Why are we always trying to accuse copies?

This is how I feel. I tried to make this point in another thread but ppl said that the reason DOD don't offer Puns internationally is because of paperwork......Well if they weren't just two students and already had an established company they would be able to offer puns to a wider audience. It's surprising how ppl defend leeke simply by saying that they sculpted the doll themselves. To me it doesn't matter that they did because clearly the entire concept is stolen without any real input from themselves. It's simply a resculpt. If the original were famous, lets say someone simply resculpted the famous David statue, and they got credit for this obvious resculpt but the resculpt is a different size, no one would defend the new sculpt.

By buying Mikhaila instead of supporting DOD, we are taking money from DOD that would help the truly creative ppl grow. As a result the ppl with original ideas end up not being able to easily get their work out or be able to afford continuing their efforts. At least this debate has raised DOD to the attn of more ppl but I can't help but feel distaste when I see pics of Mikhaila and have decided never to buy anything from Leeke.

 

And unfortunately your using the poor assumption that people buying Mikhaila are only doing so because they can't get Pun. Which is not the case. Or at least not the case in most people's situation. People buying Mikhaila are buying her because they like her. Simple as that. They are not taking money away from D.D. This is money D.D would never have gotten to begin with not just because they're dolls aren't readily available, but also because it's quite possible that even if the doll was readily available they wouldn't buy Pun because they don't prefer her. This isn't a bash on the doll, but the fact that people have different tastes.

 

on things like centaurs and hooves I don't think you can really say "oh this company stole their concepts >:0 " because it's not BJD makers who created mystical creatures like those. instead people should say "they totally copied mythologie! >:0 " (which doesn't seem like a 'crime' to me since they have be re-used by pretty much everyone in movies and books)
unless maybe the company copied the joints system and general style of another and there are clear proof... that's kind of another story.

 

It's the exact same argument people used when Dollzone blatantly recast and editted the Volks SD16 body. A few parts were different, like the legs they extended to make taller, but other parts matched up exactly. To this day, there have been no gigantic Ban Dollzone campaigns. As far as I know, Dollzone never publicly apologized for their actual recasting of Luts Woori. They simply disappeared for a few months and then came back with that doll off the English websites. It took a lot longer for it to be removed from the Chinese site.

My big issue in all of this is that Leeke is being raked over the coals for heavy inspiration that involved no recasting by people who support Dollzone who did the exact same thing and worse.

 

Oh gosh, I never meant it physically Um... I mean a gentle, logical reasoning that gives excellent points out that X doll cannot be a copy of Y doll?

Taco: I'm not denying that companies WON'T take pictures of competitors' items, and look at them and see how they can jump on the bandwagon - I hope I made it clear in my first post. Vonbonbon made my point so much clearer!

For those who go "Well, why wouldn't they have other companies' pictures for inspiration on their worktable?" - my answer is if you had done sketchwork and mood boards, why would you not bring your own designs to the workbench? Why would you drop them all in favour of referencing something someone else had created? I mean, look on Flickr. There are quite a few BJD makers who draw out the body shape they want their doll to be, and reference from that. And take pictures of said in progress doll with their sketched doll shape. Did they look at other dolls for ideas? I don't doubt it. But at least they had a finished design of their own to start referencing from? I don't think I've ever seen any other maker (amateur or professional) who puts up a picture of the in progress doll and their reference of another company's doll quite like Leeke have.

What about this - What's the difference between a resource and a reference? I mean, when you google images (I love google me ) the pictures you get for your sketchbook/moodboard are resources, right? And what you explicitly copy parts of, is your reference right? (for example, if you were painting a portrait, maybe you use a photograph to reference how light falls on someone's face)

Is it ok to use another company's photo/doll as a reference or just as a resource?

(Also, this isn't a cop out, but I'm gonna try not to reply again to the Leeke issue here. I feel bad we're sorta derailing the thread D: )

 

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who noticed this. I own a Dollzone doll, and it would be extremely hypocritical of me to then turn around and blast/want to ban Leeke for doing even less then what dollzone did. And yet I also noticed quite a few people doing just that. I had to do some double takes when I saw the icons/name of people who had the boycott leeke banner in their sig, and the fact that they own dollzone dolls in their sig.

