Angel of Dream Jurgis - Ad comparison to Soom Io layout

I just think it's the whole introduction image for Jurgis is so 'SOOM' like. A couple of copied elements? Fine, but this is really blatant, and I'd be disappointed in any company that would do that.

Of course, it wouldn't stop me from buying the doll if I liked the sculpt. I'd really been gunning for a werewolf doll, but Jurgis looks much too feminine and ... silly. So I won't be considering him.

 

I've been giving this a lot of thought since my first post in this thread, and like a few other people, wonder if this is just the beginning and if AoD continues to do things that are more challenging that they won't move off into their own unique direction. I think I view this as more of a start to try a new direction in presentation and in creating dolls that are more complex/challenging, but as a start, it isn't perfect--they went with something safe, since it's worked well for another company and in doing so, stuck too close to the original they seem to be inspired by (advertising wise, I mean--the doll has some really different elements). However, considering that AoD has improved in leaps and bounds since they started, I have hopes that they will move on from this point as well.

One thing I don't see this wolf guy as is a poor man's IO. Because advertising aside, he's quite different--and that's what's really important (to me anyway). It's pretty clear that the Soom dolls were inspiration, but with the doll itself they added a lot of their own ideas to the mix, and their style is clearly their own. I could see someone liking IO and not being drawn to him, or vise versa because they really do look very different from each other. And while the add stayed too close to the original, the doll really went beyond what Soom had done, which I think is something that should not be overlooked.

That's a neat idea--and always something an owner could choose to do. Most dolls get changed from the way they were originally depicted, and there's really lots of interesting things that could be done with this guy. I'm not fond of his leopard print get up (never was one for animal prints anyway, lol), but I would love to see what other people would do with him. Maybe that's why the add campaign bothers me less--how the company does up the doll is less important (provided that potential buyers can get an accurate idea of what the doll looks like, which is very important). I'm more interested with what can be done with the doll once it leaves the company.

 

I'm really unimpressed with AOD for their lack of creativity here..>>

The ad is a blatant copy from Soom. Surely they can come up with their own layout ideas.

The only thing i like about this guy is his paws.
Hes too big and his scary face is just...scary..>>;

 

First of all, one is a lion and one is a wolf. The Soom ad looks completely "stolen" from the Lion King poster, so I guess you could say they copied that.
And they both have crawling poses....well, since they are both animals I don't see that as being over-the-top copying.

I really doubt that AoD said, "ooh...Soom is doing a lion, let's copy them and do a werewolf". SO MANY PEOPLE have made their dolls into werewolves, it is almost as common as people making their dolls vampires, so it was just a matter of time before someone came out with a werewolf face. Since it seems like most of the doll companies have vampire sculpts, I imagine it is just a matter of time before lots of them have werewolves too.

I don't find the ads similar in much of anything except overall tone, and frankly, do we know that AoD didn't hire the same photographer/graphic artist/ad company that Soom uses?

At any rate, who cares? People who are going to buy the Soom doll will buy that one, and people who are going to buy the AoD doll will buy that one. I really, really doubt that AoD is going to "steal" customers away from Soom with these ads. And frankly, given how really bad the old AoD photographs were, I'm just happy to see them moving in a new direction.

 

*This is my personally thinking, anybody may not think like me*

I don't talk about copying doll because AOD don't copy the doll but I want to say that
AOD 's ad style is look very similar to Soom's IO.
I'm not mind know how many people want that wolf head or paw.

Personnally, I feel so disaapoint when I found this AOD's ad, it make me feel bad to AOD company too.

- Why AOD have to make thier ad similar to other company's ad style?

- Why don't they create thier own imagination or other style ?

I see it many and many times, I still think it look VERY SIMILAR to Soom IO's ad, whenever I see it

I ever be Soom customer before I bought 2 dolls from them and the doll is really nice, I don't mind if AOD want to upgrade the doll quallity to be like Soom or other famous company such as Volks but, don't mean that AOD have to use other company idea to present thier product.

This is NOT showing of any creation of AOD.

why don't you think...
How it be... when Soom customer see this copy theme ad's style.
Yes, in fact I don't care about it, but it bother my mind...

