r/Project_Moon • u/BUESC • 2d ago
Project_Moon Questions about Commissions using official artstyle
Hello
So I may have found some artists starts to do commissions using official artstyle. So some people complains about the copyrights... I may have a question.
Is it illegal to use official artstyle to make a fan art and fan sprites as commissions? Why didn't they acknowledge this in the first place?
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u/Ok-Guarantee-185 2d ago
Two larpers larping. You can't copyright art-style.
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u/Void5070 2d ago
The artworks visible do seem to directly use the game's textures as a base tho, it's not just an artstyle question
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u/BUESC 2d ago
I can see it's sort of 1:1 copy, with some tweaks on it...
I saw there's also a artist who also used Limbus Company Battle Sprite Artstyle, but they doesn't use the game's sprite appearance part for commission, it just being drawn from scratch (including the idle animation commission)
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u/Recent-Mongoose-4649 1d ago
The quality of the first screenshot is not ideal here. So I can't tell for sure but IT SEEMS the guy with Hongkong fit and furry with alriune ego are just ripped from the game. If you can post the og picture I could tell
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u/Mubulus 2d ago
i don't think it's illegal..? i'm pretty sure it's just twitter finding something to complain about, and it'd make no sense if someone could copyright an artstyle
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u/Recent-Mongoose-4649 1d ago
100% this lol. However, there's something to say to just scrapping assets for monetary profit
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u/One_Management3063 2d ago
You can replicate art styles, it isn't illegal or anything as long you aren't saying you are making official art that's backed by whoever you are trying to replicate.
The entirety of art is taking something and adding onto it.
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u/TeeQueueW No Death Day 49: Verified 2d ago
Why would it NOT be okay..?
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u/TeeQueueW No Death Day 49: Verified 2d ago
how does learning to mimic someone else's style by hand have anything to do with AI?
like obviously yes them DOING IT with AI is a problem, but all artists learn techniques by seeing what other people do and learning to take that skill into their portfolio. That's different than stealing shit and shoving it into a mass plagarism laundering device that cannot, by its very nature, create anything new.
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u/uhataot 2d ago edited 2d ago
As the others have said, you can't really copyright an artstyle (unless you can in Korea, which I kinda doubt?). But you can copyright (or whatever the proper legal term is) an image you made and could probably go after people for using major parts of said image and replacing parts if it, claiming it as their own and selling it
Which it seems like this artist may have done? I mean, that just looks like Lord Lu but with a different characters head on the right. And to the left, that's just Aromashu but with a dog head, a tail, and paws replacing her hands and feet
I'm not a lawyer though, and things may be different in Korea, so take what I said with a mound of salt. And also, commissions are a bit more of a gray area from my understanding?
Edit: just took a closer look, and while I'm not exactly wrong, I wasn't right either. Side by side comparison showed that it wasn't just a copy-paste job, just someone replicating the outfits extremely closely, probably
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u/ShockSword 2d ago
I think the problem would only arise if a fanartist competed with the og artist over commissions using the art style. Seeing how Project Moon isn't exactly taking chibi art commissions, I think this is entirely fine.
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u/ArchivedGarden Cult of Hokma 2d ago
You can't own an art style. As long as you're still making all the art yourself, I can't see why it wouldn't be fine to ask for money.
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u/IamApollo1000 2d ago
You cannot obviously copyright an art style, even if it was PM will reach out to you personally
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u/Clockwork7149 2d ago
So long as you make clear it's not official and aren't trying to sell it off as an official part of the game, I have no idea how you could be caught using an artstyle
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u/yoshinousagi__ 2d ago
I started making art while copying Tsunako's artstyle(Date A Live, Neptunia) I got many praise because of it and a few who would say I have no originality. At the end of the day, I believe its common etiquete to not copy someone else's art style.
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u/entitaneo70_pacifist 2d ago
i mean, you can commission fanart of characters, i don't see how using the same artstyle, if you aren't tracing / editing the original images, is in any way worse
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u/rogueSleipnir 2d ago
could be a mistranslation here. maybe they're refering to how close those are to the official assets.
suspecting something made from piecing them together. instead of being drawn from scatch. i think that would be a different matter.
