Cris Ortega - Plagiarism

[Fakeortega]

Hello all.

This thread is about one of the most critically acclaimed spanish CG artist over the world. A very prestigious well-known illustrator that showcases the best works... stealing others as Jason Chan, Melanie Delon, Feimo, Linda Bergksvist... and a long list more.

She built her career copying & pasting, overpainting, tracing and inspiring in other artist works, and she earn money with it. She published three artbooks (Forgotten 1,2,3) and recently released "Nocturna", wich cover gave her away as the plagiarist she is. She used a work by Ruoxing Zhang, overpainting and retouching it to show as hers (after she was revealed, she retouched a bit again to make the final cover lightly different from original one).

The Nocturna release was the moment we discovered how works Cris Ortega. The greatest Dr. Frankestein we ever seen before on art, composing her art by pieces with a kind of talent on photomanipulation since she started publishing artbooks.

Let us show you some evidences:

JASON CHAN
Original


Cris Ortega


PIECES FOR HER WORK (not just stealing Jason's ones):




Melanie Delon









Linda Berkgsvist




And the nocturna cover that betrayed herself, original by Ruoxing Zhang


There are a lots more from many other artists. If you want to know more and learn how to be a CG artist stealing the others works, visit Fakeortega

Note: We aren't haters. We just compiled a lot of evidences around internet, and people sent us the 80% that you can see in the blog. We just claim ethic, professionalism and respect for art creators as we respected Cris and her works before she give her away. We don't want art rippers.

Thank you for your attention,
FAKEORTEGA

[Iboltax]

Tracers gonna trace

[+oas+]

Hmm, that's pretty lame. Never heard of the person before, but eh...

[Brashen]

Wow....this truly is befuddling...I'm befuddled...

[Kweckduck]

Wow... just ... wow...

[Star Eater]

Has anyone actually approached 'Cris Ortega' with this issue? And I -do not- mean in a threatening manner, just to seriously get some kind of response on these pieces of evidence?

[SDNolan]

I'm really disappointed. I saw her work on deviantart about a year ago and I remember thinking how great it was. Now I'm just kinda... bleh. A little cherry on top for the second shittiest day of my life.

[Mordus]

Appalling conduct on her behalf. For that matter, it looks like she has some rendering skill already, so why she would resort to petty theft is anyone's guess - sheer laziness?
Just dreadful.

[dierat]

Has anyone actually approached 'Cris Ortega' with this issue? And I -do not- mean in a threatening manner, just to seriously get some kind of response on these pieces of evidence?

There was a whole drama storm about it on her DA page about a month or 2 months ago, when she submitted the image that ripped off Algenpfleger's wings (I think it was called 'Lillith'). She removed the image and responded to the accusations with this journal: http://dark-spider.deviantart.com/journal/40958145/

First of all I want to say that it was not my intention to harm anyone. I never denied to be working with references, is something most artists do. Whenever I can I work with my own references, but that's not always possible and I have to search through internet for inspiration. Artists ways are not always easy, and we need inspiration too. I usually work with tons of references, and most of the times I don't even know the actual source. But I'm more than willing to give credit where credit is due, copyright is important. So my apologies in this case, I never intended to harm.

I also want to make clear that although I use references, I never do paint-overs or photomanipulation. I'm a old school artist, and I always paint everything from scratch and spend hours and hours working on it. If the final work is too similar to the source of inspiration, then I apologize. I will try to work better with my references in the future, since this is a problem, and try to never be too similar to any reference.

[Reutte]

Wow, this is just depressing. And she even has published art books where she did paint overs? Do the other artists know?

[nonameowns]

life is too short to give a fuck is surely Cris's mindset.

[Sphinx]

i hate this, and this is the cause of great artist dont have a job, i go to art school, i was here two moth and i left this school for this reason , the people learn get pieces the other artist,they play to frankenstein, and they fill soo well with our work but they really dont did it nothing , they stole to other artist, an they self this and more , they said that the work or picture has been created for they.
I can said that we live in the simios planet
f...k ortega , he must pay for this

[Maidith]

Looks like she never learnt how to take her own reference photos. I mean, what's so difficult about it? Doesn't she have a camera? No friends to model for her? I'm seriously puzzled, no pun intended.



edit: I had no idea she was frankensteining so much, this is a little disturbing. Not sure about copyright issues here. It doesn't seem to make sense to sue someone if they steal just 15% or 30% of one's work, I guess... ? So she will probably get away with it, legally.

[tehmeh]

You've gotta be all kinds of stupid to expect to get away with copypasting such well known artists.

I think the first, being made from such various good paintings and creating such a bad piece, is a good lesson that "a painting is more than the sum of its parts!"
Ohhhh the delicious irony of it being a 1000 piece puzzle - maybe it's one of those "create multiple pictures" sets...

[Randis]

wow and who knows where Linda got hers from, its almost a paradox.

[Elwell]

Even without the direct lifts the work is still derivative as all get out, so, meh.

[Robert.B]

Damn.....smh

[Metal Fingers]

this is sad.

[Choob]

How do these people even think they'll get away with this sort of thing? Doesn't matter how good you are at covering up what's stolen, there will always be an internet detective somewhere who discovers that your art isn't as squeaky clean as you say it is.

[clifFroth]

Not sure how this is any different than sampling music or collage for that matter.

