artists_beware | An interesting art theft situation

Normally, I don't really bother with these kinds of situations because people cry about pose theft. However, this case struck me as a bit saddening, not just because this is an actual trace, but the lying afterwards.

Apparently some users discovered som startling similarities to two works and posted them on an image board. Since the artist of the second piece was rather known, to preserve the discovery a flash was made of this.

You can see it as it contains nudity: http://www.gpknow.com/nobuyuki/copypasta4.swf

I actually have a copy of the two images and did a bit of research using photoshop. The lines match up rather perfectly, so this isn't a case of copying, but actual tracing.

We were trying to discover the original artist of the Blue Scaley and this apparently belongs to Neolucky: http://neolucky.deviantart.com

The first image was done in the year 2004 as you can see in the following galleries (her sig was removed from the piece):

http://neomonsterisland.com/kgglry/heisei/crystal/crystalgallery.html
http://neomonsterisland.com/kgglry/heisei/crystal/crystal2004.jpg

Now what I find most depressing about this situation is that the person who traced this image was actually asked about the situation. He gave the following excuses.

1. The blue scaley was actually his and he copied over the older piece to create a girl version of his character
2. The original artist actually copied him, and created a false copyright date on top of it.

I just thought I'd bring it to people's attention because I found that the lie was rather damaging to the original artist, so I hope people can determine for themselves the truth of the situation.

Thanks for everyone's time.