Tomorrow the band "Hurt" releases their new album "The Crux". It's already getting some impressive pre-orders on iTunes, and by all accounts is a great piece of work. But one of their fans noticed that the cover art seemed a bit familiar...
...since it was almost identical to his tattoo...
...based on this artwork I posted back in 2009.
I'm waiting to hear who is credited with the cover design.
19 comments:
I can't find the band "The Crux" on iTunes. I think I can find the band who has this album but can't for the life of me find anywhere to pre-order on iTunes. You have left me confused.
Unreal.
That's kind of a mess. Keep us posted on how this shakes out. I'm kind of curious.
Naughty, naughty.
Yeesh. It's not so much "based" on your orrery design as it actually directly uses your image file without any sort of alteration. I can see why they used it - it's a cool image. But no permission or credit? That's, um, not so cool. The cover artist had to have gotten the image from here, so they knew the source.
I whipped up my own version of the Arkham city seal for a not-for-profit project I've been working on when I recently mused that it might be more in keeping with the Lovecraft shared-universe spirit to use an existing seal (such as the lovely Propnomicon version), but it would never occur to me to do so without explicit permission first.
That's pretty damn blatant. If they intend to credit you - great. But if they intend to make a profit from the use of the image...well, guess who needs to get paid.
It's cool that you've made plenty of images available to us for free as long as we use them for our own fun - even I've mailed the Arkham postcards to friends as a gag (thanks), but stealing them and using them for your own profit ain't right.
I hope this doesn't discourage you from all the great things you make and show us.
Their label claims a guy named Ted Taylor was the artist for the album.
I have always loved this design it reminds me of some of Frouds designs form the Dark Crystal. How sad that they stole the design with out asking you. Maybe they did not know who did it.
Well, I'd love to see how they like their music shared for free on torrent sites.
I'm guessing "David Taylor" needs to be contacted. Who knows how much 'work' he is generating from his 'original' design?
I'm sure you're flattered that this band Hurt used (stole) your design, but they can't use it commercially without your permission and without licensing the image from you. I have a background in image licensing and know what I'm talking about: just because you can Google something doesn't mean it's free for the taking. You have inherent rights to your creative work, but you still have to fight for it- and I'm sure everyone who follows Propnomicon would be willing to express their support (hint hint).
The band and the record label are in a real legal bind with you because 1) they didn't get your permission to use your design, 2) they didn't license your design from you for promotional print & web use, and 3) they've already printed the album (even using some special custom made ink, according to the image on their Facebook page, which has your design plastered all over it).
Please let them know that they need to CREDIT YOU AND COMPENSATE YOU for your creative work. Also, it couldn't hurt (ha!) to contact a lawyer at this point.
Keep us informed. This sounds appalling
Doing a reverse google image search on the image shows it being used on a few sites. So while it is not forgivable in the slightest, at least they might not have directly stolen it from you but rather stole it from someone that stole it.
Via a Google image search for "orrery" and "arcane circle" (terms mentioned in the Hurt forums) I found this image and this post, also Propnomicon's and most certainly the image that the band used. So the question is whether this image was created by Propnomicon or not.
Forget the tattoo, which is a slight adaptation and not for profit. The album art is a direct copy of your file with an additional 5 mins work in photoshop.
It's a clear violation of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
These guys were playing in my city today. If I'd known I probably would have gone to heckle them about it.
Any new word on what's going on? I can't find anything about them ripping off this art other than on Propnomicon? There's no posts to their Facebook or links to art thief blogs or anything. The only way artists get any justice off things like this is raising holy hell over it.
Check out their posts from March 15th (when they released the album cover) and March 23rd.
Are there any updates on this?
Hmmm...looks to me like permission was given. Silence speaks volumes.
Post a Comment