'kay, so, I know it's like this on just about any forum, but it really bothers me and I'm a part of the Shaiya community and an artist myself, so I feel obliged to say something about it...

Some of the artworks you're using in your signatures are copyrighted and many artists DO NOT want their artworks to be reproduced or altered in any way, shape or form, without their written permission.

ESPECIALLY signature-artists that are SELLING their signatures for AP(-items), should try to contact the original artist BEFORE they use their art. Many artists put alot of effort i their artworks and it's really frustrating to see your artworks being (ab)used by someone else. Why?
IF they catch you and you do NOT have written permission, they CAN sue you.

It really frustrates me how people just "render" or use gorgeous artworks of someone else, throw it in one of their signatures and then give it to a random person with their name plastered on it.

Because think about it like this: how would YOU feel if someone would take one of your signatures and place their own name over yours and pass it off as their own?
That's how the original artists are feeling.

They don't even get credit! I've seen so far NO signature artist give at least credit for the picture they used.

TL;DR/What I'm trying to say: I'm begging you, try to either give credit or ask the original artist before you use something. They put alot of effort in their artworks and you wouldn't like it either if someone used your masterpiece in something else. If you cannot contact the original artist or can't find whether (s)he allows you to use it without their permission, I suggest you to use something else.

On a side note: I, myself, do not mind if people use my artworks. I'm just speaking for the bazzilion of artists whose artworks are being reproduced/used/altered to signatures without their knowledge.

There are thousands of renders and wallpapers where the artist is not credited, or their website is not listed. Thus, no way to contact the original artist. And, avoiding every render where there isn't a blatant way to find the artist would drastically limit any siggy maker's selection of images. Many artists in this forum don't render images themselves, or at least not many images, as in, very, very few. The majority of images you see here are from websites.

If I was an artist, and posted my work on dA, chances are, I wouldn't even ever find out my work was being used on some small Fan Art forum for some B-grade game. Now, I'm not talking about any other place but this forum right now. Though, I have to agree that outright taking work from someone's dA page or website, with their copyrights clearly stated somewhere on the page or work (cropping it out later) is really bad and disrespectful. But, render and wallpaper sites are open places to get images we need for our siggies, to avoid these resources because we can't be sure if it's copyrighted when it's on an available resource type website, would just lack..sense.

But, most of the artists here, I'm sure, would gladly remove their siggy and contact the person they sent/sold it to, to have them remove it as well, if an artist ever found their work used.

Many of us know the consequences of violating copyright if one were ever caught. There was a big debate on this in a previous C&C thread (that I miss u.u) and I believe that debate/fight was part of the reason the thread went poof. Although, I appreciate your intentions, this thread is in my opinion, not really necessary.

If artist do not want ppl copy pic of they own websites they can ask makers who do those sites to lock the pic the way no one can copy it. And yes u can download wallpapers etc from sites etc. I do not think that anyone who makes the signatures, put a name to their work because of the image that they have been copied from internet is they own pics (means that they also made pic, not only the background on it), but they kind of modification is made​​. If anyone is interested in getting the siggy's, they will see who is the image editor, and it is easy to find the author. Author may be difficult to find if there is no names in Siggy's, who have edited the pic.

lol i hope ppl do understood what i try say my english is not so good

uberfearr wrote:

There are thousands of renders and wallpapers where the artist is not credited, or their website is not listed. Thus, no way to contact the original artist. And, avoiding every render where there isn't a blatant way to find the artist would drastically limit any siggy maker's selection of images. Many artists in this forum don't render images themselves, or at least not many images, as in, very, very few. The majority of images you see here are from websites. If I was an artist, and posted my work on dA, chances are, I wouldn't even ever find out my work was being used on some small Fan Art forum for some B-grade game. Now, I'm not talking about any other place but this forum right now. Though, I have to agree that outright taking work from someone's dA page or website, with their copyrights clearly stated somewhere on the page or work (cropping it out later) is really bad and disrespectful. But, render and wallpaper sites are open places to get images we need for our siggies, to avoid these resources because we can't be sure if it's copyrighted when it's on an available resource type website, would just lack..sense. But, most of the artists here, I'm sure, would gladly remove their siggy and contact the person they sent/sold it to, to have them remove it as well, if an artist ever found their work used. Many of us know the consequences of violating copyright if one were ever caught. There was a big debate on this in a previous C&C thread (that I miss u.u) and I believe that debate/fight was part of the reason the thread went poof. Although, I appreciate your intentions, this thread is in my opinion, not really necessary.

