Commission Ethics: Another artist's Style

[Zilant]

So I've recently been commissioned to illustrate a few pages of a children's book to be submitted to a publisher.

The problem is, the client first had their heart set on getting the help of a old animator friend, whose done a few pictures for my client in the past. Unfortunately, that animator has since passed on.

My client seems to want me to mimic his style verbatim, using these old pictures as an example. I'm pretty confident I can pull off this mimicry - but should I do this?

How do you handle matters of a Client requesting the Style of another artist?
Do whatever the client says and let the copyright courts sort it out?
(edit:It doesn't really matter)
Plant your feet in the sand and tell them you think there's a difference between Van Gogh-esque and Van Gogh?
(edit:It matters)
Secretly make it -esque and pretend that's as close as you can come to replicating it exactly?
(edit:It matters, but....)

[tomwaits4noman]

I think it is a case in the art world if a style is popular with either the public or client then people want to try and duplicate it, personally I think it is a personal thing as to whether you wish to take the comission

as for moral artistic intergerity- all fine and well but it does not pay the bills.

Personally I think if this client wants you copy a certain style then fine, where it gets shady for me is where people try to duplicate a style/content to compete in the same market place.

I was involved in a comission for a comic book proposal very much in the style of a certain artist that the client wanted to pitch to the same company that the afore mentioned artist worked for. something like that seems wrong or stupid to me, if they already have to best guy doing a certain style why would they want a watered down one.

in short i think its personal choice.

[Mirana]

There's nothing in copyright that keeps you from copying someone's style.

[chaosrocks]

look at all the frazetta mimics around, all the "anime" or Manga style. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. hell you might actually learn some thing. I would tend reccommend take it and make it you own somehow
but again that s rpeference

chaos

[Zilant]

@ Chaos When I say style, I don't mean like "Anime".
I mean like "Akira Toriyama".

I'd really rather make it my own, truth be told.
But the core of my question here is the lack of that option.

Am I using bad terminology? Or am I just silly for making the distinction between a style (like a movement) and style (what makes somebody a unique participant of that movement) to begin with?

@ Mirana
Well, I don't think he's going to rise from the grave just to slap a copyright infringement suit on me...At least I hope he doesn't. ;p
I'm really more just sorting out my feelings on the morality of the matter. What I really meant to get across in that sentance was: let other people be the judge.

@ Tom.
Hn. Insightful.

[Seedling]

When you join a company of artists, such as Disney, or a game company, you are required to adapt to the style of the project.

[Zilant]

Eh?
Why would I feel bad about that?


Guess I need to spend a nice long night reviewing artistic terminology before I can ask this question. My fault, it's been forever since I've reviewed my Artistic ABC's.

[Mirana]

@ Chaos When I say style, I don't mean like "Anime".
I mean like "Akira Toriyama".

Uh...what? I'm confused. Toriyama's stuff is characteristically "anime" style("manga" is the correct term, but close enough...).

I thought you meant legal=morals. I don't see a problem ethically either. It may not be particularly exciting to copy someone else's style, but it's also how we learn. Art and stylistic movements build on the inspiration of what came before us.

[Zilant]

Yeah,
I don't know how to say what I mean here.

There are the things that make you look a piece of Art and say: “Oh, that’s Expressionist”. And then are things – within those things - that make you look at a piece of Art and say: “That’s by Vincent Van Gogh, isn’t it?”

How I have it in my Head:
Anime, Disney, and Expressionism are Movements.
Akira Toriyama, Fred Moore, and Vincent Van Gogh have their own personal approach to the movements they're a part of, which is their Style. Their specific idiosyncracies that make their art immediately recognizeable as belonging to them as individuals.

I'm obviously horribly wrong.
Especially now that I've seen the word "stylistic movement" - now I just need to put on my dunce cap and sit in the corner. It's been years since Art History, but being this lost on terminology is just sad. :nohope:



Let me try and explain myself without using these terms.


It’s not that I have any qualms with doing my picture however it has to be done, that's just life. It’s wondering if there’s a point of imitating where I should feel like a plagiarist?

This would be the first commission I'd ever recieved where the Client told me to copy someone Exactly. Doing this doesn't bother me, in fact it sounds fun and challanging, but I'm not crossing some invisible line am I? It's a commission, so whens all's said and done, what goes to the publisher has my name on it - no matter how closely I was influenced by somebody else. This somebody else being a person who never made it big, not at all, so it's not immediately apperant to the publisher I'm taking from them.

So I'm basically completely ganking somebody's hard earned idiosyncracies/personal touch/whatever and claiming them as my own in a way that won't likely be detected....for profit.

I should probably feel like an ass, shouldn't I?

[Zilant]

Whoops.
Double Post.

[Elwell]

I should probably feel like an ass, shouldn't I?
Only if you want to.
If you're uncomfortable with the situation, don't do it. I, along with most of the other posters here, don't see a problem with what the client is requesting. If that's not the sort of job you want to do, that's fine, but I don't see it as an ethical issue.

[tomwaits4noman]

"So I'm basically completely ganking somebody's hard earned idiosyncracies/personal touch/whatever and claiming them as my own in a way that won't likely be detected....for profit."

If that is what the brief is then yes, in a comission the be all and end all is the brief.

When I first went free lance I did some posters for my brother he had a specfic brief, I sent him back what I had done he e-mailed it back to me, not what I asked for SEE THE BRIEF.

You might not like the brief, I am sure that you have toiled hard to develop your own style but if in doubt SEE THE BRIEF.

As others have asid clients want a certain style aped, now the moral problem I would see is if you took someone elses art and claimed it as your own.

When you start off plain and simple you can't effort to pick and choose.

If you want I can do the comission for you I'll let you know where to post the cheque. lol

[Zilant]

Please don't mistake my supreme caution for unwillingness. I have a flowery, verbose, overly dramatic writing style that gets me in trouble more often than not. I just want to make sure my Carte Blanche is being written on the right page.

Absolutely no way to make a faux pas? I can imitate til the cows come home and nobody will even think to shake their head at me? I'm worried over nothing? Perfect, that is exactly what I wanted to hear.

Thank you, now I can work on this with a clear conscience. :)





Though if somebody still wanted to educate me properly on these terms, that would be nice. I'm hard enough to understand without getting words wrong.

[Elwell]

If the situation was that you were being asked to imitate the style of another artist who was able to do the job, but the client didn't want to use them for some reason (too expensive, personality conflict, whatever), then I think there would be an ethical issue. Or if the client wanted to imitate the look of a similar or competing property.

[Mirana]

There is also a point at which critics will say what you are doing "has been done before" IF you continue to use an imitation style for the rest of your artistic days. Of course, this is not the issue at hand, so....yes, go ye forth and make some cash.

[Seedling]

If you are *capable* of completely replicating some other artist’s idiosyncrasies, then wow. That’s a tall, tall order! Unless you are a rendering god your own idiosyncrasies will interfere.

Whether or not you *want* to do this is another matter. If it makes you feel wrong, then don’t do it. Different artists are going to have different opinions about if and when this is an ethically bad thing to do; there is no absolute, and there is no law against it.

If you study the history of illustration you will see that there are trend-setters who altered the entire field because they then had so many imitators. I read a quote from one of these folks, who said bemusedly about an imitator something along the lines of “he does me better than I do”.