Artists Using Doll Likenesses without Crediting [Mijn Schatje discussion]

How is she still getting away with this?? It is disgusting blatantly stealing work like that.

 

Argh I had hoped that by now she would have been exposed for this. I had heard about this at least a year ago... =_= This sort of thing is the picture of injustice because she is profiting off of other people's hard work. The shit she does to the pictures isn't even that technically difficult is it? I dabble in traditional art only so I don't know for sure, but I can't help but think it wouldn't be that hard to trace and vector an image like that.

 

Yeah, I just read that. It's obvious that she isn't even remotely close to what a common girl might look like in Roma. The picture looks like a MNF Shushu. She can say whatever she wants about what it is supposed to be about, but we all know she's still tracing pictures. She can't draw anything, that's for sure. I have yet to see one hand-drawn sketch of any preliminary roughs that would part of the creative process that REAL artists normally do.

 

If you take a look at her facebook, now she goes through step by step of her 'vectoring' her 'art'. Seems like a load to me to try and cover her ass. Even if she does hand draw everything into a program, she still copies it 100%.
I dont understand why this is still going on!!!! Gosh the proof is just so in your face, so obvious.
I am also starting to believe alot of her life story is bull, too. It seems she truely is living in a fantasy world in which she has conjoured. I have no problem with this, whatever floats you boat, but I draw the line when it starts affecting others. To lie is one thing, but to believe in your own lies is just sad.

 

Just to put in my two-penneth worth as a commercial illustrator for nearly 25 years, I imagine this person can draw perfectly well, you can tell that from the standard of her "tracing"... you can sense a certain "eye" and draftsmanship to the tiny amount that she adds to the images she steals... What she is, though: supremely lazy, and either a liar or very self-deluded.

Way back when I started PCs weren't that big a deal in the design world and everything was drawn by hand so ideas tended to come out of people's heads. As vector illustration has become what every Art Director is looking for, there is more and more of this type of thing going on, no-one really cares as the majority of times the illustrator (that is what she is primarily, rather than a fine artist) takes the photograph to be traced themself, or a photographer is commissioned to take photos which will then be traced and given the vector treatment. It is pretty much standard practice, and I see nothing wrong with it.

Where this woman takes things too far is in taking other people's imagery as a starting point. Forget the legalities for a moment, she is being very lazy in using someone eles's composition, lighting and cropping and adding very little herself. The person who owned the doll in the first place also supplied it's personality with the wig, eyes, face-up etc as well... where is Mijn's real contribution?

I could easily copy one of her "works" right now and change a few lines/colours here and there then create some elaborate back story about how I stumbled upon a girl in the back streets of blah... blah... I wonder what she would think of it? I wouldn't do that though as I have this weird thing called self-respect... I can draw, I can trace and I'm not lazy enough to expect other people to create 95% of the image for me. As Sumomo123 above has pointed out, she seems to believe her own web of lies. I would have more respect for her if she just confessed and brazened it out! As it is I have zero respect and think she is giving my on/off profession a bad name.

One word of warning to our poor mad friend though, the world of commercial art is very fickle and the vector art backlash is well under way... the trendy Art Directors are starting to look for quirky hand drawn styles again and your traced vector orderliness is starting to look a bit "last year", better get the sketchbook out and remember how to draw!

 

Wow. This really burns me up! Why on earth has she not gotten in trouble yet? Are people even trying to show all of this proof against her? If so, its even MORE disgusting that the art community hasn't excommunicated her.

 

Has anyone created a sort of "awareness" page on Facebook for whats going on? I think that would be a good idea, although I don't personally want to start it myself. ^^; I'm just so angered by what she's done... It makes me afraid to put any of my photography of my dolls online, even though I really want to. T_T

 

I've been drawing comics for years and have had the unfortunate "pleasure" of people re-posting or coping my art (removing copyright notices etc). Usually when I find these or people tell me about them I report it to the host (which I can typically find through a whois search) or the site owner. Since most companies / people don't want to deal with copyright laws and infringement they tend to comply with only a letter and some samples of ownership.

I wonder if you reported her to say Facebook if anything would happen?

In any case, it's unfortunate and I certainly sympathize with the sting it can cause, but with the internet and the different laws around the world, this kind of thing is only going to get worse. Hopefully, it won't stop people from sharing their art online.

 

OH LOL I love art theft -_-

 

._. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not an expert at vectoring things, but I DID go to school for visual arts and graphic design, and I had a perfect grade in my Illustrator classes.
That being said, what the CRAP are all those random swirly lines all over the surface? Near as I can tell most of them don't even correspond to anything actually IN the picture. Her artwork is more vector shapes with gradients dumped all over the place than true vector artwork anyway, so, just... what?
Is she trying to make it look more complicated than it really is, to cover her butt? I don't get it.