+1

Honestly if you don't want your work to be reproduced in anyway PUT A WATERMARK ON THE ACTUAL IMAGE. It's really not hard to do. Just because you say you can't use this image doesn't mean people will listen.

Signatures have been done everywhere with tons of images and wallpapers.

Also your signature is using another wallpaper. :I

Sounds kinda hypocritical if you ask me.

I think that charging a fee for any signature or fan art is bad form anyway, unless they are the original artist of the render, but that's a different issue.

But yeah, you're not going to run into any legal trouble in using copyrighted materials unless you're profiting from it, and any dA artist would have an extremely hard time suing anyone for use of images that they made open to the public. If an artist makes his/her work freely available on the internet, it is freely available on the internet.

Bad taste? Sure. Illegal? No.

And copyrights are such a maze that it's not even worth it to pay attention to them. Just don't try to sell them and you're fine. If you're going to start in on that, you may as well say that the entirety of fanfiction.net is illegal because it is unsanctioned fiction based off of copyrighted books, comics, manga, TV shows, films, etc.

Incidentally, here's something interesting for Star Wars fans: http://swrevisited.wordpress.com/

This guy went through frame by frame and made thousands of small edits to Star Wars Episode IV. Sort of a 'Special Edition' version that doesn't suck. You know, edits that actually fix or improve the film instead of dumb crap like Greedo shooting first. It's available for free download and George Lucas knows about it and takes no legal action. All Lucas and the person behind Star Wars Revisited ask is that you own a copy of the actual film.

In all honesty, most experienced signature makers will get their renders pre-cut. most likely from bakarenders, planetrenders, gamerenders etc. or from pre-made render packs readily available on GFX resource forums, often without knowing the origin of the image. On the whole, people dont really understand how large and important the rendering community really is to sig makers...

Regardless, I'm also pretty sure that most people realise that signature makers don't actually paint/draw their own renders, that's kinda a given from newbie sig makers using awesome render placed loosely onto a smokey stock with dodgy block red text.

In the signature making community, people take credit not for creating the image used for the render, but for creating the background and SFX used to blend it, recreate lighting, colours etc. as an artist yourself, you should know the time and skill it takes to make a truly awesome signature. Not just cut and paste; smudging, clonestamping, re-painting, clipping, masking, dodging, burning, remodelling and countless other techniques. That is what the sig makers take credit for/what I give credit to when I see a sig.

For example, you head on over to planetrenders and give me the original link to each render, perhaps even just the first page of renders in a specific category; fact is, the net is so vast, it's only really the dArtists that people even recognise (and thats a select few) and little there is under (their very loose) copyright.

CGS, IA, IFX and millions of other sites get far less traffic and use much more in-depth copyrighting, and CGS (IMHO) has the best artists on the net.

I'm not even gonna start on the amount of famous Wallpapers, fanart, fanfic, and sketches based off photography that is also currently in violation of copyright laws.

As an artist, myself (9 years of digital painting + GFX design), I feel quite honoured when people rip my work, as has happened in the past, with paintings, sigs, wallpapers and allsorts. It's actually far less frustrating than you think; the feeling that your work is so good others not only wish they had it, but wanted to emulate you because of it is very warming.

From being part of many art communities and working in the industry for several years, I've found digital painters, photomanipulators etc. couldn't care less if their art was cut for signatures (it boosts their profile, and ego), but when ripped and displayed by another claiming the original to be theirs on their website/gallery - that is when they get p***ed.

When I make a tag, if its for personal use I will always title the sig with the original image, i.e I made a miss mosh themed tag recently and titled it 'mosh', messaged the model, and had it approved. But, like I said, most of the time if you obtain these pre-cut images from a dedicated resource website like those mentioned, you will unlikely get a link to the original image to credit.

It's one thing to rip an image and slap some text on. That I truly frown upon like the OP.
But taking an image from a resource site and creating an entire scene in a tiny 500x200px space takes skill which is immensely overlooked by the OP.

While I understand your frustration, you must also underestimate the amount of signature designers around the net. GFX forums may not be as popular as they used to, due to sections like this (Fanart forum) on gaming sites popping up more frequently, but there are still an untold amount of people in this signature design community, and it's not gonna stop any time soon I'm afraid.

