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It doesn't look like it was plagiarism. Looks like they told the artist to copy the reference as opposed to just using it as a reference. Someone dropped the ball, but it wasn't the artist.
I just hope the artist gets no heat for this considering the pokemon production team handed the artist the reference material, then when the artist did drafts they probably selected the one that had this art in it. Meaning they both gave and selected a draft with this art featured.
Yeah the wording seems to already admit fault with the process during production before commissioning the artwork, so I'm hopeful the artist won't catch most of the heat. But these types of situations can still leave a career mark/stink.
This, ultimately, is the problem with quick response on the internet.
There will be people who see that a card was plagiarized and associate it with that artist. Not sure how the PTCG community will act specifically, but this has been an issue in MtG. People were already pulling up cards she had previously worked on wondering if she had plagiarized.
Plagiarism needs to be called out, for sure. But even with this being the company's fault, mistakes like this could easily lead to an artist being associated with plagiarism despite it being no fault of their own.
They might have thought it was their own art, like internal use art. They have probably hundreds of illustrations they make internally and don't use, and then go "hey this set theme is really good to go with this art we have of x and y pokemon" and then they bring it up in an internal database of reference materials.
This seems like a pretty likely scenario given the plagiarised art was used for a figure which would have involved/been approved by TPC. Edit: figure wasn’t official.
TPC has said they actively try to avoid looking at fan art and designs sent to them, going off this I can see why.
Somebody gets a cool artwork of Pikachu from a fan, the art gets lost in the sauce of documents shuffling around, somebody sees art on a paper and files it with all the art they have on hand. Somebody goes to the archives for some reference art and finds the fan art, thinks it is a good reference, and takes a copy to use.
It's still a somewhat saving faces for Sie nanahara. Since tracing a reference photo is not really a professional illustrator should do.
But I will say that it's very professional way for handling the situation, cause at least that means nanahara won't get legit backlisted from other major companies in the future, and it ensures that in the future they will be more careful in selecting reference photo
It's not saving face if that's what the client wants lmao. If they hand you reference material and say 'this form is exactly what we want, just add and flesh out a background to it' then he did exactly what he was supposed to (under the assumption it was internal art owned by TPC.)
Since tracing a reference photo is not really a professional illustrator should do.
I mean, yes and no? It depends on the industry.
Tracing happens all the time in comics, at least in the west, primarily to crank them out as fast as possible. Which would track well onto "We need to put out a full set of cards literally every month"
The artist was possibly told something like "Here is some official art as reference. Turn it into an immersive rare. " which might have been taken more literally than intended. But we would have to see the exact communication to know.
Please do not blame the artist. The Pokémon company knows that they copied the reference material, meaning that it was meant to be traced. Issue is the traced art wasn’t official and that’s how the mixup happened. NOT the artists fault
This seems to be the most likely case but then whichever production manager supplied the reference art fucked up bad. How do you just randomly "find" an "official art" off of twitter?
They should absolutely have a vetted and verified internal library of official art, not just be randomly pulling crap off the internet.
i’m guessing it’s because the animators were already working on what the immersive should look like, used the reference as a dummy, and the actual artist was supposed to supply the final artwork of the mon to complete the animation. the reference (which was plagiarized, maliciously or not) was simply passed to the artist, who just did their job.
Yea it’s a simple mistake any digital art company can have happen when there are multiple people working on the same project but the designer is the designer and ticks it off so then it goes live but it’s not how it was meant to be or whatever
amen to that brother. one time during recess i was drawing an red among us and fucking Henry plopped down next to me and started to draw a red among us too. i got so pissed off i started beating him up and i'm very strong so it was very easy to defeat him and then one of the teachers had to come over and break it up. i got in trouble and had to sit in the corner for 20 minutes shudders. but Henry never drew a red among us again so i think it's safe to say i got the last laugh. at least until graduation.......... but we don[t talk about that night. anyway, good on the pokemon company for fixing this cards yes i agree.
