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Artists Using Doll Likenesses without Crediting [Mijn Schatje discussion]

May 31, 2009



    1. Quite late reply, but I think Natalie Shau has been around longer or about as long as MS:o She used to have this massive gallery on dA as far as I remember... I remember seeing her stuff in like 2005/2006 already. I always assumed she just used stock photos and did photomanipulations/vectoring/whatever to them. Although, must admit, her stuff has gone quite dollish as of late...

      as for both of them, if they did everything by themselves, their stuff wouldn't be half bad, I might even purchase if I could afford or would be a person to purchase paintings/prints in general. just a shame really.

      ´MS though, I hope one day she gets what she deserves, hopefully sooner, rather than later. and NS, perhaps someone should look into her stuff, see if it's legit or not...
       
    2. I've seen her crap in a magazine and knew they were traced. I've seen a lot of the photos she's stolen before so I knew. Sick stuff like this is praised when people like my girlfriend who are wonderful original artists don't make a cent off of the love they put into their art? Nothing is sacred...
       
    3. Hello, I don't come here often (it's a very big forum after all). I'm a seventeen year old french student, dreaming of becoming either a stop motion animator or a computer games graphics (I know, I haven't made my mind up yet) Anyway... I'm in this state where I doubt everything I do, and I keep seeing Mijn Schatje's art and it's juste killing me. On a french forum I am on, the members won't even talk about it because they are afraid of people making accusations. Now I've seen many thing such as the vector images she posts on facebook, and the interviews of her and her "fantastic and surreal world" and I also saw that she took apart of a Sanrio charity event after the tsunami lately. What is shocking about that, is that she used a Narae picture (again) and drew a Hello kitty shape with a pink bow, and that was her contribution to this particular event.

      I only wish we could do something (I mean, she freely gives her adress on facebook and I live near Paris, if I wanted I could just knock at her door and start yelling) but I'd wish there could be a "nice" way of having her admirers discover the horrible truth about her "art". Since the most revolting in what she does, is that she paints BJD heads from photos, with same shapes, colours, angles, etc, and that's the only "pretty" part of the painting. She usually draws very odd hair and unnatural looking bodies and clothes on top of it. Not that I'm saying that we have to draw realisticaly, but what she draws from nothing contrasts so much and looks like junk right next to the perfectly redrawn picture of an U-noa or Narae.

      Now what we know is that she doesn't show her gallery on her website (just her artbook for sale with a narae picture on the cover) but she did put a link to contact her agent on facebook with who mayby someone can talk to.

      I'm sure loads of people here are as angry as me against her "pretend art" but would anyone be really interested in helping stopping her, it's been going on for years now, and I'm afraid if we do not act, she'll keep getting richer and richer on stolen images and be called by famous brands to work for them (Sony is already big, but what of fashion gods such as Dior and Chanel?)

      Another solution would be to find a way to make ball jointed dolls very popular on the internet (but in that case we would have blogs filled with stolen images) so that her current fans would discover the sad truth.

      I hope none of you might think that my intervention is mayby a bit harsh, and know that I have no desire in creating conflict, simply the desire to see justice at hands.
       
    4. Part of her fanbase has seen the layover images and don't care. In their opinion it is new art, because Mijn Schatje altered the originals by tracing over them. You won't convince them it's art theft as they have already made up their mind it's not.
      You can only keep on informing the masses and some will see the layover images and decide that they don't wish to support an "artist" who traces pictures. As long as you aren't the creator or owner of an original photograph abused by Mijn Schatje and willing to take her to court, there isn't much else you can do.
       
    5. I remember reading about this girl a year or so ago, and it completely disgusted me. There are genuine artists who work so, so hard to make a living out of it and to get their work noticed, and Mijn just steals other people's hard work and profits greatly from it. I think her supposed 'lack of knowledge' of the dolls she is tracing from is again, disgusting, because she obviously knows exactly what she is doing.
      Stuff like this gets me so angry. Urgh.
       
    6. This case is going on for so long and still, nothing has changed with Mijin's morals. Ugh.

      I don't want to judge the quality of her works, I don't feel like commenting whether her works are aesthetically appealing or not as this isn't obviously the case. It's however disgusting that after a bigger action (putting up a well-known among us website comparing each of her work with original doll photos) she didn't do a single thing to develop. She goes on doing the same sh*t, like nothing happened and her lack of personal concept isn't disqualifying her as an artist. I suppose, she also believes we're still too small a community to act widely. She simply feels safe and those, who order her works don't pay attention to her inspirations, only the result is being judegd as worth the fame and $$$ she gets. We can't blame those at the end of this 'chain' however, as they are allowed to not know about BJD. But it would be valuable to point out, how much actual creation and originality there is in Mijin's works.