Truth is, if you're an artist, and you don't wanna get ripped, watermark your work.
Remember though, that even that wont stop a headstrong 1/2 trained member of a rendering forum using content-aware software to bypass this.

TL;DR: While we'd all love to live in a world where every resource for every sig was credited, that's not likely to happen, so this thread was, IMO, a little unnecessary.

/walloftext

NyokoSilent wrote:

Honestly if you don't want your work to be reproduced in anyway PUT A WATERMARK ON THE ACTUAL IMAGE. It's really not hard to do. Just because you say you can't use this image doesn't mean people will listen. Signatures have been done everywhere with tons of images and wallpapers. Also your signature is using another wallpaper. :I Sounds kinda hypocritical if you ask me.

I'm using self-made screenshots from the game that the forum owners host themselves, heck even the forum is about the game the screenshots come from, that's almost like using a standard icon from a specific forum.

As for the rest: what I'm trying to get across is;

If you are giving away signatures or selling them and if you CAN give credit in some way or another, give it. Even if it's only a link that says "Click here for original image/website/artist" or their name or website somewhere in a corner.

Just because it's happening a thousand times a day and on hundreds of different forums and when there are even websites full of renders,doesn't mean somebody cannot say something about it. Which is what I'm doing. Or at least trying...

The keywords here are "CAN", "GIVE CREDIT" and "SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT". Saying that people should look for other resources wasn't a good idea, I'll admit that, but still. I'm sure there are signature artists out there that ignore watermarks or rules that an artist has. Whatever people do with my thread, is up to them, but I just wanted to get this off my chest as it has been bothering me for quite some time. Especially because all I see is "Siggy shop =^W^= DESUU" all over the place on the fanart section.

Also, instead of going on the render websites all the time, why not go to deviantArt or somewhere where you can contact the original artist and show them your work? Then you'll find out soon enough whether they like it or not and I'm sure renders aren't the only thing you can make signatures with (sometimes I even wonder why the heck they cut out the epic background). Neither do I think making renders is that difficult. (trust me, cutting out the background isn't that hard, you've learned to use a pair of scissors to cut out an image from a piece of paper as a little kid)

It might sound naïeve and stupid, but I just wanted this to get across, for the few artists that DO want to get credit or otherwise would dearly appreciate it. (excluding myself, which might sound hypocritical, but I've seen enough drama around this to know both sides of the story)

And I'll say it again: I just wanted to get it off my chest, even though it might not do anything. But sitting on your *** and watching all kinds of things you see happening (and/or disagree with) won't change anything either.

Hopefully people understand :\

On a side note; it's not really advertisement if nobody can find your original artwork which is not the best thing when you're trying to make a living of your artworks.

HountedHearth wrote:

Also, instead of going on the render websites all the time, why not go to deviantArt or somewhere where you can contact the original artist and show them your work? Then you'll find out soon enough whether they like it or not

deviantArt lacks many things for a signature maker. It is not the holy grail of forum signatures. Often times it takes hours sifting through dull images or things we aren't looking for, to find a gem worth using. Due to the numerous categories, and keywords and types of art, it's not as simple as typing in "Full Metal Alchemist" and finding a decent image to use. Render websites are far more particular and easier to find what we're looking for.

wrote:

I'm sure renders aren't the only thing you can make signatures with (sometimes I even wonder why the heck they cut out the epic background).

There are multiple reasons why people cut the background out. One being they want to make their own, it's not as creative if you just crop an image with the background attached and slap a name and some effects on it. Making one from scratch takes far more skill is more impressive. Another reason is images with no background are easier to work with. Adding backlighting and other lighting techniques, adding stocks and brushes behind the image, is much much easier when you have the focal point singled out and not pasted onto a background where you would have to erase around the focal point to achieve that effect and that's a lot more work - tedious and unnecessary work - if you can have the image stand alone with no background.

wrote:

Neither do I think making renders is that difficult. (trust me, cutting out the background isn't that hard, you've learned to use a pair of scissors to cut out an image from a piece of paper as a little kid)

No it's not that difficult. But don't make it out to something as simple as using a pair of scissors. Rendering uses a completely different medium and requires some basic knowledge of the program one is using, and some common sense and decent judgement to create a good looking render with no background leaking through and to know what parts are part of the focal image and what parts are just the background or other things.