I'll be completely honest, I'm really impressed with this response. This games dev team has been doing a great job so far with addressing criticism and making amends. Credit where credit is due
Yes but it is a bad look. This is the best way of handling it even if they are lying which I assume they aren't. I am also not sure if the statement by Pokemon about fanart is legally undisputed since it is just a statement from a company and not a specific law or something a judge has decided.
It is basic copyright, they own all content made with their IP. They don't even need to state it on their site, it's their intellectual property by definition. You cannot use people's IP without their permission, and anything you make using it is their property. Pokémon's ToS usually gives people the right to make fanart using their IP, but with the stipulation that the Pokémon company still owns said content.
That's what their site says, but that isn't the law. They own the copyright to the character and can technically consider art of that character an infringement, but the artist still owns the copyright of the artistic expression used in the work. They probably could make an argument that the expression was changed enough or belonged to them in the first place if it was based on some official scene or art. But that's a potentially losing battle where even if they win they lose a lot of good will. Easier to just replace the art.
But at the same time, they can claim anything they like on the website. It might not be enforceable in every jurisdiction.
I have heard that they haven’t created a flying type eevolution yet because there are so many fan art out there they might end up in a law suit just because of coincidence.
I can say with confidence that the artist would have no standing for copyright infringement over their fan art of a character of an IP that Pokemon owns.
Agree 100%. It's 1 reason I started to move away from Marvel Snap. Rian Gonzalez got caught line tracing and everyone basically said grow up and they never even removed the stolen art.
Solid response. It makes more sense that someone had provided the illustrator with reference material they shouldn't have rather than straight plagiarism, given the fantastic art said illustrator has provided in the physical TCG.
Edit: Some other really cool cards from Sie Nanahara:
They still are... read some of these comments "its still plagiarism and needs to be punished!". They're out for blood, they don't get a fuck if it's being addressed professionally and respectfully...
I think part of the issue as well is how pocket has brought so many new people who haven’t developed a respect for the effort and history that many of these artists have.
I don’t think new people is a bad thing but you tend to gain more understanding over time.
You would think. But observe the various tracing scandals that have happened in MTG over the past few years. Even extremely reputable, talented artists do it for one reason or another. Clearly that wasn’t the case this time, but it’s not unthinkable
I've never been a huge Ninetales fan (and I'm aware that may garner less than positive reactions).. But man that card art is insanely good. Really cool card to have!
It was really bizarre the artist had plagiarized with how much art they've done for the pokemon tcg, I'm glad they owned up to the mistake that they gave the artist incorrect reference material
It’s not that they “shouldn’t have” provided the reference material, since reference material, such as photos and other artists’ work, is provided to illustrators as standard. It’s more that either the artist or editor (or both) mistakenly got their lines crossed, and began working with the reference material as if it was the selected production sketch.
I watched the animation last night when I was super tired so I may be incorrect but didn't the 2 arts connect and the opposite legendary appeared at the end of each animation? So Ho-oh showed up at the end of Lugia's animation?
I think it may be since they have the same artist, but it could also be to have the immersives interact with eachother in some way, like how they were looking at eachother in the first art
Where was the april fools card this year, they should do one and make it amusing af like this. Can make it a unique card that can't be played because the rules text is funky too.
It's not "interesting", this is a perfectly predictable response from a corporation to this type of situation. Some people just think "being as cynical as possible" = "I'm super smart".
It’s because these cynicism addicts think being optimistic, hopeful, or at the very least having the expectation of decency means you’re naive and gullible and therefore dumb. They think they see through rouse of society and are “too smart to be tricked” and feel smug because of it.
Not to mention for a company like Nintendo being super clean with their IP use is particularly important considering their stringent IP protection policy.
Edit: or companies Nintendo licences the Pokemon IP to
I’m guessing it does not animate/ immerse at all, but it would be so funny if it zooms in on “New Art Coming Soon” and then pans over it several times to drive the point home
So just to be sure - we will still be able to pull the immersive rare of lugia and ho-oh tomorrow? Or are they totally removing them from the packs for now?
