Live Journal Catches art thief

[davi]

http://www.livejournal.com/community...6.html?#cutid1

this is amazing..

[MoP]

Very interesting link... although I believe the original source was actually Catsuka:
http://www.catsuka.com/maggiori.php

However, this Marc Maggiori fellow seems like a talentless hack. His website is at http://maggiori.marc.free.fr/ , you can see for yourself his skill level - take a look at some of the images in his "Character Design" page, they're either blatant tracing, or just poorly drawn. What a moron.

[DavePalumbo]

the Phil Hale seems particularly strange to me. The other stuff is mostly anime and cartoons, how did he work that one in? The whole thing is very strange

[Olof]

Hah.. well, his starwars piece.. really..
http://www.catsuka.com/insolite/magg...p_starwars.gif

..

[dfacto]

Man, this guy is a pro! Most thieves I've seen just steal a piece of work, remove the watermark and put in their own, but this guy takes it to a whole new level.

A breath of fresh air really, where art theft is concerned.

[Interceptor]

Great link, davi.

[Red_Rook]

im amazed, some of the stuff, would be like harder to copy then the to acctually draw, its amazing. He should be shot. But not dead, i mean like, shot in the knee... twice

[darth massacre]

Pwned, big time.

I just told my roommates....they couldn't believe it because they felt "you can only steal so much". Wait till they see the site LOL.

[Blue]

Holy Shit, man.

[Blahm]

if its worth doing its worth doing right.

[luxun]

damn man, what an idiot

[Prehistoric]

ok, so this guy is a piece of shit and i hope they sue him blind!

the crappy thing about the phil hale ripoff is that it's what comes up first on a google image search of "phil hale".

i hope this guy gets what's coming to him, and i hope there's no international boundry on copyright infringement.

[Sinix]

Haha... I just like how he gave the phil hale painting a big moustache. It's like he's almost mocking himself.

[DavePalumbo]

I think he moved an arm too

[Steph Laberis]

I sincerely hope his email is flooded with complaints and accusations. *sigh*

One blurb in the LJ caught my eye:

"As I've found out the hard way. This is legal, this is the industry as we know it. I can bet he wasn't sued or even noticed, but probably praised as "Homage to the classics" or some rot.

Saddly animation sequences and storyboards are taken on a daily basis. There's plenty of that seen in Naruto infact, where they take the Cowboy Bebop movie, butcher it up, flip it over and use the exact same movements on a train ride and turn it into a Ninja-dbz fight instead for the show.

This is a prime reason for my leaving said industry. It's very VERY biased and harmfull to anyone original."

Think there's much truth to that statement? I hope to hell not >__<

[Faxtar]

Found this one on this website,

[Steph Laberis]

It would be a miracle if this guy made it out of this without having to pay a large sum of money.

Is there anything to be done about this, aside from waiting for the studios and rightful owners of the ripped off works to sue this guy? I have an overwhelming urge to just rat him out/bitch him out for what he has been getting away with up until this point. Honestly, do none of his clients or colleagues watch movies or know the slightest bit about art history???

[Chingwa]

Wow, you know that's pretty amazing actually... not so much the guy was ripping things off, but that so many things from varying sources were exposed. But I guess once you understand a couple of his things are blatnat rip-offs, it doesn't take much to look at any of his things and search around for the source.

Wow, thanks for the post.

[Shamagim]

How can you steal that much?, i feel sad for such creative lazyness, or for believe you can steal material for the entire produccion.

Besides that, the ripoffs are not even half as good as the originals, and thats just pathetic

[tensai]

makes you wonder about all the other things that might be stolen but hasnt been discovered yet??

http://maggiori.marc.free.fr

this guy needs to be blacklisted or something man. damn.

[Shamagim]

makes you wonder about all the other things that might be stolen but hasnt been discovered yet??

http://maggiori.marc.free.fr

Mmmmm, homework , it sounds like it could be a really fun Lounge activity IMO.

If I ever meet this fellow he shall recieve a drop kick to the face.

[tensai]

Mmmmm, homework , it sounds like it could be a really fun Lounge activity IMO.

lol - not a bad idea at all. i am really amazed about what has already been discovered. if you look at the guys painting gallery it looks very nice - but since he cant even pull the anime off by himself im doubting he did these paintings without copypasting...

[LaPalida]

Lol damn, how did he think he would get away with this? This reminds of the time a client came to us with a "sketch" done by him that he wanted us to trace. Me being no wiser, worked on the logo (I mean the guy sent us a pencil sketch that he wanted us to reproduce) and later found out that he traced a logo off of another company (our competitor notheless). I was so pissed off, not only does this make our company look bad, I felt so used argh I just wanted to strangle him. And on top of that my boss thought that the other company ripped US off. I told him that it wasn't the case, but man how do you know everything!!! I think the lesson here is ... never accept anything from a client that wants you to "reproduce it exactly". Once the client had the gall to ask us to make a logo for him that was practically a copy of our design company logo. I mean where the hell do these people get off?????

[Steph Laberis]

I've often thought of putting up a Hall of Shame sort of website which posts the websites, artwork and contact info of known art thieves, even if they decide to come clean. I feel like it's so important for artists to be sort of online vigilantes and protect one another because it is impossible to keep track of everything.

Hell, even a sticky thread in the lounge of classic cases of art theft would be amusing at the very least, help folks learn what to look out for.

[tensai]

perhaps its something for the CA wiki?

http://www.sciboy.org/cawiki/doku.php

I think you guys are onto something... Keep the ideas coming

[Red_Rook]

mike if the blacklist engine was run seperatly, not officially by ca.org it shouldnt be a problem should it? Aslong as its an accurate account of what happend, which may be a little hard to prove, cause you could have one company sabotaging the other?


btw the sargent one jes takes the CAEK

[Steph Laberis]

Mike: I'm all about that, but I still want "mugshots" of art thieves and their rips. Nothing better than pointing and laughing at some of the biggest jerks in the industry ^__~

Anyone out there have means of setting up a search engine? There also needs to be some sort of verification that the companies on the list really *do* rip off artists rather than letting any Joe Sweatsock say "OMG don't work for (insert company name here) cuz they are teh suck!"

[Fozzybar]

respect goes to the people finding where he stole all this...they are more pro than him, hehe...