-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Ford Motors shamelessly steals official art from Firewatch
- Thread starter DeathSparks
- Start date
Zeouterlimits
Member
Ford should own up to the mess up, frankly and clearly, and apologise.
element
Member
Why? Ford Motors did nothing wrong. A small local independent dealership was bad at the internet and photoshop and they are getting lots of blame and venom right now.
You say that because you might have some actual skills in photoshop, but the person who probably has no actual graphic design skills and knows just how to open photoshop.
malboroking
Banned
Imagine you are are teaching a graphic design class and you have two students submit the logos I posted - would you shrug it off as 'not plagiarism'? Come on now...
more "inspired by' stuff:
Have you ever been to Eastern Europe? You see a guy dressed like Nico walking down the street every ten minutes. As for the second shot, I've seen that exact shot before in multiple shows, movies and games. It's very common and could easily have been thought of independently. It's two people in an interrogation room being watched on a two-way mirror. There's only so many ways you can frame that shot. Just things look similar doesn't mean they were plagiarized. People can come to the same ideas independently, especially on common things.
Also, no, I would say that those two logos were plagiarized were I teaching a graphic design class. They are similar, but the are not exactly the same. It's derivative, and the two students probably borrowed elements from each other, but it's not plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking the Assassin's Creed logo and turning it in as your own original creation.
Parmadillo Marshmallow
Member
The follow up after public outrage:
Manager: "Damn it Designer, you're fired!"
SystemUser
Member
Imagine you are are teaching a graphic design class and you have two students submit the logos I posted - would you shrug it off as 'not plagiarism'? Come on now...
more "inspired by' stuff:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/
This subreddit is dedicated to russians wearing adidas (and knockoff adidas) tracksuits. Also there is a lot of dashcam videos.
This image is labeled as Russian Chicken:
Zeouterlimits
Member
The dealership I mean, as a Ford branded store, should just make a clear statement & apology.
Hell, even Ford could say we regret this and will work with our dealerships to ensure better practices for images used in promotions.
Simple.
These are terrible examples.Imagine you are are teaching a graphic design class and you have two students submit the logos I posted - would you shrug it off as 'not plagiarism'? Come on now...
more "inspired by' stuff:
element
Member
Dealerships aren't franchises. This isn't the same as a Subway or McDonalds. Ford has little to no influence on the day to day marketing assets at the dealership level. The dealership is probably overwhelmed why news websites are calling and wanting a comment and clarification, but in the end the dealership probably is learning as the story develops what they did wrong. They are attempting to shift the blame to the wallpaper website where they grabbed the image from. If anything the venom should be going after that website because they are the ones making real money on this.
As the person basically responsible for this action-packed series of events, there's one small fact I feel like nobody has brought up in this thread yet:
Firewatch is currently 33% off in the Steam Summer Sale!!
Check it out!! http://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/
🤗
Firewatch is currently 33% off in the Steam Summer Sale!!
Check it out!! http://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/
🤗
Hm. I dunno. It looks like a lot of that artwork was completely ripped off from Ford.
(PS: I have been delighted to see some other devs get into the spirit)
these are great.
Narpas Sword0
Member
"Ford Motors" and "a Ford dealership" are not the same thing
Big Chungus
Member
Kurt Angle
Member
where can I buy that suit fam
It's sad. I'm a graphic designer that lives in the Detroit area and I understand the pressure and why this happens. We are given too little time to work and are encouraged by our bosses or supervisors to take things from Google images and steal art and photos from other people.
Work places want high quality art that takes a artist a week to make done within the hour of being handed to them.
What's worse is that the artist will be entirely to blame and they will agree and take the punishment. Because blaming anyone else will be considered coping out.
But companies constantly instill the fear that if you can't get the work done in the time given they will just hire someone else that will and give the same conditions to that person and repeat the circle.
Its a huge problem in the industry. It's a shame when these things happen but I don't entirely blame the person.
Work places want high quality art that takes a artist a week to make done within the hour of being handed to them.
What's worse is that the artist will be entirely to blame and they will agree and take the punishment. Because blaming anyone else will be considered coping out.
But companies constantly instill the fear that if you can't get the work done in the time given they will just hire someone else that will and give the same conditions to that person and repeat the circle.
Its a huge problem in the industry. It's a shame when these things happen but I don't entirely blame the person.
OnionPowder
Member
Clinton514
Member
That what happens when you hire your employee's kid to do your ad campaign.
Then approve it yourself because you're too stingy to put together a real marketing team.
Then approve it yourself because you're too stingy to put together a real marketing team.
Springfoot
Member
Imagine you are are teaching a graphic design class and you have two students submit the logos I posted - would you shrug it off as 'not plagiarism'? Come on now...
more "inspired by' stuff:
Woe, such plagiarism! John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, and Clint Eastwood
jediyoshi
Member
Stuff like this is super common in games. The image is of course reconstructed and content is different but conceptually, it's a 1:1 copy. It's reprehensible.
content is different
1:1 copy
Is this a real post
boredandlazy
Member
Rather ironically the banner ad for me at the bottom of this thread was for the Ford Focus.
