Upon inspection of the two pieces of artwork, one can easily recognize the similarity between the work of Michael Turner [left] and the FanArt submission by Emiko Setsuna [right]. In fact, we realise that the left hand of both pictures are exactly in the same position.
A "swipe" is a term coined to describe when one artist draws their comic book panels in the same style as another artist. This goes beyond just taking the basic style, but rather is a direct copy of another part of a comic book. It would be described as plagiarism in the writing world, or a knock off, in the fashion world.Most camps of comic book fans frown on this practice, especially when the original work is uncredited, and the artist in question can come under further scrutiny and even legal action.
We see that there is minimal effort on the part of the Fan Art. Features were completely changed in the Fan Art, although still easily recognisable as an adaptation from the original piece due to the high level of similarity in the posture. Despite these elements however, this Fan-Art is not exactly an act of plagiarism.
Inspiration, is essentially what explains the similarity between the two pieces of work. The Fan-Art is clearly inspired by the posture of the one done by Turner. Arguing that the similarity in posture is a from of plagiarism is a display of ignorance. It is indeed impressive to see how far the Fan-Artist has been able to achive without tracing, but are only so many poses available to the human body, two different art works which display the same pose can hardly be passed off as plagiarism.
When I was first presented to this comparison, it was relatively easy to see the similarities between the two pictures as they are lined up next to each other. However, if these two pictures were presented at differ net times, one would not be able to recognize the similarities with such ease. There is clear distinction between the effects of the two art works as well, effectively achived through the different colour tones. It is not merely a simlpe re-colouring, the shading is completely different.
Furthermore, there is evidence of different character details in the two pieces. Therefore this cannot be considered as a copy. There is also lack of proportionate line up of the physical elements, hence the claim that this is a copy in the posture is invalid.
The nature of this piece of work should be taken into account as well. As mentioned earlier, this is a piece of Fan-Art. It suggests that as long as it does not have financial impact on the original and that are done for non commercial purposes could be considered to be legal. This Fan-Art submission is merely a display of the artist's impression of certain elements of the product, and has no finicial impact on the product entirely.
This piece of art is in no way a plagiarism.