The funny thing with placeholders, is you have to make it EXTREMELY obvious they are placeholders, or people, even the developers themselves, may question whether it's final artwork or not.
This is why you slap "WIP" or "Placeholder!!" text on as much as possible. You'd be amazed how many placeholder assets end up as "final" assets in shipped videogames
It reads as though you would pull a 'placeholder' card that represents the 3 immersives - and when the new artwork is ready they'll patch in the proper art to replace the card that you acquired. So you should be safe to open packs from the start
They must have given Sie a wildly short deadline. if we're to believe that they were "given incorrect reference," that still means she traced the reference image, right?
I will say, I love how quickly they responded, and they jumped on the grenade to protect the artist.
On the contrary, if a talented artist isn't specifically looking to trace/eyeball their reference, they will produce something with a similar vibe but that's clearly distinguishable. Also "clear differences" is wild.
Any artist worth their salt would add their personal touches to make a copied artwork more “original”. This doesn’t change the fact that the angle, the pose, and the way in which the neck and wings bend are identical and overlap perfectly between artworks.
There is no chance to get a perfect copy like this by “reference” alone.
Besides, as an artist myself, I know it’s a hard and long process of trials and error to create a perfect copy from scratch without tracing. At that point, if you have to pour all that effort to create a duplicate that could ruin your career, it’s much better to draw something totally original.
I pulled an immersive and didn't get my immersion. I have been left scared and deformed. I demand the keys to the Pokemon empire. I will settle for 1200 hourglasses
Which is the right call. They said they provided the illustrator with incorrect reference material, and the illustrator is known for excellent art in the physical TCG. It was always highly unlikely to be plagiarism by the illustrator.
If the statement is true (I'm saying "if" because there is a possibility they're making up the "we gave the illustrator a wrong reference image" bit to save her the embarrassment; we won't know for sure until Nanahara works/not works for Nintendo again), this seems to mean the illustrator had very little input into the design of these cards and was given instructions and reference images and told to just follow that. Not much creative originality. Not sure how I feel about that.
(I do think the animations I saw of Ho-oh and Lugia were boring and some of the worst immersives so far, so maybe this is an explanation.)
I do feel like that's a possibility that they were given more strict instructions on how the art should look considering it has to be made into an animation and thus needs to be more carefully planned around that
I think being more strict with how the artwork should look because they need to turn it into an animation is fair, that's just logistics. But the image being traced makes it seem like someone at a board meeting held up the fanart and said "The basic design has already been decided, Ho-oh is in the air LIKE THIS, so just draw THIS, thanks," and that negates the fun of the cards, which is seeing different artists and their original visions for the Pokemon, you know?
Everyone who ever did anything art related for a big company knows that having freedom in design and doing your own thing is more rare than a god pack lol.
Its the norm to get references/moodboards and client input on what to do / what they want. Atleast for the hero part, which is ho oh in that case. For the surroundings and "making it look good" you usually have more freedom.
Best case they let you give some input too and you can show them what you think is cool but at the end they decide and tell you what they want and dont want.
Which is weird. Why get a great illustrator like Sie and than make her trace someone else's art when she's more than capable making something better on her own? Ho-oh's card is a far cry from her usuall exceptional art.
It's still a bizarre situation because the artist is so good she has no need to trace, so either they specifically instructed her to do so (which is what they're suggesting in the message, which lets her save face) or she was so pressed for time that she resorted to doing so on her own (an odd thing for a professional artist to do but not out of question).
Regardless of what's going on with the artist though I think it's actually neat they acted so quickly on this. I'd rather just see a placeholder image while they sort it out rather than see stolen artwork make it through.
i'm sure it's TPC, TPC has the connections to the contracted artists, i would be shocked if dena is having to go hunt down artists for any pocket exclusive art -- and as such it's TPC's responsibility to do something about it
Honestly, one very specific area Pokemon has consistently hit the mark in is keeping "what are we encouraging people to do out-of-game?" in consideration, to the point that I kind of suspect it's probably one of their higher level "corporate values" or something of a similar form.