      As an artists myself, I know that I would feel really shallow not being able to come up with compositions of my own. I would advise Mijin to start working on her own ideas, since fame and wealth aren't eternal. There will finally come a day, when she'll simply appear repetitive. Her employers will ask her for something fresh, surprising, different, only with a tint of her style and suddenly, she will realise there isn't much she can do, as long as she's left without something to COPY FROM.

      :/
       
    7. I know an “artist” in southern california who does something strikingly similar to Mijn. She takes doll photos from doll company websites, and projects them onto a canvas to trace and color them in, making it appear she painted some original work, but if you compare the images side by side she does the same thing Mijn does. The traced parts are what draw you in, then everything else is simplified mish mash that doesn't really require talent. Keep an eye out for her tracing of the 5 part torso from Dikadoll. Here is her painting: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...37069315_229447217071087_1098741_921949_n.jpg

      The company's photo: http://www.luxour-academy.com/images/dolls/DikaDoll/70cm/70cm_5part_09.jpg
       
    8. Ugh. I would love to know this "artist's" name!
       
    9. There are a few pieces that are obviously "borrowed" images, but when she uses her own photography I don't see the problem in that. I'm not sure if there's a major difference between her using paint on canvas vs Mijn using digital images. The basic idea of taking someone else's photo and just adding some simple bits is the same.

      Here is a link to her art page.
       
    10. If you read far enough back in this thread you'll see that Andy Warhol (father of the idea of stealing another's work and painting over it) was actually sued by the photographer that took the Kennedy funeral photo that Warhol based a very well known piece on. So yes, I'd say Mijn painting digitally and Devon Curtis painting with actual paint over a blown up image she doesn't have permission to use is very much the same thing.
       
    11. I'm actually ticked at this whole scandal for an entirely different and selfish reason.

      When I was little and got into drawing the toughest part was drawing the human face. It is a pain to draw sometimes still, and that's after decades of practice.

      It seems to me that she's using these photos as a shortcut. she doesn't need to do proportion, or perspective or anything really. there's no skill other than selecting the colors she's going to use to paint over it (mind you if she at least used REAL paint that would take some extra ability as paint is tough to master but alas she just uses software which to me is rather like playing zoo tycoon and then claiming you're an animal handler). It's just lazy is what it is. i'd love to see her try to draw from a human model. :/
       
    12. I agree that paint is a bit more "hands-on" but tracing is still tracing. It's like calling a color-by-number fine art. What bothers me the most is that these artists are using the fact that BJD's are still somewhat obscure, so they can go undetected for longer as "art thieves". Imagine how long the original doll's sculptor spent creating the doll itself, and then the photographer painstakingly setting up the photos. It just seems like credit is being stolen. It would be different if the artists were open about "borrowing" images, but it doesn't seem like either of them states "I doctored a photo to bring out my imagining" or "I traced this and added my spin on it".
       
    13. No doubt, I'd respect them if they came out and said that, or even if she took down pieces that the original owner has requested to be taken down.

      Of course this got me curious so I did some google searching and found an ebay seller and blogger who have "borrowed " my photos of certain toys. -_- One even added their own copyright to the pic on their blog. i'm messaging them now. This is just ridiculous...
       
    14. WOAH! That's absolutely crazy. People just click and save images off the internet and don't even care! They use obscurity to trick other people into thinking it's their own work. It's PATHETIC!
       
    15. I agree that it's VERY wrong to do. that's just messed up. it's like stealing someone's OC. it's EXACTLY like it. and as a creator of OCs like I know many BJD owners are. it INFURIATES me when I see someone claiming a stolen character as their own. even if it's not mine. and what's worse is people think it's somehow less wrong if you steal from a larger company. absolutely not. these dolls still came out of their imaginations, not whichever artist is trying to pass them off...ugh, sorry I'm ranting, but it just makes me so mad when people think they can get away with that.
       

    16. man you had your own photos stollen? that's messed up D:
       
    17. Completely OT but she was sent the photos by her publisher and took them off her blogspot after I contacted her.

      Now I'm wondering how many people have been handed a stolen pic by someone else and not know. I mean it's easy for us here to know once we get to where we recognize dolls and company pictures but someone less knowledgeable wouldn't know. :/
       
    18. I think using likeness is alright, however, she obviously traced-overpainted them, which is awful. Seeing all the loops in her lies was amusing, though. "I've never heard of bjds!" then "I use my friends bjds!" then "People just send me bjd pictures!" Could have made up a better story. -___-
       
    19. That looks eerily similar to the art in the first post. oO