Inktober Book Plagerism Accusations

[MattBaker]

This is the "KILL THE BEAST" scene from Beauty and the Beast. Townspeople just wanna poke something with their proverbial pitchforks.

Don't confuse me with facts, my minds already made up.

I hope the truth prevails this time.

[George Broussard]

@Carmanda said in Inktober Book Plagerism Accusations:

People are still salty about trademarking Inktober

Yes, and this was always insane. A lot of artists, particularly amateur, young, or leaning heavily left, don't understand matters of trademarks, etc. They just see it as being mean. There's 100% nothing wrong with trademarking Inktober and protecting that name and logo mark. Try explaining that to people that are anti capitalism, though. They would understand if they were to ever create or own something valuable.

[Coley]

@MattBaker you nailed it

[Coreyartus]

@George-Broussard Youth and the simple lack of experience and worldliness, I get. But I'm not sure it has to do with a political stance or one's embrace of the legalities of capitalism... I think that's a stretch. I, myself am just about as far left as a person can get and I understand the complexities of what's happening. I think we start down a dangerous path when we bring politics into the conversation, as cancel culture exists on both sides of the aisle in its own ways. As a moderator, I'd personally like to avoid opening up that particular can of worms on these forums as it seems this tiny oasis has managed to blissfully sidestep it for a good many years...

[jsnzart]

@Coreyartus I think I agree with that.

I'm nearly 50,...and I still don't understand politics.
Especially in the US!!! Left and right?
Sorry, I have no idea!

And, I wanted to be a political cartoonist. Lol

[pixel.dsp]

@NessIllustration With the current events, I highly doubt anybody would sue AD. With the way his fans have injected racial arguments, pitting this as a “white vs black” issue, it would look really bad on a corporation like Chronicles to sue an independent artist like AD.

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@NessIllustration Jake can’t win no matter what. these people of little minds will always think he plagiarized Dunn. If it will be proven that no plagiarism happened, I want Dunn to make a public apology.

[xin li]

@pixel-dsp It is such a mess. Highly respect Jake and the whole team at SVS: everyone dealt this matter in such a professional and calm way - the way a true art sensei would do.

@Nyrryl-Cadiz In my opinion, Jake already won.

As an old saying goes - "And this, too, shall pass away."

I look forward to this year's inktober, and can not wait to see all the beautiful art that will come out from the svs family.

[Julia]

I also think it is not fair to assume the commenters are young and inexperienced : first it is unkind to the youth. I know bright youngs whose opinions are balanced. Saying this, without real study or statistics to back it up, tends to generalise the profil of the commenters and to create a generation gap.

Second, I feel it exonarates the commenters or at least diminish their responsability.

When someone makes a comment on social media (or, as a matter of fact, any forums, blogs, etc. Anywhere public), there is an individual responsability going along as well as a moral commitment. This is even truer for hateful or racist comments.

Going back to the comments below Alphonso's video, yes, most of them show an immediate, emmotional reaction of support and sympathy towards Alphonso, and plenty of them carry a bias and sharp judgement against Jake. Finally another substential percentage include some racist or hateful statement. This is very shocking and very sad, unfortunately Internet allows behaviours that would be sanctionned "in real life" in democratic countries. Internet is also real life but didn't seem to have solve this yet... maybe Youtube should be the one looking at the hateful and racist comments and take appropriate action?

[Coreyartus]

@Julia You're right, I was overgeneralizing.

Just an FYI, during my own blocking/muting/restricting efforts to save my sanity on Instagram and Twitter, I visited a lot of those accounts. I have absolutely no statistical evidence other than my own personal anecdotal observation, and I am sure I looked at things with my own biases. I discovered about a third of them were new, with 0-10 postings and 0-10 followers, implying to me they may have been made specifically to post with anonymity as "stab accounts". Another third seemed to be accounts that had under 100 followers. Generally, of all of those, the profiles that most commonly had ages listed were on Twitter, and usually those ages were under 25 years. I didn't see any ages listed older than that.

That probably gave me bias confirmation and led me to overgeneralize. Apologies. And also the fact that I teach students of that age at university means I see a lot of really immature stuff, but I have to remember that I also see awesome, integrity driven young people I'm now proud to call peers and colleagues.

Interestingly another thing I noticed was that about half of the accounts I visited were not illustrators or even artists of any kind. Which was really curious. About half the number of accounts I visited on Instagram were Private, and I couldn't see anything they posted.

All told, I have blocked/restricted about 100 accounts on Instagram slowly over the last 3 days so as not to pop the algorithm or flag my account, and about 75 on Twitter.