AOD is LACK of creation.

sorry about my English

 

I think we should keep the doll separate from the advertisement.

My personal rule of thumb for plagiarism is: Is it visibly traced? Does more than 10% of it resemble its "inspiration"?

As far as I can tell, AoD Jurgis is certainly not plagiarism or copying. He's a unique doll sculpted by someone else, with a similar sort of idea - "hey, let's throw in animalistic features", except in a different sense, SOOM Io being the hunter who wears a pelt, and Jurgis being the wolfman who IS the beast.

Body-wise and head-wise I think there are enough differences that I can't call him a ripoff.

The advertisement, on the other hand, is almost a trace-job, positioning, layout and typography-wise, and that's probably where I'd start hurling brickbats, except that I notice a lot of Korean doll websites have similar site layouts.

Which makes me wonder: Are the same people coding and making graphics for these, and is this the same crew getting lazy and copying their own work, or a separate crew getting lazy and copying someone else's layout?

Either way, it's not exactly 100% professional, but if you're copying stuff in your portfolio you're just uninspired. If you're copying someone else's, you're a plagiarist.

- Mel

 

To me, it looks more like both ads used the same 'default' template from one graphics/web design program or another. It is unfortunate because it is really this stylistic similarity that have people yelling 'copy' more so than the sculpt themselves. If the doll had been presented differently, I bet there would have been nary a squeak. It's like saying one painting is a 'copy' or (to use a less puerile term) derivative of another because they have the same frame.

To my eye, the DoA doll is nowhere near as 'zomg-beautiful' as the Soom doll, but has its own charms and could be worked into some very interesting characters. I can't imagine mistaking one for the other, that's for sure! Not even if I squint and cross my eyes a little bit.

Is it possible Soom and AoD share a parent or affiliate company and the ads were productions of an in-house graphics department? That's what it really looks like to me - independent contractors are usually pretty careful not to repeat styles for separate clients.

 

considering one is chinese and one is korean i doubt that.....

 

This. Soom does a fabulous job presenting their dolls in their website. And imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.
I think AoD is doing a good job "growing" their business as the default faceups have improved as well as the lineup of dolls they offer. I'm interested to see where they go with their limited dolls and I hope it's just as interesting as what Soom has been doing with theirs.

 

Yeah, but 'outsourcing' isn't limited to North America, and companies in different countries can be part of international conglomerates. It really looks like the two doll presentations used the same source layouts, and rebuilding that as a copy (unless it derived from a commonly-available template) would be more of a pain in the keester, imho, than making something from scratch.

::sez the girl who is always accidentally saving over her source files and having to do exactly that ::

 

well, i know that.

but these aren't huge companies. these are artists and i really don't see them being owned by one company.

 

I've actually thot about this alot, and given the materials/techniques involved and the quantity of capital required to produce a 'run' of dolls, it is very likely that the artists are involved on some level or another with a larger manufacturer. A lot of things are made of resin, and in the interest of keeping high quality and production standards it would make sense that the production facilities making our dolls might also manufacture other goods using the same techniques. This has been extremely common arts practice -particularly in editioned, or even OOAK sculptures- for a long time; my sculpture prof at art school worked exclusively with Alcan, for example, in order to obtain the materials, equipment and production expertise he needed to create his artwork. Yes, it is possible (though mebbe not advisable) to cast resin in your kitchen - that doesn't mean this is how our dolls are made; in fact, for both the safety of the people who create our lovely resinkiddies and the quality of the end product, I sure hope they aren't!

Companies also can be associated by ties other than direct ownership - it is entirely plausible that Soom and AoD share the same suppliers for materials and equipment, for example. That same company may have an arm that provides product photography and web graphics, and because of the existing connection, it is far easier and less expensive to work with them. Or, services of this type are often offered through IT, shopping cart, and webhosting. The fact is, the smaller a company is, the more likely it is to be connected -either directly or associatively- to other, larger companies, regardless of national borders.

 

Just to clarify, Jurgis and Nicole are both in AoD's 'super' range, which are approx 62cm tall.

I'm a little disappointed that more time has been spent taking a company to task for their ad layout than to get the correct information out there. Lumping the discussion thread together with the 1/2 scale dolls is just creating massive confusion.

