It has come to our attention that the card Crux of Fate from the Strixhaven: School of Mages Mystical Archive may overtly feature Magic: The Gathering fan art and the contracted artist did not receive permission for this incorporation. These actions do not reflect the values of Wizards, and, as a result, we will be suspending future work with Jason Felix until we have been able to bring this matter to successful conclusion.
Basicly Jason Felix art has been suspended until a successful conclusion comes in
Basicly Jason Felix May have plagiarized the bolas from a fan by the name of Scarypet
Someone comment on congrats on his art being used but he saids he didn’t get asked he wasn’t sure and investigated and if you watch the video his bolas fan art is like pretty much perfectly fitting the art
(Look at the hand it will fit perfectly when aligned)
and Fans notice his art has 5 fingers but people pointed to scarypet bolas has 3 fingers in all other offical art and then they looked at this crux of fate art....5 fingered bolas.
And the chances are the Ugin May be plagiarized too the head and maybe the body may just be nothing more than crop from Raymond swanland's ugin art
so It spread around and then WOTC finally found this and officially suspended Jason Felix art from being submitted.
Well the head on it was copied almost directly off of the original ugin and the artist who had their work stolen broke down in a video how they stole it, only redrawing the section to remove the DA water mark, so it is shady at best.
Wow eh...someone fell asleep at the quality control wheel this time around because they took too many shortcuts.
'buster
I don't know how fair it is to blame Quality Control - are they supposed to review and be aware of all fan art just in case something like this happens? that doesn't seem reasonable. Certainly it's unfortunate for everyone involved, but the blame falls on the artist in this case, pretty squarely.
Yeah, I have to agree that this is 100% the artists fault. That said, it would still be the right thing for Wizards to do something to compensate the artist, but they likely don't want to commit to anything publicly until they have decided (and probably made sure that the artist will accept) exactly what sort of offer to make. I'd be very surprised if Wizards doesn't have something in the art contract about the commissioned piece being the artists own work, so they have every reason to assume that the artists are being honest about that, and checking against random fan art would be a pretty weird waste of time for them.
The Nicol Bolas artist (Scarypet) whom Jason Felix copied the art from had previously submitted his portfolio to Wizards and was not selected. So, it's ironic that Jason Felix uses that same art on a commissioned card by Wizards.
Something doesn't quite add up about this discussion. Fan art isn't protected by copyright afaik, since it is itself infringing on copyright, so the artist shouldn't need permission to use it.
Don't get me wrong, WotC can very much reject this artist's work because of it--and I think it's actually a good idea. But I don't see why, for example, they should compensate the artist who originally infringed on their copyright, other than maybe hiring them, since the art is obviously good enough.
I don't know how fair it is to blame Quality Control - are they supposed to review and be aware of all fan art just in case something like this happens? that doesn't seem reasonable. Certainly it's unfortunate for everyone involved, but the blame falls on the artist in this case, pretty squarely.
In todays day and age you can put all the art in a search engine and get a look at "Image Search" to just check quickly.
Having a nerd that really loves Magic art also helps, as people can reference these similarities very well, if they actually care for the art.
Also, picking artists that have some self-respect and honor their craft also helps, nobody would put something like that together and steal something to sell it as their own if they had any respect for their product.
So it takes at least 2 to bring this kind of stuff to the printing press , the scummy artist, and a lackluster quality control (together with the people that pick and commission the art), all of them failed here.
What an odd situation all around. Like, he does art for Magic already, how or why would he think it's okay to pull that? That seems extremely ooc for a working artist.
I’m not sure reverse image search would really cover it. It’s of dubious quality even with something whole and unedited and that’s not what happened here, it’s part of a composite image.
And I’m sure the staff does care about magic art. You can care about something without knowing the totality of all created fan works of it.
Wow eh...someone fell asleep at the quality control wheel this time around because they took too many shortcuts.
'buster
I don't know how fair it is to blame Quality Control - are they supposed to review and be aware of all fan art just in case something like this happens? that doesn't seem reasonable. Certainly it's unfortunate for everyone involved, but the blame falls on the artist in this case, pretty squarely.
TMU, the moment WOTC signs off on it and attaches their name to the art use, they become liable as well.
So this falls on all parties involved, pending any claim to copyright of course.
'buster
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
This has to be sarcasm. Please tell me it is sarcasm.
EDIT: Okay, apparently it's not. Please tell me how WOTC was supposed to figure out that part of one image of a single Magic card was lifted from one of thousands pieces of Magic fan art. Explain the process to me.
[quote from="BestOfThree »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/821242-wizards-statement-on-crux-of-fate?comment=4"]
In todays day and age you can put all the art in a search engine and get a look at "Image Search" to just check quickly.