 

I know it wont happen but:
It would be funny if we started a campaign for loads of people, including better know online artists and illustrators to all make a copy of her work and post it. Like the campaign to copy Damien Hirst's skull when he tried to sue a kid who used an image of it: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090216/0250573782.shtml

I agree, though Vonbonbon, if she's such a one trick pony she'll be in trouble soon as vectoring seems to be finally falling out of favour.

 

Definitely create an awareness campaign against her and to help turn trends away from vector tracing. Having got my art degree for old fashioned art back int he 90s I have little idea what vector tracing is, but there's plenty of Apps for it.

One way to artistically fight back is to have a very distinct style that someone can spot at twenty yards, like Ed Hardy. Damien Hurst and many other 'modern artists' irk me, let's slice up a cow, stick it in formaldehyde, and charge a ton of money for it, or throw paint at a canvas. (not Jackson Pollack who worked at his creations) Not having a layout or prep sketch is a red flag. But as History Detectives pointed out Gilbert Stuart didn't do sketches for his paintings, but he had a 'history' of other works building up to it, and the fake was spotted because the faker missed a key element to his style by a mile. Many artists might not have an exact layout of a finished work but they could produce elements and proof they've been building up to something.

 

Actually as a fine artist, I work directly on the canvas/board and don't do any prep work, I've never kept a sketch book but when I use the computer, then it's so easy to create automatically dated WIP files. If there's ever a debate about who made something first, digital files have the date embedded and it's hard to fake that. The trouble is with Mijn, no one is managing to call her out and I think even if it was proved the doll photos existed before her work, she'd still be in denial.

 

Well, when Mijn was first communicated with about her plagiarism, part of the reason she claimed that her works were original were that "it takes a long time to do her work." To me, the "underpaintings" she has on her Facebook are just fodder to the argument that "See, these took me a long time, so I couldn't have been copying!"

I too, am an artist, and I would have no sympathy for a person who took pictures of my art or doll, traced over it and re-sold it as original work, especially with a whimsical backstory to make it "their own." >

http://mehitobel.com/blog/archives/45 I dunno if this story has been posted, but this is basically how I feel about it all!

 

Apologies if this isn't new information, but it looks like she's still selling disputed images. This time as cheaply made, yet expensive, jewelry: http://www.lamarelle.net/c/282/p/fda348232d342147ef2d0b45d9232a4d/Jewels.html

Edit: I think this is the same site that had the earrings mentioned earlier. However, the former link to the earrings doesn't seem to go to any items.

 

That article didn't mince words... what was not mentioned though, Kallisti also does the face-ups and designs/constructs the costumes for her dolls, so not only were her photos taken, the characters she created were also taken.

 

I'm pretty sure thats exactly what she's doing. "Oh hey look I added lines and turned off the layor I was tracing over so you can SEE that I do realy work!" But um. Why are those random... Things not in the piece? She's adding miles of things in her WIP images that do not turn up in the finished pieces.
Between that and the fact the people argue that you have to see her vector art at "full size" to tell it's not stolen my logic and sense has exploded in a pile of ow. Vector art doesn't really have a full size. It's a vector. It's the same no matter the size! Mental. Ow.

 

I think we should all keep emailing the brands and shops who are using her plaguristic works and the websites who host her and let them know whats going on with her and the growing backlash against her in both the doll and the art and design communities. If they start getting bad feedback because of her from lots of people it might make some kind of impact.

 

OMG ! I just realized that I actually have one of those Fornarina shirts... I love this brand and I bought the shirt with a "dolly" head a while ago... I never knew about this !

It's really frustrating ! Now I'm quite ashamed to wear it anymore.

She must have made so much money with this ! Incredible !

 

DollyKim, re:"Having got my art degree for old fashioned art back int he 90s I have little idea what vector tracing is", You know when you spend a while doodling and sketching then use pen, ink, watercolour, whatever to create a sketch full of life? Well, with vector art you scan that great loose sketch into your Mac (or use a photo, like Miss Mijn, preferrably your own, unlike Miss Mijn) and then spend a while labouriously tracing over it in Illustrator (or app of you choice) and then do everything in your power to flatten the life out of it and then hand it to some random Art Director who wants that style of image because everyone else is using it... it takes LONGER than the old fashioned techniques to be honest... and I'm pretty damn fast!

Disco Biscuit is right though, she paints straight on the canvas, no preparatory sketches, a lot of people do that for spontinaeity (is that a word?) and I often draw straight into the Mac with my Wacom pen. The little girl on my avatar was vectoring over a watercolour sketch but I often just draw some simple shapes in Illustrator and work over that. If you send an Art Director a pencil sketch of something when they want Vector finished images you often just confuse them!

I would put money on it that somewhere way back this person was a regular Illustrator trying to make a living and had a looming deadline and zero inspiration. She saw a photo, possibly Kallisti's and just thought "I shouldn't but maybe I can get away with it just this once" and it snowballed from there. The more you get away with something like that, the easier it gets to go "Tra-la-la, I'm doing nothing wrong"... I guess??? What worries me is that this is sending out such a bad message to younger creatives.