Hi, i have an orcm model that taken reference from Guldan(warcraft series). It has 2 major smilarites. Shoulder armor and left arm. Would you consider it as copyright issue? Take a look at the picture of my model:
There are way more than just two major similarities. If anything there are more similarities than there are differences between them. About the only differences are the weapon, the spikes with skulls jutting out of his back, and the color of the runes on his pauldrons.
Yes. It’s almost identical to the Rogers v. Koons case. Koons created a sculpture based off a photograph by Rogers with only three differences. Long story short the courts decided it was substantially similar and Koons lost.
4 Likes
I see. thanks for reply!
Ultimately your character is still very recognisable as a WarCraft Orc. And that’s a bad thing.
1 Like
My non-lawyerly opinion is it looks like your goal was to duplicate the Warcraft model with how similar they look.
I wasn’t actually planing this. I gave it to freelancer to do something similiar to this. He came up with this and i really loved it. I messaged him to change.thanks everyone
Honestly if it were me I’d find a new freelancer. If he was willing to copy the original design almost verbatim then he may decide to do it again with the next result and the next. You may end up with a result that doesn’t look like anything you recognize but may be copyrighted and lead to trouble down the line.
4 Likes
My eye is obviously untrained… but it looks to me like he stole the Warcraft model and just tweaked it.
5 Likes
My advice would be to be a lot more specific about what you want when you start a job with your freelancer. Giving them a highly recognisable character from one of the most famous game series ever made and asking them to ‘make something similar’ is not a great way to do things. Chances are that if they had actually done what was necessary to make it different, you wouldn’t have been satisfied.
I would suggest providing a few varying references which all contain whatever traits you specifically require the character to have, so that the freelancer has a better idea of what the underlying nature of the character should be without being locked onto one reference.
6 Likes
I disagree. I also think there’s a huge difference in quality. 
2 Likes
The scary thing about this is that there probably are freelancers that simply steal the models from existing products, re-texture them and maybe open them in a modeling program and tweak it a little and call it theirs and submit it back.
Almost getting to the point where we need a full certification on the artists we wish to hire.
2 Likes
Almost no freelancers at all would do this because it would be career suicide if they got caught.
1 Like
Really depends how much you are paying. At the bottom end of the freelancer market, dodgy things like this are common.
3 Likes
It’s also the internet, a new identity is pretty easy to come by.
1 Like
Anything is a copyright issue if you’re brave enough.
3 Likes
Didn’t warcraft basically copied warhammer anyway (who stole from DnD who stole from tolkien who repurposed from celtic folklore)? They changed the name because they couldn’t get the license. Following the lawsuit aimed at disney and Zootopia, We can see as long you have enough money and weight, stealing isn’t a problem (I meant really close homage or inspiration, let’s speak the polite language). Now if you don’t have that money and you are way too close, you’re in bad luck. Behind the scene there is massive lawsuit battle you don’t know about.
Plagiarism is bad anyway, but some smart business artist told: copying one person and you are a plagiarist, copying from 100 and you are a genius. I’m too hippie for that anyway, but I’m jaded by now.
When you need to deal with finances, payments and want to actually receive money, this is not the case.
Warhammer was a major source of inspiration for the Warcraft art-style.
http://kotaku.com/5929161/how-warcraft-was-almost-a-warhammer-game-and-how-that-saved-wow
Put some of the models side by side and you really can’t tell the difference.
That would certainly make for an interesting discussion between lawyers. If no formal agreement to use the character designs exists between the two companies, and neither has enforced their copyright on the other, you could argue that the companies don’t consider the characters general design to be their intellectual property.
You might well loose. But you could make enough noise to get some solid marketing out of it. Controversy does tend to be a pretty solid marketing ploy.
I don’t suggest trying this without a lot of money and a lot of legal advise. Probably need some decent publicists as well.
1 Like