Artists using doll likeness without crediting

I am a live art model. I do it for a living. And when someone paints me, they take my likeness, and make it theirs. If this painting used a doll as a model instead of a real person, the likeness becomes theirs.
Now, if they had copied a vendor picture, or a photo someone else had taken that was NOT intended to be used for their art, without permission, THAT is stealing and not entirely creative.
Any good muse will tell you that being acknowledged is not the point. In fact, I do not want to my name linked to any painting anyone will ever paint of me. The point is the art. And that is the end of it.

Plus, it might just look like a particular sculpt because that is what you want to see in it, which is also one thing art is about. You see parts of yourself when you look at other peoples art. If you love a sculpt it may be natural that that is what you see. This artist may not have used a Soah at all. She might just have a particularly lovely living model, that you see Soah in.

And that should make other people's art more personal and lovely.

 

i use my dolls for inspiration all the time, but it is more about hte character they portray then the actually sculpt of the doll itself. in this sense i see nothing wrong with it because in most cases when people use this approach you can't even tell.

but i understand why this would upset you. there is a well known doll artist who had an issue with this. someone took photos that the artist had taken of their dolls and then painted/ drawn them. in the exact same outifts and poses that the dolls were photographed in. and then the person tried to have the drawning published. i think that, similiar to what others have said, when there is this much resemblance then you should be honest about who inspired you.

so in this case, yeah someone should be owning up to what is not theirs, but if it is not so directly related, as the example i gave, then i think that it is alright.

but maybe you could ask the artist if this was the doll they used or something? it would be interesting to know what their intent was.

 

Interesting topic. There is an artist who goes by the pseudonym of Mijn Schatje and some of her paintings look like they were inspired by BJDs. I remember one in particular that looked almost identical to a Pipos Baha limited edition.
I don't think there is anything wrong with it myself. If she had copied another artist's painting then I would be unhappy but in this case she probably just used a Pipos doll as a model. Maybe the people who designed Pipos Baha and his limited face-up wouldn't like it or who knows, they may be flattered?
I like her style and I would probably buy one of her paintings if I could afford it.

 

I too was a live art model and there is a distinct difference between using TRADEMARKED IMAGES (not copyrighted, copyright is subject to some very stringent standards) and using a human or anything else as the subject of a work of art.

Comic characters, Disney characters, the sidewise O LOVE image, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis, are all examples of TRADEMARKED images. You cannot use them in any form for profit (not even for artworks, although you probably won't find anyone pursuing fanartists or Velvet Painters) without securing the rights to do so.

Live models, the likeness of those people and objects that are NOT trademarked, are not subject to this constraint. To my knowledge, no one has trademarked the image, the likeness of any BJDs for purposes other than making dolls.

As to whether (assuming this is true, that a BJD was used as a model) the artist should give credit to the doll? No. This is not and never has been the standard in fine art circles. Next you'll be asking them to give credit to Lennox for the vase their flowers are in in their still-life, and that is just ridiculous.

 

The OP sounds like a person who may just be beginning to have an interest in fine art. Art should incite emotion, that is good art.I don't have anything else to add, except to thank the OP, and say that this is one of the most interesting threads I have read in a long time, it showed me a lot of artist's sites and works that I would not have looked at without it. I encourage the OP to keep looking at art, and keep questioning it.
When an artist "steals" the likeness, be it of human, doll, whatever, it is an insight into their vision of reality, and their right to depict their vision is pretty well accepted in our society. As fans of BJDs I think it is thrilling to have them depicted by such a wonderful artist.
I did a whole series of watercolors of Sooah, she is inspirational. As is Soah I am sure.
I paint on my BJDs as well as paint them as subjects. They exist, they are fair game. I did a movie once based on a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" (movie was "Tune in Tommorow") and Peter Falk had a line in it to Keanu Reeves that went "Art is like two cannibals on a desert island. It's eat, or be eaten."
That sums it up for me, as an artist, and as a lover of art.
For me BJDs are art, and for me and amazing culmination of a lifetime of being a painter and a doll lover.

 

Let me guess, Eli Effenberger? (As her work was featured on a sci-fi mag several months back?)

Eli doesn't own any dolls. She would love to, though. I've spoken with her about her work because I will one day get around to ordering prints, I find them amazing. She uses humans as her drawing models and then she turns them into ball-jointed dolls. The faces just look like that because that's her style, it runs throughout any work in which she does faces.

 

I have some exaples:

A

1) My mother got the idea that it would be fun to name my brother "David", so she did just that.

2) Some other people named their sons David around that time, and the name actually became really popular in my brother's age group.

3) Now my mother thinks that she started the whole popularity of that name, and everyone else around us copied her idea.

Does this mean that my Mother really started it, or the concurrence is just accidental? I guess you know the answer.

B

1) A no-name Hungarian artist with almost no pageviews on deviantart drew a woman in a nice fantasy armor.