I also wonder if people made and signed a petition to boycott dollmore when the same issue arose between them and dollshe...my guess is not likely.

 

If I recall it correctly people were much more heated in the Dollshe VS Dollmore issue, but perhaps that's just my memory.

 

A couple of months ago I went through the main page that dealt with that, and saw that people were divided on the issue. Same thing that happens every time this thing comes up it seems. But as far as I could tell there was so cry of boycott dollmore, or petitions being passed around. At least not in the way that the whole D.D/Leeke issue has seemed to unfold. Of course I showed up after the fact so I probably missed a lot of what went down.

 

I actually remember people being afraid of mentioning that they wanted a doll from Dollmore or were very careful where they talked about Dollmore dolls even outside DoA, which is something I haven't noticed with Leek at the moment.

 

The reaction + ensuing debate WAS fairly savage! But it was contained-- there were a lot fewer people on DOA back then, and having fewer people breeds less hysteria. The mob-mentality didn't quite gain enough momentum to get the torches lit or the pitchforks sharpened. I don't recall any petitions, either... the matter was out of all of our hands, & because there is no point to those petitions except to make the signers feel better. I don't even remember any Anti-Dollmore signature-banners at the time (though I may have been moving in rather limited circles).

It's a teacup-tempest every time this happens, though; lots of sound & fury inflating the issues and spreading bad blood, and in the end, both doll-companies involved go about doing what they were going to do anyway.

 

Yeah, I remember reading some of that with the dollzone fiasco as well, which I think happened first, and fairly early on in the creation of this forum? I wonder if the change in the way things happen is because as Jenny mentioned there is more people and likely to be more people on either side, and so people feel less...isolated perhaps? Or maybe this has happened so much that people have just stopped caring what others think about the dolls they have.

And then we as doll owners finally move on until it happens again. I do have to agree with Autumnrain that it is kind of like a train wreck (watching the drama unfurl), horrible to watch, feels like it goes on forever, but you just can't look away.

 

I'm not sure you can draw that conclusion from a few photos of one area of their work space -- that's what I was getting at. You're jumping to a conclusion based on really very little information.

DOD makes a very sympathetic figure, but that also doesn't mean that Leeke is in the wrong either. Nor is Leeke keeping DOD from producing Puns, whom people seem to genuinely want. Ideas (especially good ones) don't just stay with their originator as has been proven throughout the hobby, and to be honest, that's not always a bad thing. If DOD can't fill the needs of the hobby community (at least at this point), that shouldn't mean that other companies shouldn't try to--the hobby doesn't go on hold just because a company can't seem to get themselves up and running. It's up to them to get their dolls out there and compete, and I do believe they have it in them to be quite competitive and garner quite a few fans.

I'm glad that people are wary of recasts, and that the community is very aware of what's going on around it--it can save members a lot of heartache from getting scammed. However, the down side to this, is that sometimes in the fervor to do what's 'right' and protect the hobby and the companies seen as being legit, gray issues get turned into black and white ones and that's not a positive thing. I don't think the hobby is lacking in originality, it's just that ideas get spread around and picked up, and fiddled with and so on which can lead to more variety along a particular thing, and improvements in designs -- again, not a bad thing.

That is a HUGE fallacy that I really wish people would stop using. There are people who prefer Mikhaila to Puns and don't want to own Puns. There are people who prefer Puns and who have no interest in owning Mikhaila. There are people who would happily own both. Buying Mikhaila is NOT taking money away from DOD, because the money would never have gone to them in the first place. To most of the people who are buying her, they are genuinely excited about her for herself and are not settling because they can't get their hands on a Puns.

 

I agree with the OP, always looking for the similarities is silly. I mean, blatant copies or reproductions are wrong and it's stealing, but I don't really want to spend my spare time looking for them... I could spend that time with the dollies instead There will always be similarities, there are only so many completely 100% original ideas... should all dolls look the same? NO WAY! But isn't that why we spend so much time giving our dolls their own personalities and styles and quirks?

It's in a way like in Secondlife (which my future hubs and I spend time toying with) where people are always trying to accuse creators of copying one another. Some people spend all of their time doing this, to me it doesn't make a lot of sense. I am not saying it's right to steal, but there are other things I could do with my time, you know?