What? No, that's not at all how this works. You can't search for a piece of Magic art, and then Google tells you that a small fragment of that art is similar to another, existing piece of art. Go ahead, try doing a Google image search for that last picture where Bolas takes up most of the space.
What an odd situation all around. Like, he does art for Magic already, how or why would he think it's okay to pull that? That seems extremely ooc for a working artist.
This is what really confuses me as well. I'm trying to construct a situation in which an artist with dozens of comissioned MtG art under his belt pulls a stunt like this. The only thing I can think off is that he was way too close to the deadline and had to do something super quick and cheap while still delivering an expected level of quality, but... Not sure that makes it better.
What would be a real power move on WoTC's part is if they comissioned Scarypet for an illustration of Crux of Fate to use for future reprints.
Something doesn't quite add up about this discussion. Fan art isn't protected by copyright afaik, since it is itself infringing on copyright, so the artist shouldn't need permission to use it.
IIRC from another case WotC may have the ability prohibit someone from using their characters, but cannot simply claim and use the fan-art without permission either since they only have the right to the character not that particular piece of art. So that should put this in a situation where neither party has sole proprietorship of the artwork. A third party selling a second level infringement to either of them wouldn't follow the usually incorrect formula of "two wrongs make a right" either.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from Conuly »
Heck, every day I wake up, I don't go out and kill people - and I'm rewarded by not having legions of enemies! Amazing how that works.
Although ninjas are experts of camouflage and concealment, they are actually horrible liars. This means that no matter where you are, you can shout out, “Are there any ninjas here?” and if there’s a ninja within earshot, he’ll be compelled to respond.
It's wizards fault as well as the artists. Wizards could vet their artists and choose to only hire actual credible fantasy artists (you know, like they used to...) But instead they just let some girl in marketing hire her fav Instagram tattoo amateur artist (omg yay!) Such as with faithless looting.
Or in this case, an actual plagiarist.
Wizards has been declining the quality of their art for decades. MTG audience just isn't discerning enough to notice
It's wizards fault as well as the artists. Wizards could vet their artists and choose to only hire actual credible fantasy artists (you know, like they used to...) But instead they just let some girl in marketing hire her fav Instagram tattoo amateur artist (omg yay!) Such as with faithless looting.
Or in this case, an actual plagiarist.
Wizards has been declining the quality of their art for decades. MTG audience just isn't discerning enough to notice
Well, at this point its very easy to produce art as well.
Everyone can sit down for a week and learn how to use a program and just go ahead and make art.
Actually painting by hand is a different story, but copy/pasting and editing some art in software is way less work and basically anybody can do it (and plenty people do so).
Has its pros and cons, quality of art has its up and downs as well, with the entire "world building" theme they made a bunch of sets in which lots of cards have a very "samish" look and style, nothing really popped out as special art (the odd "terese nielsen" art was instantly recognizable).
Then WotC introduced MasterPieces , more Promos and especially Secret Lairs and the "collectors" cards art versions, having that much more different art around is a net positive (at least if players have a choice in the matter and alternatives).
With the sheer amount of art they might just wave in everything and do way less quality control overall, which is shaping up to become a huge problem (with all the controversy about artists and all that stuff, it became so much hate mobs and social media outrage, that completely ascends the art itself, there simply is not separation between artist and artwork anymore, it got mixed up and politicized as well).
----
Anyway, WotC needs to put more quality control at work, thats unavoidable if these problems should be kept in check, otherwise this will get worse guaranteed.
It's wizards fault as well as the artists. Wizards could vet their artists and choose to only hire actual credible fantasy artists (you know, like they used to...) But instead they just let some girl in marketing hire her fav Instagram tattoo amateur artist (omg yay!) Such as with faithless looting.
Or in this case, an actual plagiarist.
Wizards has been declining the quality of their art for decades. MTG audience just isn't discerning enough to notice
Jason Felix isn't a new artist for Wizards. He's done over 120 other illustrations (that we've seen so far) that stretch back years. All is Dust is a classic, iconic card by the artist. There's literally 0 reason for Wizards to suspect that this guy was going to suddenly start plagiarizing after a business relationship of over a decade.
Something doesn't quite add up about this discussion. Fan art isn't protected by copyright afaik, since it is itself infringing on copyright, so the artist shouldn't need permission to use it.
IIRC from another case WotC may have the ability prohibit someone from using their characters, but cannot simply claim and use the fan-art without permission either since they only have the right to the character not that particular piece of art. So that should put this in a situation where neither party has sole proprietorship of the artwork. A third party selling a second level infringement to either of them wouldn't follow the usually incorrect formula of "two wrongs make a right" either.