Please, try not to talk like you have any idea what a serious signature maker knows and goes through. It seems like you are discrediting the work of not only the siggy artists, but the people who work their butts off to supply us images to use, background free. You're treading on a thin line with this thread and especially with your previous post.

[rant = incoming]

uberfearr wrote:

HountedHearth wrote: Also, instead of going on the render websites all the time, why not go to deviantArt or somewhere where you can contact the original artist and show them your work? Then you'll find out soon enough whether they like it or not   deviantArt lacks many things for a signature maker. It is not the holy grail of forum signatures. Often times it takes hours sifting through dull images or things we aren't looking for, to find a gem worth using. Due to the numerous categories, and keywords and types of art, it's not as simple as typing in "Full Metal Alchemist" and finding a decent image to use. Render websites are far more particular and easier to find what we're looking for.

That depends on how accurate the use of your keywords are and how you use those categories. It's a matter of clever browsing. (and looking through the gallery of groups that stack the type of artwork that you need, they are out there, it just needs a bit of effort to get there)

Talking about groups, there are groups on dA that contain stocks and resources that can be used for just about anything. Things that you are ALLOWED to use, instead of using someone else's hard work.

wrote:

wrote: I'm sure renders aren't the only thing you can make signatures with (sometimes I even wonder why the heck they cut out the epic background).   There are multiple reasons why people cut the background out. One being they want to make their own, it's not as creative if you just crop an image with the background attached and slap a name and some effects on it. Making one from scratch takes far more skill is more impressive. Another reason is images with no background are easier to work with. Adding backlighting and other lighting techniques, adding stocks and brushes behind the image, is much much easier when you have the focal point singled out and not pasted onto a background where you would have to erase around the focal point to achieve that effect and that's a lot more work - tedious and unnecessary work - if you can have the image stand alone with no background.

How about working creatively with the background you already have? Oh well it wasn't my main point anyway and like I said before: it's not the ONLY thing you can make signatures with.

wrote:

wrote: Neither do I think making renders is that difficult. (trust me, cutting out the background isn't that hard, you've learned to use a pair of scissors to cut out an image from a piece of paper as a little kid)   No it's not that difficult. But don't make it out to something as simple as using a pair of scissors. Rendering uses a completely different medium and requires some basic knowledge of the program one is using, and some common sense and decent judgement to create a good looking render with no background leaking through and to know what parts are part of the focal image and what parts are just the background or other things.

Download GIMP for free, get a hand on the erasing tool, read and watch some tutorials and copy the original image on several layers for repair and off you go. You can now make renders /yay.

All it takes, is a keen eye and a bit of understanding the image.

I've seen kids at the age of 14 making proper renders on deviantArt.

wrote:

Please, try not to talk like you have any idea what a serious signature maker knows and goes through. It seems like you are discrediting the work of not only the siggy artists, but the people who work their butts off to supply us images to use, background free. You're treading on a thin line with this thread and especially with your previous post.

People that are rendering images for signature makers to work with, are being just as bad as signature makers IF (keyword, "if" this means, not everyone, only those to who the following condition applies) they don't ask the original artist for permission. SOMEBODY has to know the original artist, whether it be the signature artist or the one that put up the render, the line has to begin somewhere. Saying that it was posted on the internet and that it therefore means it's free to use, is utter ****. You're not taking someone else's car either because it's parked on the street, now are you?
Also saying how much hard work it costs is also utter ****. Because I dare to bet that the people that made the original image put ALOT more effort into one single piece than the people that make renders of the same image. How about giving that some credit?

As for discrediting signature artists: There are people out there making profit by selling their signatures, I refuse to speak 1 good word about them or acknowledge whatever skill those sellers have, unless they provide something that is for a full 100% their own (this means, not using images somebody else made).

Honestly, I think signature artists selling their signatures are discrediting the artists of the original image and I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Saying that signature artists put oh so much effort in their signatures and then saying I shouldn't discredit them or talk like I know what they have to go through to make a signature works for both sides: Signature artists that sell their works or just give it away are discrediting the original artists of the images that they use, who sometimes put over 30 hours of work in a piece.

And instead of saying how much effort it takes to make a signature, start using some of that effort to find the original artists and give credit to those that want you to.

[/rant]