Of course, I opened tabs in my browser for each account on Saturday and slowly addressed them as I worked, so who knows who is posting now. A lot can happen in 72 hours.

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@xin-li This whole thing is stressing me out i just want it to be over

[hakepe]

@jsnzart there's your angle of approach then, politics is nuts.... now start drawing

[xin li]

@Nyrryl-Cadiz just keep drawing, just keep drawing...

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@xin-li haha thanks

[StudioHannah]

I came here looking for some sane conversation, and found it! Thank you! I've been upset about this whole thing, because I really like Jake, and I respect Alphonso, so it's sad seeing these accusations unfold and cause so much anger in the art community. It will end eventually - everything does - and I hope it ends well. I hope. Still, there are going to be people who irrevocably dislike Jake and boycott Inktober no matter what happens. Alphonso probably did more damage than he realized.

I also made a video about this that I hope is ok to share here. I want to be fair to both artists, though I do have a definite bias toward Jake because of how long I've been lurking around YouTube and SVS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GCWSBuTKPs&lc=Ugz3ffqfJk67EKJMTkJ4AaABAg

Thanks for making this thread, Lee. I hope Jake sees all the love he's getting in here.

[carrieannebrown]

@Nyrryl-Cadiz it's genuinely stressing me out too! I'm worried about being in the public eye in the future now. I tried deleting my social media apps to stay out of it but it didn't last long . I don't want to argue with strangers on Instagram but some of the comments really wind me up!

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@carrieannebrown I TOTALLY AGREE! It's frustrating

[danielerossi]

@StudioHannah Just a side note: I came across your video a few days ago and enjoyed it very much. Not only did you raise excellent points. I got curious and watched your Inktober one. I’m still laughing at “you insult me, you insult my dog!”

[George Broussard]

@StudioHannah said in Inktober Book Plagerism Accusations:

I also made a video about this that I hope is ok to share here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GCWSBuTKPs&lc=Ugz3ffqfJk67EKJMTkJ4AaABAg

Good video.

It's going to now ultimately come down to Chronicle lawyers looking over both books and rendering a decision. That's just how it's going to go. They may well want to change some pages. If they delay and change pages this will hurt Jake. If they cancel the book this will hurt Jake (likely being responsible for paying back advances).

Suing people takes a lot of money. I doubt Jake or Alphonso either one will initiate action on the other one, themselves. You can vaporize 100k in no time.

I still think Dunn acted rashly and caused damage to Jake's reputation and even monetary damages with potentially unfounded accusations.

• Jake either blatantly copied the book. Unlikely as he knows what would happen and there's no history of anything unethical in his past.

• Jake got lazy and when writing it flipped through some books for "what are good textures to put on these cubes?". That's not even lazy. That's essentially research and inspiration and there are 100's of sources online or in books of textured material forms.

I think you have to give Jake the benefit of the doubt here. He's a pro, he has a high profile and he full well knows what accusations like this can do to a career. He's not stupid enough to willfully do this or even be lazy enough to do it. I'm sure nobody ever thought anyone would care about some textured cubed or value charts etc. It's silly to even consider it.

As it is, Chronicle and Jake have little choice but to fight. Chronicle may throw their hands up and just say "not our fault" leaving Jake holding an expensive bag, legally.

So it comes down to how Chronicle reacts. Will they stand behind the book and Jake or not? All we can do is wait to see their response.

[John Roberson]

Omg thank you! I just discovered this video today and at first I thought it was just a clickbait title having followed both artists for some time. But then I started watching. Dunn seemed so adamant in his accusations and the people in the comments seemed to mostly agree wholeheartedly. But I just couldn’t see it. It’s been on my mind all day.

Everything he was pointing out was stuff that I’ve seen or heard repeated over and over at various points in my art education. And Jake’s layouts, while perhaps a bit derivative in a broader sense, seemed different enough from Dunn’s...at least from a layout and design standpoint. I watched it 3 or 4 different times and kept pausing it at certain points trying to understand. Every time Dunn would point something out it just felt to me like he was claiming ownership of the art fundamentals themselves rather than outlining clear examples of outright plagiarism.

And sooo many people seem to be supporting his accusations without question. Beyond just empathizing with how Jake must be feeling, the implications of how Dunn handled this and the arguments being presented leaves me feeling very unsettled. By what it means for art education and for the overall art community. And it’s part of a larger unease I feel about our current cultural climate and how we address conflict on a fundamental level. But seeing that at least some people were feeling the same gives me some solace.