Was discussing this on FB and had to look up some stuff. So generally speaking, an artist has automatic copyright for any work they produce. However, WotC holds the trademark for its characters, so using them for your own personal art would typically be trademark infringement. It's still infringement whether or not the artist profits. So, ignoring anything else, WotC can't just take the art without permission but would also be within its rights to sue the artist for violating the trademark. I'm not sure what the outcome of the suit would be--my guess would be a court order saying the artist could not display the work publicly or otherwise distribute it via any other medium, unless WotC could prove the violation resulted in monetary damages.
I take this to mean that WotC basically grants automatic licenses to all fan content produced based on its IPs, with the caveat that by granting the license, WotC reserves the ability to use the content without any further permission from the creator. The way I see this working is that it exists essentially as an ultimatum--either you follow this policy when you create fan content or we sue you for violating our trademark.
So while WotC in an of itself probably can use the art, that doesn't mean that Jason Felix (who I would assume is classified as an independent contractor, not a WotC employee) was allowed to steal it for his own personal gain. I don't think the artist can go after WotC, but I do think there's probably some sort of cause of action against Jason Felix. Whether WotC does the cool thing and offers something to the artist, we'll have to see.
It's wizards fault as well as the artists. Wizards could vet their artists and choose to only hire actual credible fantasy artists (you know, like they used to...) But instead they just let some girl in marketing hire her fav Instagram tattoo amateur artist (omg yay!) Such as with faithless looting.
Or in this case, an actual plagiarist.
Wizards has been declining the quality of their art for decades. MTG audience just isn't discerning enough to notice
Jason Felix isn't a new artist for Wizards. He's done over 120 other illustrations (that we've seen so far) that stretch back years. All is Dust is a classic, iconic card by the artist. There's literally 0 reason for Wizards to suspect that this guy was going to suddenly start plagiarizing after a business relationship of over a decade.
You've proved my point perfectly. The art for all is dust is very poor. It's only a matter of time before substandard digital illustrators start cutting corners.
And youve proved my last point too about the MTG audience; you actually think this artwork is iconic
It's wizards fault as well as the artists. Wizards could vet their artists and choose to only hire actual credible fantasy artists (you know, like they used to...) But instead they just let some girl in marketing hire her fav Instagram tattoo amateur artist (omg yay!) Such as with faithless looting.
Or in this case, an actual plagiarist.
Wizards has been declining the quality of their art for decades. MTG audience just isn't discerning enough to notice
Jason Felix isn't a new artist for Wizards. He's done over 120 other illustrations (that we've seen so far) that stretch back years. All is Dust is a classic, iconic card by the artist. There's literally 0 reason for Wizards to suspect that this guy was going to suddenly start plagiarizing after a business relationship of over a decade.
You've proved my point perfectly. The art for all is dust is very poor. It's only a matter of time before substandard digital illustrators start cutting corners.
And youve proved my last point too about the MTG audience; you actually think this artwork is iconic
its all subjective my guy.
he's done quite a few cards (a quick search puts it at 139), a lot of them are really popular and easily recognized for their art.
if he has a bunch of art that wasn't plagiarized, then yeah, there's no reason to suspect him of it. its just that simple.
guy ****ed up in trying to be lazy, lots of people do that.
Basicly Jason Felix art has been suspended until a successful conclusion comes in
Basicly Jason Felix May have plagiarized the bolas from a fan by the name of Scarypet
https://twitter.com/omgscarypet/status/1376180852070174725
Someone comment on congrats on his art being used but he saids he didn’t get asked he wasn’t sure and investigated and if you watch the video his bolas fan art is like pretty much perfectly fitting the art
(Look at the hand it will fit perfectly when aligned)
and Fans notice his art has 5 fingers but people pointed to scarypet bolas has 3 fingers in all other offical art and then they looked at this crux of fate art....5 fingered bolas.
And the chances are the Ugin May be plagiarized too the head and maybe the body may just be nothing more than crop from Raymond swanland's ugin art
so It spread around and then WOTC finally found this and officially suspended Jason Felix art from being submitted.
'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
I don't know how fair it is to blame Quality Control - are they supposed to review and be aware of all fan art just in case something like this happens? that doesn't seem reasonable. Certainly it's unfortunate for everyone involved, but the blame falls on the artist in this case, pretty squarely.
Been on this forum for 10++ years
Playing since '94
Thats going on the court for crimes against humanity ...
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Don't get me wrong, WotC can very much reject this artist's work because of it--and I think it's actually a good idea. But I don't see why, for example, they should compensate the artist who originally infringed on their copyright, other than maybe hiring them, since the art is obviously good enough.
In todays day and age you can put all the art in a search engine and get a look at "Image Search" to just check quickly.
Having a nerd that really loves Magic art also helps, as people can reference these similarities very well, if they actually care for the art.
Also, picking artists that have some self-respect and honor their craft also helps, nobody would put something like that together and steal something to sell it as their own if they had any respect for their product.