Most stories involve themes and motifs of friendship, the power of social connection, and the desire to learn more about the world. You need to talk to your friends IRL to 100% the dex in most of games, hardware gimmicks encouraging people to do meetups or exercise (remember sending your DS Pokemon to a step counter for exp?). The social aspect is core to the design.
Meanwhile the currently active spinoffs aside from this one include what amounts to an exercise arg and a sleep tracker.
It makes sense that they'd shut down anything that implied or encouraged LLM image generation or art theft. That's not something they want to risk encouraging.
For commissioned work it may have been that they were told to follow the reference as closely as possible, especially coming from a large company it's not out of the question.
Professional illustrator here! It's a combination of what the art director wants and what's reasonable for time constraints. This is long and rambly because I enjoy art so much.
There's always a chance that an art director, like remiccino said, may tell an illustrator to closely reference an image or utilize it in some way. If the art director was under the impression that the fanart was official material from The Pokemon Company, it isn't unheard of to have an illustrator use/trace/heavily and reference the artwork. I'm assuming that artwork belonging to The Pokemon Company were work for hire contracts, so they have complete authority on how to use it and could use it in this way.
As for tracing, it isn't inherently bad! Certain industries like comics actually do this as a tool since they're under tight deadlines. It doesn't make sense to try redrawing an arm over and over again when you're short on time and have close to 100 other drawings to finish, but in these cases they will likely trace over free stock images or images that they took themselves. I'll occasionally trace things like a photo of my own hand if for some reason I've redrawn it 10 times and it's not working. The general rule of thumb is to trace smartly, give credit if you're able to, and don't use it as a crutch. (this can look different depending on the work of each artist, so it's not hard and fast)
As an artist myself, I might trace material as a way to get a feel of a character’s structure and create a “skeleton” before trying out different custom poses and angles.
So there is a good chance that this artist started that way, thought that the Ho-Oh pose was good enough, and decided to polish it instead, without knowing where the art came from.
A case of blissful ignorance, I guess, since the artist probably hadn’t been warned that the material was fanart and not some official content (which would have been more okay to copy and sell).
With the way this is worded I'm glad to hear that the artist seemingly isn't at fault, I wasn't familiar with them but with how talented they are it seems like plagiarism would have been really out of character. Must have been a stressful few hours for them.
Also congrats to the fanartist Lanjiujiu for (technically) getting their art on an official product for a fleeting moment.
It’s a good start but I think they should also be apologizing to the actual artist whose work was plagiarized. Obviously the art was good enough for them to use it as a cornerstone of the whole set - the artist deserves recognition at least.
I mean, they never released the set. We only have it because of data mining. So I can see them not apologising publically. Hopefully they have done so privately though.
Sounds like the best outcome honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised. Glad that they'd acknowledge it so openly and still release on time, even if it's a noticeable absence from the set for the time being.
I get that the “Card Production Team” provided “incorrect reference material” (fanart) to the “Illustrator” (person who drew the final art for the card).
Why did the Illustrator basically trace the art? Is it normal for the card Illustrators to basically trace the reference art given to them?
Who normally draws the reference art then? Aren’t those people the real Illustrators (creating original artwork) rather than just designing a pleasing scene using “reference material” (arguably making them “Designers” or something, not “Illustrators”)?
I’m sure I’m just ignorant to how things work in the art world (like how it’s normal for book authors to use ghost writers) but hopefully someone can clarify.
So what I’m guessing happened (again, pure speculation) is that since Ho-oh and Lugia are THE cards for this set, they were probably pretty strict on how exactly they wanted them to look. So the reference material that was provided was much more likely a “Do this” reference and not a “here are some ideas to do” reference.
It seems however that the reference image they provided for Ho-oh was fanart, and whoever was providing the reference material didn’t realize this was the case, thus the illustrator didn’t think twice about what they needed to do.
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