2) Soom came out with "Deneb-Planet Spirit", who has a nice fantasy armor with a similar general idea (bodyshape-following swirls with large gaps). Actually every second fantasy artist designs armors like this.

3) The no-name Hungarian artist now thinks that Soom copied her, because she hasn't seen any other artists designing similar things.

Does this mean that she is right, or does this mean that she hasn't seen a large part of the fantasy community (you could say that she is ignorant)? I guess the answer is obvious.

C

1) Elfdoll designed and made a beautiful BJD named Soah.

2) Someone - a popular artist - made a beautiful picture of a woman who looks like Elfdoll's Soah. Actually most of her pictures have a BJD-ish feel to it. We don't know whether she knows about BJDs at all (at least there is nothing implying that in the OP's post)

3) Now someone thinks that the artist used Elfdoll Soah as an inspiration.

I think the question is obvious. Couldn't she have just came up with the idea on her own? Similar things pop up in the world without having ANY connections to each other. Maybe she thought that she would draw a beautiful oriental woman with large eyes (because her general style goes for that style - just like BJDs). Maybe it's totally coincidental?

The similar could go if she drew "dolls with joints". She doesn't have to know about BJDs at all - maybe she just came up with the idea of making people more doll-like. That doesn't mean more BJD-like.

Another way of thought (I'm studying psychology right now, and just came over a text describing this): She has seen a Soah in the past. Maybe a picture of it. And she liked her, but after a while she forgot about the doll (afterall Elfdoll Soah has been around for a while). Maybe when she wanted to draw something the image came to her, without even being recognised as something she saw before. Like her own idea, because she's already forgot the picture. Now how could this artist credit something that she thinks is her own idea?

---

Of course many things depend on the actual picture. For you it may look like Soah. For me - maybe not. If everybody thinks that the strong resemblance is there and the pose is also similar to an already existing photograph, that she may have intentionally copied, may have intentionally dawn the picture to look like Soah. One can never know.

 

As another artist who posts quite a bit on DA, I have to say I generally agree with the consensus here. If the artist was stealing from official photos by tracing, that wouldn't be right. But drawing a style or characters based on BJD style doesn't bother me. I've seen some professional artists in Japan using styles that are very doll-like, with facial features and hair reminiscent of BJD brands.

 

There is actually a large body of law on this and your post is somewhagt oversimplifying the issue, particularly as regards US law, but I don't see much point in pursuing this discussion yet again as rights protection seems to crop up on every thread about doll art and a complete discussion of all the legalities involved is legal research beyond the scope of this forum.

Setting all that aside, I'd say that a prohibition or an objection to using something in art to me creates a very strong creative reason to do so as a means of questioning said prohibition. Whether it brings a law suit down on your head is a separate issue (some companies have a history of aggressive suing whether they have a good legal basis for so doing or not), but simply as an artistic statement, particularly if you're not looking to sell 100000 prints of whatever, it definitely has possibilities, just like any other form of thought provoking or "objectionable" art.

 

THIS.
Really, how often have we seen paintings of people, even photographs by big-name artists with credit for the models? Rarely.

Someone is going to make the argument that lots of people on DA/flickr/whatever always credit their models but that's generally because those models are friends, not hired people. Not to mention that for most of those people, it's a hobby, not a job. If art was your job, I can imagine it'd be difficult to keep track of the names of people (and dolls) you drew.

Also, dolls are inanimate objects. If we credited the sculpt, what would be next? Would we have to credit the make and model of cars? The exact species/breed/variation of flower? The brand of a freaking water bottle?? That'd be crazy.

Also, there's the copyright issue to think of. I entered a re-ment photo contest but my entry had to be DQ'd because my old Pipos Robin was in it. They said they could not enter pictures with other copyrighted dolls or toys. If the artist credited the sculpt of the doll as an Elfdoll Sooah, Elfdoll could technically sue her if they wanted. Because she didn't credit, it can be difficult to prove that she did use a Sooah as a model.

Also, BJDs are being used increasingly as artist models because of their realistic appearance and posability. It's cheaper and easier to spend $500 on a doll once, have it with you, use it whenever you want, and have it be compact/portable than it is to hire a model which can get very pricey. Not to mention they can't hold totally still for long periods of time like a BJD can.

Most of the time, saying something like "referenced used" generally is more than enough in terms of credit in a situation like this.

Also, I'm curious if she actually does collect BJDs? Does she have any or have an interest that she's stated? Did you ask her about it? What did she say if so?

 

Lol... Oh noes... If more people wise up and use their dolls.... I'll have to find a new profession! Gah! Then how will I buy clothes for mine!?

 

People... wise up..? I think you're safe

 

No kidding AllMightySkuld. Clearly no chance of that happening.

 

I can't really imagine many people being interested in who/what the artist is painting. I know when I go to see an artists work I don't really care who the woman in the picture is...

I do't think any artist is obligated to name their model, even if it is just a doll.

