The problem with art plagiarists, I’ve often observed, is that they honestly don’t think what they’re doing is wrong. How can you argue artistic integrity with someone who has absolutely no concept of such thing? Ergo, against such hopeless individuals, I’ve resolved no longer to try to convince them the folly of their ways. No more shall I embark on quixotic quests of righting moral compasses which do not exist. Rather, I’ve resigned to help them become better at their degenerate endeavor, because the only thing worse than a plagiarist is a laughably incompetent one.
So here’s ProTip number 1: If you’re going to trace, do so from an obscure source, not something that has sold over 50 million copies.
Edit: Tite Kubo knows.
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Gotta find time later to listen to this… the newest Inkstuds podcast features Deb Aoki, Christopher Butcher, David Welsh, and Ryan Sands talking about manga for indie comic readers.
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The only thing I can take away from this is that B&N is in trouble, but not too much trouble.
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Relevant to our interests… Canned Dogs has stats on the ero manga industry in Japan, including total number of books published each year between 2002~2009 and average prices. (Original data source: ero.manga-studies.com) Based on number of releases, one could say that the genre has been on a steady decline since peaking in 2006.
The original site also ranks artists by the number of books released in 2009. The most prolific among them released an astonishing 6 titles… over 1000 pages of manga! Some of those have got to be reprints.
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Just so you know, all the stick figures in this movie are underage, and naked.
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Random thought of the day… So-and-so people are still complaining about the design of so-and-so website. Honestly, it’s getting weird now.
As you can plainly see, I’m not one who concerns himself much with websites and web design. I do recognize, and fully appreciate, the carefully chosen color palette, the cogent uniformity of style, and the effortless flow that mark a good one. Proficient web designers are artists in their own right. But at best, web design is the colorful wrapping paper and the dainty bow that adorn the gift of content. Content is king, and the only time I am ever compelled to complain about design is when it impedes my receiving that content. Often, it is the visually impressive site that runs afoul of my personal law; sites requiring the latest plugins, each installation causing the same mental anguish as peeling away a layer of tamper-proof plastic packaging capable of amputating fingers; sites running ads that cause my antivirus to go berserk 1 out of 3 visits; sites whose menus are so clever, one must have a PhD in arcane symbology to navigate it.
Come to think of it, this is yet another reason to welcome our new Flash-less iPad overlord, even if the hardware sucks – maybe this will finally force so-and-so manga publishers to drop all those crazy animated menus from their websites.
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Regarding web design, Simon, your blog isn’t fancy, but it doesn’t get in the way. Everyone is piling on to a certain website at the moment for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is just plain ugly: Bad type, bad typesetting, overly busy front page, animated ads, too many text blocks with too many different styles (black on white, white on color). And yet, none of that complication serves any sort of hierarchy: It’s not like the different sections and styles help you sort out the different types of content. In fact, the design does get in the way of the content. I go there much less often than I used to, even though there is more content, because of that.
This particular website would have been better off using a simple, off-the-shelf theme (like yours) and using subheads or some simple visual marker to seperate different types of content. A simple magazine theme, like The Manga Critic uses, would work as well. A good website doesn’t have to be fancy, but it shouldn’t be overly complicated.
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Those stats seem to include all 18+ books; I see a bunch of BoysLove publishers mixed in. If the Japanese site didn’t have the data in an image rather than text, I’d go through and figure out the breakdown…
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Wow with some of those panels I thought I was reading Bleach. That’s too much.
I’ve argued this with artists, and their argument always seems to be that it’s a teaching tool for artists, tracing and mimicking others, that goes back centuries and so it’s acceptable. My view is, that may be, but you can do that to learn, or even as a fan project and not make money off of it. I think that a commercial release shouldn’t use something created by another artist unless it’s being used satirically or ironically, like Warhol’s work. What’s so hard to understand about that?
(Then again, I couldn’t make some people understand why it’s wrong to take Twilight and change the character names to those in fandom X and call it your fanfic. And of all the novels to plagiarize. Wouldn’t it be more entertaining to read an anime version of something like Pride and Prejudice?)
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Sure, you can do whatever you want with Pride and Prejudice, it should be public domain by now. That’s what copyright law was originally intended for, allowing the public to build on ideas that have worked their way into our cultural subconsciousness by installing a sunset on IP ownership. Everything has been done before, every story is boy meets girl or the hero’s journey and art itself is just observations of the world around us functioning about the same as it has for at least a few years; people are pretty much the same all over the place. Originality can get to a point where a creator is being way too obtuse and there are just some ideas no one can claim ownership over.
Like Simon said in post, a tracer just isn’t going to understand the difference between a reference or life observations and shamelessly aping style and form; they aren’t artists, not even decent art hobbyists. They aren’t making an observation, there’s no objectivity to it, they’re just pushing a button that gets them a food pellet whether it’s money or popularity. That’s the real difference between Super Totally Original Twilight Fanfic, Im Serious Guys #453687 and a half-decent Shakespeare adaptation.
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The P&P thing was a joke, as in, why steal Twilight if there are better books around? P&P’s public domain, but changing Elizabeth and Darcy to Naruto and Sasuke and saying it’s your own fanfic would still be plagiarism.
The “nothing is original” idea is crap, IMO. I read original stories every day. Maybe the very, very basic idea of some story at the lowest level is something that’s been used before. But you know, if you send your story to a publisher and all it says is boy meets girl, chances are they won’t even send a rejection note.
It’s everything in between, the stuff that’s important in storytelling, that matters, and if people copy it to the extent that you can see the original then it’s simply a problem.
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Right, it is unfair to say nothing is original. Like you said, the basic ideas and concepts is more what I meant. That’s why if someone is just going to copy ideas and concepts from rote, they’re going to end up with that manuscript with ‘Boy Meets Girl’ on the cover.
The dynamic that really turns the same old story or a pretty picture into a piece of art is a bit of the artist’s personal take on, how they interpret, all that’s been done before, their thoughts and reactions to their influences and the world around them. Artists are prostitutes, basically; they’re doing the same thing people have been doing for eons, but people want their professional take on it.
So when fanfic writer X craps out P&P:Blaze Orange Ninjas in Luv!<3, there's no personal involvement, they just want to make a quaint novelty. Thus, the creative process holds no personal investment that would be devalued for them if they cut corners or plagiarised.
My big point was really how pissed I get about people like that because it makes the audience wary of anything smelling anything like something else. Not every sci fi movie is Stars Wars, Star Wars is just that basic that any dope can compare anything to it. Now when someone comes along and consciously rips the movie off, suddenly it's taboo to make anything like the most basic story in existence. Idiots who just inertly parrot the things they like make it harder for legitimate art.
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Relevant to the discussion:
Google Answers: The Seven Main Plots in All of Literature = ???
The Seven Basic Plots: Christopher Booker Examines Common Narratives in Storytelling
Booker, Christopher. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004. ISBN 0826480373.
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Ooo, thanks for those links. I used to know a Steinbeck quote along those lines I was going to toss out, but it could well have been misattributed from something Campbell said or a variation on something he said about the Soviets.
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You’re welcome. ^_^ I had heard of the “seven plots” before, and the above mention finally moved me to look it up.
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