Seeking Advice - How to Handle This Situation?

[kayla-na.livejournal.com]

Ok so...Last year in November, a friend of mine saw that I really wanted an adoptable that went up for auction but it was out of my reach. My friend ended up autobuying the auction, and gave me the adoptable as an early Xmas gift. The premise of the auction is that once the design is bought, it belongs to the buyer 100%. So since my friend bought the adoptable and gave it to me, he relinquished ownership to me.

Fast forward to today, I end up finding the adoptable recolored and raffled off. Confused, because the design was supposed to be relinquished upon purchase. So I asked the person about it, their gf won the raffle and gave it to the person that I found the recolored adoptable from. We talk back and forth, and upon doing some digging through what they presented me, said artist sold the original adoptable to my friend for a lot of money....but two weeks after that, they resold it to the person that my friend beat to get the adoptable in the first place.

Then, said person that lost raffled the recolored adoptable to the gf, and said gf gave it to the person that I spoke to.

At this point I'm pretty peeved because the design was unique, and there were NO recolors presented at the time of the auction. I'm wondering how my friend and I should proceed with this...

Comments

[wuvvumsoc.livejournal.com]

I feel like either one of the parties needs a refund, and it should probably be the second party.

I would write a beware overall. Selling the same adoptable to two people means either the client did it willingly, or is very bad at keeping track of their own business and selling things more than once. Either is not a good business practice of course.

[bornesb.livejournal.com]

Since you're friends with the original buyer of the original adoptable, I would get them to message the artist as if they were the ones who discovered the adoptable was recolored and resold to the second highest bidder.

Then, if the artist did not give some response akin to an apology and some offer of compensation for the loss of the originality of the purchase, I would write a beware about that artist for reselling the adoptable in the first place.

This is how I would do it, just so I at least I had some sort of closure on the issue...

But if your mind is already made up on the artist being at fault, I'm sure a beware is warranted without contacting the artist first.

I feel like I worded this a bit weirdly, so I hope it makes sense.

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

This is a tough one. Was it specifically advertised that this would be a one off? As in the lines wouldn't be reused at all? Obviously without seeing it, it's going to be a tough one because the artist does have the right to reuse their art unless one of the stipulations for purchase was that the lines wouldn't be reused.

[takesu.livejournal.com]

Really hard to tell without seeing how different the two designs are and not knowing what's the TOS of the original post. So you're saying that the design is suppose to be a 100% one-off but the artist recolored the base and sold it to the 2nd highest bidder?

If the design was unique, something about it like the anatomy, that these elements as a whole design are suppose to be a one-off, then yes, a beware is well warranted regardless if the base was re-colored or even if lines or pose were redone.

I think the 2nd owner should either be refunded or be given a new design.

[kamilamutt.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing 'it belongs to you 100%' refers to there not being those rules of 'you can't change gender' or 'you can't resell', but keep in mind that when a character designer sells a design, they aren't selling the art. It's common practice for artists to re-use lines; if you're uncomfortable with that is better to ask before buying if the line will be reused, or if it's an off-base.

But if the re-colored adoptable is too similar to yours for comfort, I also think the second buyer will need to get a refund.

[spartanwerewolf.livejournal.com]

I'm not really seeing the problem? Design is lineart, palette and markings, not just lineart. As long as they're not using the same palette and markings as the one you got, each design is still a one-off.

"- Once this adopt is yours you're free to do whatever to the design, make changes, swap the gender, your choice since this character is all yours now! Have fun."

This doesn't state that the lineart won't be reused. Unless that was specifically stated, I don't think the artist is in the wrong.

[ravensmoon666.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know exactly which character you're talking about too. That artist is known for doing that with their batch adopts but I would be appalled as well as that character was obviously not done on one of their well known bases. I guess I would message them (if they even reply knowing them.) and hope for a resolution. I wish you so much luck on this Kayla.

[sno-pomf.livejournal.com]

Okay wait...so to get everything straight here, they sold this design, the one that your friend bought, twice? One to your friend and one to the bidder who lost? Or they sold a recolored version of the design?

If they sold the exact same design-that is a huge problem and grounds for a beware. But if they re-sold just the lineart with a different design, then I don't see the problem with that. Sorry if I misread something in your post. I just wanted to make sure I understood what was going on.