Inktober Book Plagerism Accusations

[StudioHannah]

@danielerossi Thanks for watching it! Ahaha, I got that bit from Ethan Becker, who is an excellent art YouTuber. Very funny guy and great teacher.

[NessIllustration]

@Blitz55 People seem to have a bias against Jake for 2 previous incidents/scandals that were really nothing burgers.

• The digital art vs. traditional art scandal. Several years ago when people started doing digital art for Inktober, Jake said that originally the point of Inktober was to make time to practice traditional ink techniques and so it's not the ideal time/event to do digital art. People ran with it and thought he said that digital art isn't real art, and was bashing digital art. No matter how many times he tried to respectfully explain that digital art is rad and he does a lot of it himself, it's just this particular event happens to be challenging you to ink traditionally, some still think he bashed digital artists.

• The trademarking controversy. A couple years ago, Jake trademarked the Inktober name and logo in order to protect people from using it to sell T-shirts and stuff, and also to allow him to create an Inktober book and partner up with different companies to create official merch. This eventually led to some artists receiving DMCA notices if they were using the Inktober name or logo to sell their Inktober related zines or other products. Jake worked with those artists to allow them to keep selling their products, just remove the logo from it. They were also allowed to use the Inktober name in a subtitle, just not the main title (for instance "Black and white: an Inktober zine by John Smith" was allowed). Sadly there was a huge outcry because of an overwhelming lack of understanding of the situation, of how copyrights and trademarks work and Jake's intentions. A lot of people think he outright sued people who participated in Inktober in order to make money off other people's art. Some people still believe you can get sued for selling your Inktober prints, or even just using the Inktober hashtag. It's of course ridiculous because a) DMCAs are not suing, to my knowledge Jake has never sued anyone and b) his trademark only protects the NAME (as main title of whatever you want to sell) and his logo, not the concept of Inktober itself. And still again some people believe that Jake did not create Inktober, the community built up Inktober and it is public domain, and Jake is trying to appropriate something that does not belong to him.

That in a nutshell is the explanation of the silly misunderstandings that people are using to base their whole opinion of Jake... The most ridiculous thing is that most people going after Jake for what they believe is copyright infringement of Dunn, also are the same ones thinking he is a bad person for attempting to prevent copyright infringement of his own Inktober logo. They're not making sense whatsoever. Most of these people have no understanding of copyright law, are only vaguely aware of rumors they heard on the internet and are using these tenuous "facts" to make up their minds that Jake is an awful person who has now been caught plagiarizing and they're not surprised. It's insanity. This could happen to anyone through no fault of their own...

[danielerossi]

I just ran into a kinda-sorta similar situation last night! I was working on a few thumbnail sketches for ideas for “Fish”, the first Inktober prompt. After trying a few different scenarios, I settled on a tiger looking into a fish market window. The sketch I drew is from the perspective of looking at the tiger from the inside of the fish market. I liked what I drew so I — of course — fire up Instagram to share with the world.

You know how Instagram shows you the latest photo in your news feed when you open it up? What I saw made my mouth drop. A friend of mine in Japan DREW THE SAME THING! Except hers is of a pig looking into a donut shop window. Both of our layouts were the same. Food at the bottom, hands on window, lots of white space above the animal’s head. Uncanny.

Neither of us knew we were drawing anything about fish or animals or donuts or whatever. We don’t even keep in touch on a daily basis. As far as I know, I don’t think she’s participating in Inktober (or at least, I haven’t seen anything related to a fish prompt in her illustration).

I admit, anxiety got the best of me as this reminded me of the Alphonso/Jake thing. So — to make sure — I sent her a private message with her illustration and mine along with a note saying how I had just made this drawing when hers happened pop up in my news feed.

[lpetiti]

What has amazed me is that, even though people say they aren't sticking around with Inktober and Jake, they feel the need to do just that and bash anyone who still participates. "I'm unfollowing you." or things similar to it run rampent in comments. My opinion has always been "Okay, that's your business..." Why people feel the need to make a big production about posting how they will no longer participate in anything has always baffled me.

[Blitz55]

@NessIllustration That is a great breakdown, thanks for taking the time to write that out. I may even use that info to pass on to others I know who don't understand the situation so well.

I typically feel that most of that had to have been a misunderstanding. I've seen it stated as "Jake sicking his lawyers on people" which sounds so misleading and wrong. I don't know Jake personally though I've had the chance to meet him a few times at ECCC and through that and all his public videos and work I have yet to ever see something that makes me think this is a shady guy, this is the kind of guy out to get his and to hell with other artists.

But, people take misleading information and run with it on the internet. I was part of something like that and saw first hand how a fabricated story by a random person on a forum completely destroyed the work of one of my best friends simply because people took this person at their word and never bothered to actually look into the matter. It's freaking pathetic how that always seems to be the case.

