for custom owners and artists who don't like seeing their work uploaded to Dropboxes or image hosting sites by people they either do not know, or do not want to "save" their customs or display them.
Showing courtesy to your fellow user and artist is important when it comes to a community like this running smoothly, so please keep these guidelines in mind for the future.
Posted by JAK
(#15) on Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:20pm
- Fnord 🍬 👻 💩
(#21141)
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Posted on: Mon Jan 12, 2015 5:05am
If the problem is with prompters providing a reference as inspiration but then expecting artists to follow it too closely, why not make a rule that if linking to outside sources we need to link at least 3 of them and not value one above the others? That would prevent the problem, while also allowing people to suggest a general class of thing that they don't already personally own art of.
- Kyu
(#8896)
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Posted on: Mon Jan 12, 2015 5:21am
Verbal description is very tough for non-native English speakers.
It's easier for us to show what we have in mind, because we just don't know the English words to describe the idea.
- Flufsera
(#62397)
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Posted on: Tue Jan 13, 2015 3:45pm
If I bought a custom, and I link back to aywas and the artist is that allowed?
- Guitarlos
(#6879)
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Posted on: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:47pm
How does this affect PLBC breedings? I use image references for all of my breedings because a few words just isn't enough (which has always been okay). Prompts like "sugar skull", "sunset", "cherry trees", "opals" can all mean so many different things. Even with 10 words, that doesn't always get across exactly what you mean. I've had word-only prompts be horribly misinterpreted and turn out nothing like I imagine. Even saying "white base" got me a beige one once! So now I always use images.
I used to link inspiration albums so the artist would have a wide variety of things I like to help them, without feeling too forced into making it like one thing. But it was changed to only allowing 1 single image, so that's what I've been doing. I never ever ever expect my babies to be clones of the photos/drawings (if they were I'd be reporting it immediately), but the images serve an incredibly important purpose of showing the general feel/look I like. Some things are just impossible to describe, especially when you don't know the person who'll be reading it and don't know how they'll interpret what you said. Not to mention non-native speakers who may not know how the describe something or may not understand a description.
I had a PLBC artist today tell me that based on this news post, they don't feel that they're allowed to look at inspiration images at all. Apparently they were told to ignore images and just listen to the music for my album cover prompts, which would result in wasted coins. (Since what I'm after is a loose inspiration, using similar colors or similar art style, NOT anything close to copying the covers exactly.) I hadn't interpreted the news post that way, thinking its just about using someone's characters/customs/etc for inspiration, not photos/album covers/etc to give a feel for what you're after. If images are disallowed for everything from now on, I'd really like to know so I can stop buying Painted coins and get refunds on the ones I have in queue. - Azi
Posted on: Mon Jan 12, 2015 12:46am
Being an artist, I really don't see the harm of working from references, I can understand the issue if the person is COPYING a certain element from them (and that's the artist's fault for not knowing how to make an original work based on a visual CONCEPT, which is what the references should suggest), but referencing / taking inspiration from a mix of different works is very different than that.
The first step in a designer's project is usually to make a concept board, filled with images and colors that give the "feel" of what you're trying to achieve. The designer wouldn't be copying any elements from any of the images there, but when put together, they give an idea of the path the designer has to take for the project to achieve its visual goal.
Some times there's just no way to describe certain things, like shading style, and the only way to properly explain it is to give them an image of what you mean. Some artist manage to mess up prompts so badly even when you give them images, some people don't understand verbal explanations so well, others might not explain themselves verbally too well... I imagine a lot of frustration happening.