 

This occurred to me also. To me, a lot of BJDs look like a lot of fairly standard anime characters. If there's nothing super distinguishing about the BJD, for example fantasy elements like horns or hooves, or a very unique facial expression like a smirk or a tongue out, then to me they do not look that distinctive. Perhaps the first thing that pops into a BJD collector's head would be "That looks like such and such doll" but if the person drawing the picture isn't a collector, she might have arrived at a similar looking face just doing standard anime-style art.

 

In my work with OT dolls on my site I have more pictures than you can shake a stick at, but that's free to view and I credit every maker as best I can. One brand is completely defunct but by the grace of the doll gods I found out who did the original sculpt. The next step is publishing but I'm getting in to Harry Potter Lexicon territory so I'm asking permission from the companies first.

In a recent issue of Haute Doll magazine I saw what looks suspiciously like the body review that is the main doll part of my site. I could get huffy about it but decided to quietly point and laugh that they couldn't do a decent version. My next step, just make mine bigger and better and know people find it useful and I'm doing a service to the doll comunity.

Jim Henson believed that ideas shouldn't be hoarded but let out in to the universe to see what other people can do with them and usually they got better, see Inside the Labyrinth and playing with the Helping Hands idea. Otherwise that's why there's a patent office.

 

I came across some artist that use bjd in their work again haha..I must say inspiration is good but a plain rip-off of a known BJD sculpt because the artist knows mainstream people won't recognize them I think is still stupid. If an artist is that creative she/he can make up a new character and they shouldn't make people think that they're original characters when that's clearly a Unoa or a Volks doll etc. Which as what 'we' know were designed by someone else.
Can you imagine that Araki-sama sees an artwork from a different artist with his dolls where the artist claims this is her/his original design. I can imagine Araki-sama to have mixed feelings about this!

 

This, x100.

However, I think the medium also plays a role. If it was, say, a photo series of this specific doll, one may have to credit it in order to sell it. This probably all has to do with the fact that the company owns the dolls "image", and when people say that, they usually mean photographic image. This is where things get tricky, though. Who is to say a series of photos isn't the same as someone painting a series based on the same doll? I personally don't think you should have to credit the company for either, but I can see where the argument could be made.

 

You are kidding right?

 

(my boldface)
So by extension, a painter who includes a house in her landscape ought to credit the architecht, right? Because otherwise people might get the (very wrongheaded!) idea that she had made that house up out of her creative mind, I guess.

While I recognise that this issue is a bit of a grey area when it comes to photography, I think that in the case of art re-created directly by human hand (whether in sketch, painting, CG, sculpture, or what), a translation from one medium to another makes a likeness just as original as a major change would be. So to sculpt a likeness of a particular BJD would be pretty iffy (although it might be okay if there was a significant change--say, sculpting a classical Venus-esque figure with a face obviously inspired by Narae) but to draw one is just the same as to draw a still life--and as someone pointed out earlier, you wouldn't go around crediting the store where you bought the bowl, or the person who designed it, much less the orchard where the fruit was grown!

I wonder if the current popularity of drawing comic/graphic novel/manga-inspired art has influenced our ideas about what is creativity and what is ripping somebody off.

If you are drawing a comic, then your characters' figures are part and parcel of the characters themselves. I can see that in that case, to have a figure that looks too much like someone else's figure would seem less creative. If you browse DeviantArt or even chat with many people here, you will see and hear a lot about characters, and many people think a lot about whether or not the characters they are representing in their art are "original."

However, in the older artistic tradition, characters were pretty much left to literature, while the visual arts focused on, well, the visual representation of humans. While artists have surely drawn figures purely from their minds' eyes, I think that until fairly recently the expectation was that most pieces of art that showed the human figure would have involved at some point an actual human (or painted/sculpted/etc.) model. The themes were usually either the model him/herself or some historical/mythical personage, not some other character that the artist had imagined. If you wander through an art museum, you'll see lots of paintings titled "The Wandering Jew" or "Three Young Women," or "Madonna and Child," and not nearly so many titled (to use some of my own characters) "Kristop Nayrab" or "Two Srobijinni (which are a kind of dragon that is Highly Original)" or "The STOAT and Eleven Sins." Often, you'll even find paintings titled "female nude no. 3" or the like. It's not because the artists were too lazy to name them...there is a deeper significance as well.

Why? Why is it that for centuries now artists have not explicitly credited their models? I think it's because the character behind the painting doesn't matter. In visual art, the character should be universal--either because it's a shared cultural persona or because the figure speaks to humanity in a universally applicable way (for example, representing joy or fear of death or some other shared human experience, or even simply the existence of the body or environment). I recently modeled for a painting; the painting is not going to be about me...it's going to be about something else that may be less unique/original but in exchange will be more broadly meaningful.

So while I think it's nice that many people on DA credit the friends, dolls, houses, and pieces of fruit who model for their works, I maintain that it's not a necessary part of being an artist. It's simply a courtesy.