So it takes at least 2 to bring this kind of stuff to the printing press , the scummy artist, and a lackluster quality control (together with the people that pick and commission the art), all of them failed here.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
And I’m sure the staff does care about magic art. You can care about something without knowing the totality of all created fan works of it.
TMU, the moment WOTC signs off on it and attaches their name to the art use, they become liable as well.
So this falls on all parties involved, pending any claim to copyright of course.
'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
EDIT: Okay, apparently it's not. Please tell me how WOTC was supposed to figure out that part of one image of a single Magic card was lifted from one of thousands pieces of Magic fan art. Explain the process to me.
What? No, that's not at all how this works. You can't search for a piece of Magic art, and then Google tells you that a small fragment of that art is similar to another, existing piece of art. Go ahead, try doing a Google image search for that last picture where Bolas takes up most of the space.
This is what really confuses me as well. I'm trying to construct a situation in which an artist with dozens of comissioned MtG art under his belt pulls a stunt like this. The only thing I can think off is that he was way too close to the deadline and had to do something super quick and cheap while still delivering an expected level of quality, but... Not sure that makes it better.
What would be a real power move on WoTC's part is if they comissioned Scarypet for an illustration of Crux of Fate to use for future reprints.
IIRC from another case WotC may have the ability prohibit someone from using their characters, but cannot simply claim and use the fan-art without permission either since they only have the right to the character not that particular piece of art. So that should put this in a situation where neither party has sole proprietorship of the artwork. A third party selling a second level infringement to either of them wouldn't follow the usually incorrect formula of "two wrongs make a right" either.
Although ninjas are experts of camouflage and concealment, they are actually horrible liars. This means that no matter where you are, you can shout out, “Are there any ninjas here?” and if there’s a ninja within earshot, he’ll be compelled to respond.
Or in this case, an actual plagiarist.
Wizards has been declining the quality of their art for decades. MTG audience just isn't discerning enough to notice
Well, at this point its very easy to produce art as well.
Everyone can sit down for a week and learn how to use a program and just go ahead and make art.
Actually painting by hand is a different story, but copy/pasting and editing some art in software is way less work and basically anybody can do it (and plenty people do so).
Has its pros and cons, quality of art has its up and downs as well, with the entire "world building" theme they made a bunch of sets in which lots of cards have a very "samish" look and style, nothing really popped out as special art (the odd "terese nielsen" art was instantly recognizable).
Then WotC introduced MasterPieces , more Promos and especially Secret Lairs and the "collectors" cards art versions, having that much more different art around is a net positive (at least if players have a choice in the matter and alternatives).
With the sheer amount of art they might just wave in everything and do way less quality control overall, which is shaping up to become a huge problem (with all the controversy about artists and all that stuff, it became so much hate mobs and social media outrage, that completely ascends the art itself, there simply is not separation between artist and artwork anymore, it got mixed up and politicized as well).
----
Anyway, WotC needs to put more quality control at work, thats unavoidable if these problems should be kept in check, otherwise this will get worse guaranteed.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Was discussing this on FB and had to look up some stuff. So generally speaking, an artist has automatic copyright for any work they produce. However, WotC holds the trademark for its characters, so using them for your own personal art would typically be trademark infringement. It's still infringement whether or not the artist profits. So, ignoring anything else, WotC can't just take the art without permission but would also be within its rights to sue the artist for violating the trademark. I'm not sure what the outcome of the suit would be--my guess would be a court order saying the artist could not display the work publicly or otherwise distribute it via any other medium, unless WotC could prove the violation resulted in monetary damages.
But then there's this: https://company.wizards.com/en/legal/fancontentpolicy
I take this to mean that WotC basically grants automatic licenses to all fan content produced based on its IPs, with the caveat that by granting the license, WotC reserves the ability to use the content without any further permission from the creator. The way I see this working is that it exists essentially as an ultimatum--either you follow this policy when you create fan content or we sue you for violating our trademark.
So while WotC in an of itself probably can use the art, that doesn't mean that Jason Felix (who I would assume is classified as an independent contractor, not a WotC employee) was allowed to steal it for his own personal gain. I don't think the artist can go after WotC, but I do think there's probably some sort of cause of action against Jason Felix. Whether WotC does the cool thing and offers something to the artist, we'll have to see.
You've proved my point perfectly. The art for all is dust is very poor. It's only a matter of time before substandard digital illustrators start cutting corners.
And youve proved my last point too about the MTG audience; you actually think this artwork is iconic
its all subjective my guy.
he's done quite a few cards (a quick search puts it at 139), a lot of them are really popular and easily recognized for their art.
if he has a bunch of art that wasn't plagiarized, then yeah, there's no reason to suspect him of it. its just that simple.
guy ****ed up in trying to be lazy, lots of people do that.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||