[Kitsunia]

There certainly is overpaints and copies but some of the stuff is complete nitpicking; especially on the blogspot. It's the same thing that happened to Azurelle a while back; one image is clearly copied then suddenly everything in every image has been copied.

Take this for example: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Yzln206u7Q...600/espada.jpg

One could argue that the sword was referenced from the other painting but there is enough differences to say otherwise. And lets face it, how generic is a sword with a skull in the hilt?

I am, by no means, defending her actions and I am not saying she has not traced or copied, but I think we're trying to dig deeper into what this really is and pulling at ghosts in some of the cases being presented.

[Dusty]

There certainly is overpaints and copies but some of the stuff is complete nitpicking; especially on the blogspot. It's the same thing that happened to Azurelle a while back; one image is clearly copied then suddenly everything in every image has been copied.

Take this for example: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Yzln206u7Q...600/espada.jpg

One could argue that the sword was referenced from the other painting but there is enough differences to say otherwise. And lets face it, how generic is a sword with a skull in the hilt?

I am, by no means, defending her actions and I am not saying she has not traced or copied, but I think we're trying to dig deeper into what this really is and pulling at ghosts in some of the cases being presented.

I fully agree. I think it's a pretty crappy thing to directly reference another artist's work (paintover or otherwise) without saying where you referenced from, but the witch-hunting that goes on with these people just gets old. Sure, there is a time for awareness, but usually it goes well beyond awareness and goes to insulting, trolling their facebook/webpage/DA/etc, and even some people trying to go directly to their family, friends, and work to bring their life down.

Does someone honestly deserve to have their real life destroyed because of poor judgement in their art? I mean, you can argue that they probably don't deserve to get art jobs, but that's about it. I don't think they deserve some of the heavy cyber-bullying that goes on.

Just my opinion...and something I have felt for awhile now with these types of threads.

[Jason Rainville]

Take this for example: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Yzln206u7Q...600/espada.jpg

One could argue that the sword was referenced from the other painting but there is enough differences to say otherwise.

Nope.

The point/central ridge of the sword, the fuller, the rain guard, cross-guard and the cut-out detail on the blade closer to the hilt are all EXACTLY the same. The only difference is the grip, and some of the detail on the mid-outer blade. You'd have to be blind not to see it's a rip.

@Dusty; I don't think anyone in here is planning on phoning them up at 2 in the morning to harass them, but when there's not a whole lot to be done legally I don't see what's wrong in spreading the word that these people are ripping other artists. It's not destroying their professional lives, they've already done that themselves.

[Dusty]

Nope.

The point/central ridge of the sword, the fuller, the rain guard, cross-guard and the cut-out detail on the blade closer to the hilt are all EXACTLY the same. The only difference is the grip, and some of the detail on the mid-outer blade. You'd have to be blind not to see it's a rip.

@Dusty; I don't think anyone in here is planning on phoning them up at 2 in the morning to harass them, but when there's not a whole lot to be done legally I don't see what's wrong in spreading the word that these people are ripping other artists. It's not destroying their professional lives, they've already done that themselves.

You'd be surprised. Deserved or not, that Rob Granito thing went VERY far into his personal life. Yes, he deserved to be ousted from conventions, but people were insulting his wife, his family, his kids, and from what I understand some people were seeking him out in avenues not-related to the internet (and not just conventions).

I'm just saying this type of stuff can snowball. When people post on message boards for awareness...yeah, fine. Deserved as they dug that grave themselves. But when people are making Facebook Fan Pages and Blogs with the sole intent of dragging someone through the mud, you just don't know what can happen. You can not predict (nor moderate) what a userbase of followers are going to do even if you have the best intentions with your cause. I followed the Rob Granito Facebook page for a week or so and some of the things I saw on there were absolutely atrocious.

They may have "just been words", but people were orchestrating some seriously dangerous stuff on there. It was awful to watch.

That's the only reason I bring any of this up. Not to DEFEND this artist, but to be a voice of reason to anyone who thinks it's okay to get obsessed with this kind of stuff and take it too far.

[hitnrun]

Wow, yea, messed up!

[Ccs]

Huh that's pretty bad. Well at least she's getting called out for it. I find her work pretty boring though no matter who she copied from, it's all just really airbrushed looking women looking somewhat clueless and a little mysterious.

And Jason Chan pulled off the whole "translucent silk" thing so much better.

[Eric Young]

I don't understand people like this. Clearly she knows at least the basics of painting. Why spend so much time cutting and pasting and putting a bunch of shit together. I'd imagine the searching, cutting and rendering it all together would be more time consuming then just starting from scratch.

[melon_kuantum]

strange... looking at her "work", I believe she has the skill, but why use it
to rip off others work, and not use it for her real work....
I really never understands people like this

EDIT: wow, The Original [E] above me can explain what I mean better, and he posted it 8 minutes before me, lol ^^

[dierat]

I think her problem lies in the fact that there is a huge gap between being able to render well and being able to imagine and create objects that don't exist.

[Tim Murphy]

Looks like she never learnt how to take her own reference photos. I mean, what's so difficult about it? Doesn't she have a camera? No friends to model for her? I'm seriously puzzled, no pun intended.

Hell, I find taking the reference photos to be part of the fun. But I guess if you're skipping even that step, you don't really give a shit about actually making anything, you want the fame/money.