Hi everyone
I make this journal entry in order to clarify something, it's about the "Do not take inspiration" under each of my pics.
As a lot of people send me messages and notes saying that's "not fair", "wrong" etc about the fact that I do not allow it, I wanna say once and for all what I think about it:
- First, design work is a work, and it is as important as leatherwork is in my work.
I spend hours and sometimes months on my sketches and designs before starting the conception of the armor/costume. This creativity, this design, this idea IS mine. My designs are under copyright, I own them so nobody can tell me what should I do or not do with them.
- Second point, when people takes inspiration from my work and makes their own stuff with it, but stay far from the original, I'm ok with that. I mean as an exemple, I've got a note from someone who took inspiration from my work before reading that I don't want it to be done, but what he made was really far from the original, so I was totally ok with that.
- Then comes the WHY I do not "allow" it.
I recently saw the page of an "artist" who made a design for an armor and asked to a leatherworker friend to build it (she says no, recognized my design when she saw it and finally build something different for this artist) ......... this was a perfect mix between 2 of my armors, exact color, shapes, carving details in the border, pieces and they were mount in the same order ........... that's a NO, totally NO.
This artist was claiming this was her own design, and she received multiples comments on it about how good was her design..... so yeah, she "makes" this final sketches, she mixes the stuff but she made it with my work.That's not her, that's mine, she just copy part by part and make a mix, and I'm not OK with this.
I can't check all of the "inspiration", I can't check if it's a 90 % copy, a mix or just an inspiration for another stuff really different, that's why I say NO and put it under copyright. Like that, if someone makes a thing that's more a copy revisited than just an inspiration, I can defend my work.
- To finish, I wanna say that creativity is what makes us and our work different and unique as artisans and artists. If you make your work based on other work, it's not really your own stuff and it's not fair for the creator who work hard on his original. I'm proud and happy to read that my work inspire some people and give them the wish to make their own stuff, really, but I'm not glad to see my intellectual property being used and revisited by other who claims it's their own work from A to Z.
Hope it's more clear and that you'll understand why I wrote that now
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Journal Skin by: Zaellrin.