 

This is missing the point a little, the people who are buying Mikhaila may or may not be interested in also buying Puns. This assumes (often incorrectly) that the people buying Mikhaila are doing so because it's a cheap, accessible Puns. Most of the people who bought Mikhaila did so because they liked Mikhaila.

The other issue is that Puns is not available to buy from Dust of Dolls. They produce dolls in limited quantities and sell them more like art dolls in that they are already customised for sale. There are no Puns available to buy and you cannot pre-order Puns from Dust of Dolls. If a company isn't producing dolls to sell, other companies producing similar products aren't taking money and customers away from them. If you're not putting your product out there, you can't complain that someone else is stealing 'your' money. If you haven't got anything to sell, you won't be making the money anyway

You can choose to boycott any company you like, for whatever reason...but basing it on the belief that business was 'stolen' away from Dust of Dolls is incorrect. Blame Leekeworld for lying if you like, blame them for being heavily inspired by someone else's work...but you can't blame them for stealing business from a company that had no products to sell and, until recently, no real intentions to open up an ordering system for their work.

vonbonbon, there were other pictures on Leeke's work table with Mikhaila, a picture of a Cerisedolls/Lillycat doll. Tthat doll also featured wide hips and narrow shoulders, just like Puns, just like Mikhaila. So, it's okay for French sculptors to work on similar body shapes without being accused of copying each other's work, but it's not okay for Korean sculptors to follow the French trend?

Aside from the Leeke/Dust of Dolls issue, I think that the 'ZOMG IS IT A RECAST? A COPY?!!11!!' knee-jerk reaction whenever a new company releases a doll or a more established doll releases a doll in a very different style has been toned down a little. I like that the hobby is vigilant and we take customer loyalty so seriously that we look out for our favourite companies' interests in this way, but I am wary of calling something a copy until there is actual evidence for that. If a doll's similarities to another doll make you uncomfortable but there's little proof to suggest there's anything more to it than coincidence, I do think you need to keep your opinions to yourself. You can tell everyone till you're blue in the face that Doll X is a copy of Doll Y, but if you don't have a shred of evidence and it's all your own gut feeling, it's really unhelpful and can be unfair on a company, especially if they're just starting out.

If there is evidence though, shout it from the rooftops and get your overlays and whatnot out there as proof of your claims...but you still have to let other people ultimately make up their own minds about whether they're willing to trust your evidence, or trust the company. You can't win 'em all, but if you do have evidence, you can help educate others who might be making a very expensive mistake (as in the case of bootleg recasts.)

 

I can't read your mind, and I don't know you or your reading habits at all -- I have only what you write to go by. That doesn't mean that lots of people (myself included) don't word things poorly at times, however 'recast' is a very specific word with a very specific meaning that comes up a lot in this hobby. So when you said recast, I assumed (and it wasn't a big assumption to make) that you believed that Leeke took Puns, made a mold from her, and then made dolls from those molds. Someone who had read the info and knew that Puns was a tiny and Mikhaila a mini would be aware that Mikhaila can't be a recast. Therefore it followed that you really didn't have all the information.

I will also say, that in my time I have seen some really out there accusations of copying and recasting, so the fact that someone would come along and say that Mikhaila is a recast of Puns is definitely an eye roll moment, but one that sadly wasn't shocking. Of course now that you explained yourself, I know that it was simply a misuse of the word, but when you misuse words there will be a very good chance that people will misunderstand you.

That partly is a matter of focus. If all someone sees is largely the shape, then they are very similar indeed. If you look at the entirety of both dolls, they are quite different. When a doll has a very distinctive feature, it can be hard to see past it sometimes.

Absolutely. And I want to clarify something I said earlier-- I was complaining about people being inconsistent with how they react to issues of inspiration in the hobby. However, that doesn't pertain so much to the decision to actually buy or not buy a doll which is a very personal choice and one that is controlled more by those gut feelings. People's reasons for buying and selling dolls don't have to be rational and they don't have to justify them. The only time it becomes an issue, is when people take it beyond their own very personal and quiet choices and out into the community. If people are going to kick up a fuss and start condemning companies and hobbyists publicly, they had also better make sure that they're walking the walk or it seems hypocritical. I didn't want my earlier post to sound like I meant that people's personal doll buying had to be all rational and justifiable, as that is really none of my business.

