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My Portfolio
- Thread starter Charalambous
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You can't use photos that other people took to create commercial artwork unless it falls under fair use. While you can probably get away with it, you are breaking the law by selling if for a profit. No one is going to come after you unless you start making lots of money, or become well known. The problem is that soon as you start making money, someone is going to come along and sue your butt off and you could be liable for thousands of dollars unless you can prove in court that your artwork falls under fair use. Of course, you're also talking thousands of dollars of attorney fees to defend yourself. It's reminds me of illegal downloading of music. It's okay until you get caught, then you pay dearly.
The way around it, is to redraw the photos (not trace) and change them enough that they don't look exactly like the originals. Then use your derivatives for your vector traces. Of course, that is more work than what you are doing now, (just tracing existing images) but if you want to be original, then that's what you have to do. Otherwise, all you're doing is tracing and anyone who knows Illustrator can do that. It's not art, it's just copying and craftsmanship. If I was looking to hire you as a designer, I'd think that you were good at Illustrator, but not so good at coming up with an original concept. However, if you did them based on your own images, I'd be impressed. Otherwise.. meh.
Therefore, why don't you take your own photos and trace those? That would be more interesting and would keep you out of court.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Using-photos-found-online
The way around it, is to redraw the photos (not trace) and change them enough that they don't look exactly like the originals. Then use your derivatives for your vector traces. Of course, that is more work than what you are doing now, (just tracing existing images) but if you want to be original, then that's what you have to do. Otherwise, all you're doing is tracing and anyone who knows Illustrator can do that. It's not art, it's just copying and craftsmanship. If I was looking to hire you as a designer, I'd think that you were good at Illustrator, but not so good at coming up with an original concept. However, if you did them based on your own images, I'd be impressed. Otherwise.. meh.
Therefore, why don't you take your own photos and trace those? That would be more interesting and would keep you out of court.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Using-photos-found-online
The same could be said about tattoo artists because every tatoo artist will use a stencil, they get an image, trace it, sometimes manipulate it or enhance it (as you suggested) and then trace it with an ink pen onto/into your skin.
I know there are lots of tatoo artists that trace work and do stencils that are not their own artwork or designs, some of which are famous people, characters, team logo's, country flags, icons, symbols, even famous quotes and on and on...and they surely make a profit from it every time. I wonder how they get around this? Or perhaps the big arms covered in tats, bandana and handlebar mustache, <insert biker image> warrants them to be left alone...
I know there are lots of tatoo artists that trace work and do stencils that are not their own artwork or designs, some of which are famous people, characters, team logo's, country flags, icons, symbols, even famous quotes and on and on...and they surely make a profit from it every time. I wonder how they get around this? Or perhaps the big arms covered in tats, bandana and handlebar mustache, <insert biker image> warrants them to be left alone...
The irony of you watermarking your TRACES of other professional photographers' photos!
This is not art... and you can't sell it on any sort of scale where you would get any notoriety. This displays a talent for.... nothing. You have learned the skill of the pen tool. Brilliant.
You should hook up with Shepard Fairey.
This is not art... and you can't sell it on any sort of scale where you would get any notoriety. This displays a talent for.... nothing. You have learned the skill of the pen tool. Brilliant.
You should hook up with Shepard Fairey.
agreed - this is a worthless demonstration of knowing how to use the pen tool. nothing is changing from the original image in terms of content, emotion, meaning, etc. all you are doing is stylizing someone else's photograph. lame.
why don't you try drawing a caricature of these people first then do the vector thing. At the moment, whilst they look nice, you can't deny they are just vectored photos and no company is going to pay you $30000 a year for these skills when they can pay someone in Indonesia $5000 for the same thing or better still pay for a photoshop plugin that can do the same thing.
I see accuracy, attention to detail, and proficiency with the pen tool. That is it. I don't see how this is a portfolio. You may want to pay less attention to your self-taught skills and take on some new challenges in school, like breaking out of your box. You can do semi-realism illustration amazingly well, but your use of color, type, space, layout, and creative development are not readily apparent in anything you've shown. I'd go as far as to say that you may be struggling, because I see use of like one extremely tacky font with tacky effects and bad kerning, and obviously all in your interest area (hip hop music heroes). This should be a wake-up call to branch out and see what new things you can do: it's 2009, and you've been doing this since 2006 or before.
The irony of you watermarking your TRACES of other professional photographers' photos!
This is not art... and you can't sell it on any sort of scale where you would get any notoriety. This displays a talent for.... nothing. You have learned the skill of the pen tool. Brilliant.
You should hook up with Shepard Fairey.
Like that Andy Warhol hack
First off, if we're going to invoke the name of Warhol, let's concede that it's more likely that Warhol is called by Rolling Stone to do the cover art for their Tupac issue, where he'd likely photograph Tupac to use as reference for his cover illustration.
This, opposed to the OP googling "awezome pix tupac" and slapping it into illustrator, live tracing, and tweaking the details.
"You must first learn the rules to break them"
Andy Warhol learned the rules first. He spent considerable time working his way up the ladder of the arts world. Starting with his time at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, now Carnegie Mellon University, an esteemed school that only picks the best and brightest for enrollment.
In the 1950s, Warhol freelanced for music industry powerhouse RCA records, designing some outstanding album covers for Jazz greats:
You can see an inimitable style beginning to form, a pure talent and originality on display, and a fine respect for other aspects of design (type, layout, composition) as opposed to just a focus on illustration.
To bring Warhol into a discussion about copy machines like the OP or Sheppy Fairy is an injustice to Andy.
Warhol could outdo the OP and Fairy Boy with a piece of paper, a quill and and an inkwell. The other guys would be lost without the google, let alone likely confused by the pen and the paper.
Our OP and Fairy boy owe more of their "success" to Bruce Chizen than to Warhol.