 

Actually, based on some of the things Mr. An, the artist behind DollsTown, has said about his struggle to cast his dolls, the general state of the industry, his decision to outsource to Mr. Dollshe (don't know if that's a real name, but he sure goes by it), and a little "how-to" about casting resin, the companies do basically do it themselves.

This is obviously going to depend on the particular company. As I said, DollsTown started having their casting done by Dollshe, and I think a few other companies have too (because Dollshe have a $200 000 vacuum chamber-vibrator to get the resin to mix perfectly with almost no air bubbles), but as far as I understand, that machine is Dollshe's, not belonging to some resin-dedicated factory that also puts out, I don't know, resin battleships. I imagine that most of the bigger companies do the casting themselves with more expensive machinery like Dollshe...I'm not sure about the small companies, like K-Doll or GloryDoll or...basically anyone who only sells heads.

Speaking more specifically of the possibility that this ad wasn't copied, but produced by the same group/person, that's actually a really interesting and very possible idea. Even aside from the fact that there could conceivably be a connection on the company or super-company level, it's quite possible that there's an individual or a team out there right now selling their services to BJD companies. Maybe they have been getting so much business from SOOM they thought they'd approach a few other companies, and AoD was (one of) the one(s) that accepted.

Of course, maybe it is copying. Who knows. But the thought that it might be legit is enough to make me think people should, er, keep it polite. It's like this post I read a long time ago, where someone started freaking out about a case of copying, only to be told that the dolls had been sculpted by the same artist for a different company.

 

Personally, I find that there are so many similarities in the advertising campaign that I overlooked the doll itself at first. My initial reaction wasn't "oh look, a werewolf doll, how cool". Instead it was "wow, someone took Soom's idea and ran with it".

I'm with Tenshi on this one. I also do graphic design for a living, and the whole marketing campaign for Jurgis just left a bad taste in my mouth. The doll itself is a great idea even if he's not to my personal taste, but the fact that they chose to market him that way just bothers me.

 

I agree the layout is a copy of Soom's website Io presentation.
But, everyone has forgotten Soom also takes other's works for inspiration. Their Onyx June dolls were totally inspired by a painting from a game design (at least they mentioned the source).
So it's not "Soom is good, AOD is bad". It's not as simple.

 

being a graphic design student (sat in my class right now) i have to say this is such an astounding lack of creativity and obviously inspired by soom. i know people are trying to defend AoD, but ask and semi decent designer, that is not some 'pre set' layout, yes its fairly simple, its more the way in the first pic, even the photo is VERY similar. there isnt a pre set design for lion/wolf/beast doll photoshoots or stories - it doesnt exist. everyone knows by now that chinese companies are more likely to see it as flattery rather than imitation, its not an uncommon thing. and before people jump on me, im not saying 'chinese think compying is fine!! lol' im just saying, it is more likely to happen. i have chinese friends, asian friends, and everyone knows it who lives there

and algesiras, i think the differance is, soom DID mention the source, it made it more of a homage than copying something they thought sold well. after all, it was inspired by a painting, not another doll photoshoot. likewise, the lion king is not another doll photoshoot @_@ there really IS a differance between the lion king vs soom and Aod vs soom...

 

If you read carefully, I did say "copy" for the ad, and "inspiration" for the Soom dolls. So I implied there IS a difference.
What I wanted to say is Soom doesn't create things out of the blue, inspiration can be found everywhere.

 

Yeah, I have to chime in again and say that I think it's very unlikely that AoD somehow found a template that's exactly the same as SOOM's. It's not like the layout is terribly difficult to replicate. Give me all the Photoshopped photos and the text in a Notepad file, and I could replicate the layout in a jiffy.

But the point is now how simple the layout is -- the point is that there was absolutely no need to copy it! I think the doll is original. His "gimmick" is obviously inspired by SOOM's Monthly Dolls, but I don't think most people have a problem with that. Why? Because other than some similarities in clothing he's VERY different from Io. AoD is just shooting itself in the foot by coming out with a creative doll and then advertising it in such a way.

This has nothing to do with AoD being one of the "cheap" companies. I'm a huge Volks fan, but if Volks had pulled this I would be just as angry.