Seems like an honest fuck up to me, small isolated dealership wants their advertising campaign material to match the "orange" forest aesthetic in the Ford ads on TV, finds this photo on a free wallpaper website and decides to use it. They should have checked the source before hand, but small stores don't check these sort of things - my local Pita Pit for instance has Dead Pool drawn on the chalkboard that welcomes customers (pretty sure they didn't ask Marvel) - the dealership will hopefully be more wary of this in the future. Legal action would just be a dick move tbh.
jediyoshi
Member
https://twitter.com/vanaman/status/747516512336961536
Nope, however they lifted it, it was from an official source.
there's a difference between a drawing on a chalkboard and lifting of a websites background
A Link to the Past
Banned
Eh, I'm calling coincidence. Just like how Vanilla Ice didn't rip off Queen and Bowie.
That seems rather presumptuous - it's not like this photo doesn't exist elsewhere on the web (like the free wallpaper hosting site posted in this thread).
Again, I don't think you can prove they lifted it from the website, this image exists elsewhere. And if they didn't intentionally know they were stealing copyrighted material, then the difference is the chalkboard example is worse.
EDIT: Ignore this lol
jediyoshi
Member
You missed the crux of the tweet then, because it's literally saying the opposite. If that would be their defense, the onus is on them to define the exact source because of the actual variation being pointed out.
Oh woops sorry my bad, couldn't see the bottom part of the image on mobile - damn that's pretty inexcusable then.
element
Member
Knowing how people crawl websites, you can't really expect assets to not be pulled and republished someplace else. Doesn't excuse the behavior, but the 'only could have taken it from here' is a bit misguided.
If you posted it online, even if it was replaced, someone probably grabbed it.
DeathSparks
Member
Quick update: An MA Ford dealer says the stolen Firewatch art came from Ford HQ, they were not involved in this promo however.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...s_it_lifted_Firewatch_art_for_sales_promo.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...s_it_lifted_Firewatch_art_for_sales_promo.php
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Some lazy graphic designer is going to get fired I assume.
No it doesn't.
"Update #2: Sara Tatchio, a representative from Ford's communication group, reached out to Gamasutra to provide a statement on the advertisement. Tatchio states "Ford was not involved in creating the Quirk dealership advertising, our dealers are independent businesses."
Furthermore, Tatchio clarified that the YouTube video discovered by Nick Robinson contains original artwork comissioned for their ad campaign, and is not sourced from Firewatch."
Ford provides dealerships with some promotional material, but all of it is created by Ford using assets they own. If a dealership hired someone that stole artwork for their regional promotion, that's not on Ford - that's on the dealership.
BuggeryBugz
Member
I'm also a Graphic Designer and I understand what you are saying but there is an onus on the designer to either create original artwork or at least use sites that have royalty free un-copyrighted images. I'm sure it was an honest mistake though.
Yeah. Having worked under pressure a lot, either that or use royalty free vectors and try to edit as much as possible within time constraints, so that there's a bit of a difference at least.
BREAKING NEWS: FORD HQ SAYS THAT THE DEALER IS AN INDEPENDENT DEALER.
Stuff like this is super common in games. The image is of course reconstructed and content is different but conceptually, it's a 1:1 copy. It's reprehensible.
I saw your other posts as well.
You don't actually know what plagiarism is.
That is an understatement.
I can't tell you how many times I'm stuck between this choice.
Its against me to steal art online, but when your boss tells you why don't you just take something online and then tweak it. It'd just a huge amount of problems that comes from that.
I do take things from the Internet but try to do the most I can out of it to make it my own. But there is a huge difference between just cutting a face out and manipulating a image to make it an entirely different thing.
TheAbsolution
Member
Because they make good cars?
Why else?
This is probably what happened lol.
DirtyLarry
Member
Always recreate it. Explain to your boss you can get sued if they fight back and in my experience, 98% of the time they will just cave in and say something like make it happen as fast as possible. So I have personally always opted to recreate it. You will 1) have a clear conscious and 2) get really good at whatever your chosen app may be.
FYI I am 41 and have been doing digital design for over 18 years now. I have recreated a whole, whole lot in my time, especially earlier on.
I reckon I could completely recreate the Firewatch art in less than 30 minutes, and it would look very damn close. And that is no knock against the original artist, just once the art is there for reference, it is super easy to redo. I would open up Illustrator, make a few trees (and you have the hard part done as you clone the hell out of them), bust out my Wacom tablet and do the mountain ranges, and create 8 layers which includes the background, and you are pretty much done. Hell, you can even eyedrop the colors if you really wanted to.
So yeah, I would go as far as saying if a designer did create this, they have under 1 year of experience on the job. It would basically be design 101 to recreate this image.