Did you not read the comment I quoted about not being able to sell traces of photographs or gain notoriety from them because its not art? A lot of Warhol's pictures had no drawing at all, they were just prints with the colors changed, so apparently they arent art or sellable.
Yes. And I agree with that comment. The OP's work is not art. It's copying/tracing. It's not sellable. It's likely illegal to sell.
To say Warhol's art has "no drawing at all, they were just prints with the colors changed" shows a gross lack of knowledge about the art world. You should stop posting.
Did you not see the album covers I posted? They're done by Warhol. They had to have been hand drawn. He has a WHOLE body of disparate work in addition to his soup cans and marilyns. did you know that?
Warhol painted the Campbell's cans. He replicated them with a silkscreen process and added in the different varieties of the soup. It's a stark contrast to the Monet's and the like who would do series art and show how light, time, etc can all affect a subject is a series.
There's alot more to it than googling "tupac" and tracing the pic and calling it art.
Now sure, you can say that Warhol's Marilyn Monroe came from a famous photo (which Andy did manage to purchase and own). But look at the original photo and Andy's painting of it. The original was a b/w photo. Warhol painted color onto it, gave it a completely different feel than the photograph.
http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/marilyns.html
The op's stuff is just fancy traces of an already existing photo. I'd rather just buy the original photo! Is it real or it is memorex? Ya know? He doesn't ad. He just parrots.
But in Warhol's case, there's originality, creativity and addition to the imagery that he used. He enhanced, even if the enhancing was bizarre or jarring, the original image.
Does the OP own the originals/usage rights to any of the photographs he traces in his "art?"
Does Danny Clinch know that some kid is planning on selling posters of his Tupac photo? I digress.
I quite agree. A lack of knowledge about art is terrible and they should stop posting on a technical computer forum
Or better yet, you could actually read what I wrote instead of trying to educate me about things I already know.
Your art snobbery is blinding your logic. What hes doing is not any different than what Warhol was doing when he first started messing with famous photos (WITHOUT the original photographer's consent). Is there a difference in quality? Absolutely. But legally and logically they are in the same category.
I for one appreciate the art history. You can't build a house without a foundation, so this discussion with some added history about art greats and historic types of fair use definitely gives perspective to the issue. I wasn't offended at all. Who gets offended at someone being educational?
not necessarily......here's a court case from a few years back that uses Warhol as an example for part of the decision.
Gary Saderup vs The Three Stooges
Keep in mind that Warhol was also sued, and if he was just a nobody he would have gotten sued a lot more than he did. Judges tread in murky waters when they try to define things based on opinion, the same cases can easily turn out different based on who you get. People can BS artistic meanings into anything regardless of the artist's intentions, they did it with some of Warhol's stuff and Im sure they can do it to these images.
Now could the OP get in trouble for selling this stuff? Probably.
Now could the OP get in trouble for selling this stuff? Probably.
I find the OP's technical skills to be impressive, but his artistic vision is undeveloped, and his intention to sell the images is legally actionable.
Since this is the "Design and Graphics" forum, I think such discussions of the legality and artistic merits of created imagery is justified and, indeed, demanded in situations like this, if only for the education of those who might consider such questionable actions themselves.
Apart from technical skill (which is admittedly impressive), the images do not have any message other than an apparent intent to commercially exploit a famous celebrity and/or image.
It is common to teach oneself skills through copying others work/images. This is a valuable and worthwhile activity. We see the results in the OP's images. They are well-done renderings of images owned by others and therefore have value to the OP only to the extent that by copying them, he learned a new skill. Because the images are mere copies, albeit in digital form, they have no merit, no message apart from the celebrity they portray and therefore cannot be legally sold for profit without the consent of the original image holders and/or celebrities portrayed.
I suggest, as others have, that the OP look to inspiration within himself, and use his skills to discover a personal vision and message beyond mere celebrity exploitation.
That's my opinion as a designer with 30+ years experience.
Who's Tupac? Gawd! I feel old.
Since this is the "Design and Graphics" forum, I think such discussions of the legality and artistic merits of created imagery is justified and, indeed, demanded in situations like this, if only for the education of those who might consider such questionable actions themselves.
Apart from technical skill (which is admittedly impressive), the images do not have any message other than an apparent intent to commercially exploit a famous celebrity and/or image.
It is common to teach oneself skills through copying others work/images. This is a valuable and worthwhile activity. We see the results in the OP's images. They are well-done renderings of images owned by others and therefore have value to the OP only to the extent that by copying them, he learned a new skill. Because the images are mere copies, albeit in digital form, they have no merit, no message apart from the celebrity they portray and therefore cannot be legally sold for profit without the consent of the original image holders and/or celebrities portrayed.
I suggest, as others have, that the OP look to inspiration within himself, and use his skills to discover a personal vision and message beyond mere celebrity exploitation.
That's my opinion as a designer with 30+ years experience.
Who's Tupac? Gawd! I feel old.
he would seem to fall into the same territory as Gary Saderup did with his drawings of the Three Stooges....plus he's got the potential copyright violation issue that comes from so directly using the photographers' work
would learning that Tupac has been dead since 1996 make you feel even older?
I'm surprised Warhol wasn't sued more often than he was. You have that a little bit in reverse. It tends to be the somebodies who get sued alot. They just happen to be able to defend themselves better.
The nobodies get sued once and completely screwed from it.
That said, the judge is pretty clear. Transformative is pretty much the key word and perfectly sums up the difference between the OP's work and the work of a Warhol.
would learning that Tupac has been dead since 1996 make you feel even older?
Yes. Thank you for that.
Actually, I Googled him, so I'm up to speed. Never been a big fan of rap, saggy pants, or wearing baseball hats backwards. I'm an old fuddy-duddy.