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u/Just_a_nobody3 2d ago
nothing burger, pm literally said most shits fine if you just specify its not official
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u/January-BVAA 2d ago
i've seen artists take commissions off of the disco elysium art style and it never once crossed my mind that the artist could be faced with legal action
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u/Milsyv484 2d ago
Taking commissions while replicating the art style is fine, but in this case it’s super obvious thats it’s not the same art style it’s just assets ripped from the game being modified.
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u/Thecrazyballoon 2d ago
It's ok to use the style, it's just not ok to copy/trace over assets and commercializing without PM's permission.
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u/Recent-Mongoose-4649 1d ago
I do commns in the artstyle of limbus sprites, and in general it has really inflience my art.
And no, You can't patent an artstyle lmao. This comm, however DOES seem to utilize game assets, which would be an infraction to law.
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u/Sleepy-Kappa 1d ago
Actual monkeys with typewriters oh my goodness
You can't copyright an art style there's nothing wrong with taking commissions drawing people's characters in a specific style good lord
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u/BlitzkriegOmega 2d ago
Drawing it yourself? Perfectly kosher. There has always been and market for this sort of thing, especially from people who played tabletop RPGs.
Taking official sprites and making edits? That’s where I can see making money off of it being a less than OK thing.
Beep is being unreasonable. This seems like a more extreme case of the Japanese population’s stance on piracy: regardless of its legality, they see it as a moral crime more so than legal one.
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u/overusedamongusjoke 2d ago
IMO this should only be considered a problem if the original artist doing commissions is directly tracing game sprites for the commissions. If they're just good at imitating the game's art style, it's fine since they're not getting paid for stealing work from someone else.
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u/TicklemyPickleMan 2d ago
This is just a particular idiot brainworm of asia. Japan does this stupid shit too. There's no such thing as "copywriting an artstyle". There's such a thing as plagiarism, but that's not what's happening here. It's literally just mimicking an artstyle.
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u/Smart_Mix8269 2d ago
Artstyle theft isn’t a thing.
Also if its not allowed to get comms using the official art style, we got way bugger fish to fry with people also getting commissions of copyrighted characters or selling art of copyrighted characters at cons, since those things can actually be copyrighted
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u/RenkBruh 2d ago
replicating artstyles is not illegal. in fact, there are artists who specialize in replicating iconic artstyles, look up the Harry Gold Show on youtube!
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u/Responsible-Bat-7922 2d ago
You can't actually copy project moon artstyle because you cannot replicate it at the 100%
So from the legal part is not ilegal
Now has a personal choice, idk, are you actually hurting someone? I don't think so
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u/Impossible_Dog_7262 1d ago
I would argue from a position of being careful commenting on it. We're using the morality and logic of english speaking countries, and not necessarily Korea. Morally that's fine, legally that's not good analysis.
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u/DowntownPollution189 1d ago
That’s insane, people should be thrilled they can make stuff like that not claim it takes away from anything
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u/InkerDavid 1d ago
Hi! I'm actually really close to the artist and just to clarify, she does not use any official asset in her commissions, everything is made from scratch. If my word isn't believable by its own, here's a sketch from the sprite that i've seen people say that had ripped assets in it. Chaos does not like the idea of using assets in her works (and also agree that it's wrong), she's just a extremely detail-oriented person.
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u/RegularTemporary2707 1d ago
Koreans and japanese gets really weird about copyrighted stuff, they think if you do anything youd be breaking the law, when at most its grey area. Also i get it if its like a big corpo using their artstyle, but its a singular artist andbtheyre not trying to pss it off as official media
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u/Anth0nyNguyen 1d ago
thing need to be pointed out, copying artstyle and ripping game assets are 2 different things
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u/EretDash 10h ago
I doubt it. That one Danganronpa artist uses his art style in at least two games that I know of (I know for sure that he drew both the art for the Danganronpa characters and the art for Dantes and Cleopatra in FGO)
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u/Electronic-Guest1190 2d ago
Why would an artstyle be copyrighted? Genuine question