Thank you once again.
Gave you a follow on Instagram too, nice work. I like your mushrooms. haha

[A Former User]

@lpetiti said in Inktober Book Plagerism Accusations:

What has amazed me is that, even though people say they aren't sticking around with Inktober and Jake, they feel the need to do just that and bash anyone who still participates. "I'm unfollowing you." or things similar to it run rampent in comments. My opinion has always been "Okay, that's your business..." Why people feel the need to make a big production about posting how they will no longer participate in anything has always baffled me.

thats how it alway works. people dont like something and want other people to not like it too. in this case for sure with the additional mindsetting that they have to let the people know the "truth" for them to follow theire path because why else would the prompt lists still get so many likes. it must be that people dont know and not just that they either side with him, dont care or whatever.

i just wait for the first people claiming he copied alphonsos stuff with the new indigogo easy sketchbook "mirror" device

[djlambson]

@danielerossi Oh my gosh. I sketched this yesterday in preparation for my first go at Inktober.
I guess we should not be surprised..it was literally my first ..well, second thought. Now I'm curious how many of these there will be!

[lpetiti]

@Molambo I had a friend tell me "you're aware of his plagiarism right? We discovered that he stole work. Just be aware of it when you post with the hashtag".

The way people think we're ignorant of accusations just because we dont buy into them is...mind boggling.

[pixel.dsp]

@NessIllustration You articulated it so well. Just like what Kesh said in his video with regards to people criticizing Jake for “lawyering up”: In what kind of la la cuckoo land do they live in?...
The event is called Inktober and not Digitober... and I still used multiple types of medium and hastaged Inktober and the world did not end.
Do artists think they can just use someone else’s logo without permission?
And I hope Alphonse also “lawyered up” because he’s gonna need one for making such serious accusations.

[danielerossi]

@djlambson Hahahahaha this is so funny, scary, and cool at the same time

[djlambson]

@danielerossi Agreed! crazy.

[NessIllustration]

@djlambson All of you are plagiarists apparently haha!

[A Former User]

@lpetiti yeah, i really wonder when the innocent till proven guilty thing changed. based on the last insta post from alphonso the thing will not be done in a shot amount of time. i really wonder how this will end, book itself is still listed on amazon.

[djlambson]

@NessIllustration We are!

[lpetiti]

@Molambo it's hard not to be skeptical of him, because I just saw that post and no where does it seem like he acknowledges that 1)its for the courts to decide and LAWYERS and 2)he has contributed to a lot of the "haters" online by giving them a platform to speak up without any of us knowing the full story. I'm not just blindly following Jake either, I dont think any of us are. If, for some unknown reason, it ended up being that he did plagiarize, then he would need to be held accountable, as all artists would. Problem is...I dont think he did so he shouldnt be held accountable until such time (however unlikely) its determined he did. And if he didnt...then hes having to deal with other peoples rash decisions to accuse without knowing all of the facts.

One interesting observation...just browsing around the comments to Alphonsos post. I dont see anyone criticizing him or bad mouthing him. I'm assuming if people dont agree, then they're just not posting. So...why dont those followers pay the Inktober posts the same courtesy?

[NessIllustration]

@Molambo I just looked up that post, wow... It's a bad trip, but the comments take the cake. Someone said: "You have treated this episode in a very calm way and earned much respect." I really have no words.

[K.Flagg]

Just read Alphonso's post....wow....just wow.

[George Broussard]

@lpetiti said in Inktober Book Plagerism Accusations:

One interesting observation...just browsing around the comments to Alphonsos post. I dont see anyone criticizing him or bad mouthing him. I'm assuming if people dont agree, then they're just not posting. So...why dont those followers pay the Inktober posts the same courtesy?

You have to click to see recent comments, vs top comments. The top comments are clearly the ones ppl click like on and bubble and are skewed toward Dunn. There are a fair number of posts calling Dunn out but they are never seen because Top Comments is the default.

[davidhohn]

So I imagine the post being referred to by @NessIllustration and @Molambo is Dunn's recent IG post.
As some SVS members may go over and read it I feel compelled to make the same correction here that I did on his post:

POOR MANS COPYRIGHT is a myth. Do not do this. Please research copyright law. It is not hard, and if you are a creative it is the basis of your job.

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

I love copyright. The concept of it, teaching it, using it in my job. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing 25,000 people getting fed misinformation about it.

Edit: So he posted the same thing to his YouTube channel. Now there's 600K people "learning" this stuff. . . . sigh. . . .

[Norman Morana]

@George-Broussard I think they’re referring to Dunn’s new post on Instagram. Unless you are too? I’m not sure if you can arrange comments on Instagram. I’ve been looking at that new post off and on. I haven’t seen a single negative comment on there either. Guessing people that can see that the book is most likely authentic are also more polite.

Venting side notes:

This whole ordeal is incredibly frustrating to see. One comment on Jake’s recent post, shows that someone is sending out misinformation that if you tag a post with Inktober, Jake owns it. Silly. Some people don’t get that it’s only the Inktober logo you can’t freely use, which makes sense. I work with logos in my day job and you can’t just go throwing those around willy-nilly. And then to assume someone who’s been teaching and helping people for years isn’t capable of writing their own book. Also I worry about the implications this could have for anyone wanting to teach in the future.

I haven’t been able to find the book on amazon by searching but I can always still see It when I go to my preorder. It’s always shown the price but today instead of the dollar amount it reads “currently unavailable” hoping thats not a sign of bad news or a huge delay.