Ha ha, nice imagery. I will say that a few years back there were a lot of instances of suspicion being thrown around -- especially at new companies. It might have been partly because what had been a pretty small pool of companies was really starting to grow, I'm not sure, but it got to the point of crossing the line from being vigilant to getting ridiculous. However, that seems to have died down a lot since then. There are always going to be times when accusations arise, and some of them are quite valid. In fact I would say that demanding more proof of wrong doing rather than jumping to conclusions helps keep the real bootleggers and scammers from being lost in amongst all the noise from random accusations being flung around.

I do believe that a lot of hobbyists do care about the artists and companies, so that certainly comes into play. But a company being upset does not always mean that the offending party was actually in the wrong, either. Sympathy shouldn't be too much of a deciding factor as it doesn't always reflect the truth of the situation (or what amounts to truth based on what info we have).

*Whew* my second long winded post of the day. I didn't have time to get online this morning, so I'm only just catching up now.

 

Oh gosh yes!!!! I get so tired of the "you're stealing money from two poor students mouths by buying Mikhaila". Quite frankly, I had seen Puns before Mikhaila and had no interest in her whatsoever. Mikhaila appealed far more because of her pouty mouth and face. Pear shaped bodies didn't do a thing for me. I was a little curious as to what they would be like in person. If anything, buying Mikhaila has given me more interest in pear shapes because I now like them. But even if I was planning to buy a Puns - how? Leeke hasn't stolen any money from them, they're not producing any dolls. Dust of Dolls has issues with French Taxes etc and can't afford to produce or so we are told. This hasn't changed in a couple of years and isn't likely to change. There are options out there for them. They could get Dollshe to produce their dolls then resell them, Jpop would probably happily run an issue of their Puns. Her Kaye Wiggs dolls sold for approx $350 with face-up, her version of Puns could even undercut Leeke's doll and take some of their sales. But for whatever reason, they've chosen not to do this. The reality is that pear shapes are gaining in popularity and they are popping up over the place along with different sizes and shapes. Dust of Dolls market is likely already being scraped away for that reason alone. While some people will hold onto their cash in the hopes that their dream doll will become available, a large number of other people will simply find something else to spend their cash on. Sometimes it's not just enough to be a good artist, you need to be a good businessperson as well. And yes, there are hundreds of examples of people creating a product, not being able to get it out to the public and a bigger company stepping in and saying "I can do this". That's called commerce not copying.

 

I know you can't and that's why I clarified. I didn't really think through what the term actually meant, honestly. Like I said, I was just sick of using the same terms repeatedly and recast was what I pulled up for what I meant. However, now I know it's specific to its definition, and I will remember that for the future. C: But I definitely see what you got from what I said. I didn't think through what I was saying carefully enough, so it was pretty easy to be mislead by what I said.

I suppose this is true. With the puns/mikahlia, I looked more at the bodies yes- the sculpt of the faces are exceedingly different from each other.

I completely agree with this! I hadn't really thought too deeply about what you meant by it, but I definitely agree about there needing to be consistency if someone is going to go out there and crucify a company, but then turns around and buy "The Doll in Question", then no, that's just hypocritical and stupid.

Haha, Thank you. ^^;

I wasn't really around for that bit, but people do have the habit of taking things to the extreme. It happens. And I definitely agree that evidence is a must before a company is condemned for such a thing.

This is also very true. No, sympathy shouldn't be a MAJOR factor, but it does indeed factor in. A lot of people think with feelings, rather than empirically and logically.

Haha, glad I could be part of your long-winded posting. ^^ I appreciate a full and complete thought.

 

Yes. Thank you for saying this. I'd also like to add that not every dollmaker draws blueprints before they start sculpting dolls. Some use reference pictures to keep an eye on the stylistic direction they want to take and that's it.

Yup. As sucky as it must be for D.D and their tax-problems, that's just the way it is.

I'm getting really tired of the "poor students vs. giant coorporate business" , 'cause I really believe that Leeke's employees will have to have a job on the side as well. They are not a million-dollar factory. The reality check is that if you want to get rich, dollmaking is nog the best way to do it; especially in this hobby where the costs of producing dolls are high and the market too small.
I understand the need to sympathize with the 'victims', but this exaggerating makes ME want to sympthize with Leeke.