Dear players,

It seems that we have a bit of misunderstanding about some of the BeastKeeper artworks. Let us clear all of the questions here please.

1. "The items and builduings are hevy referenced/stolen! These are images from Google!"
There is no such license type as "images from Google". These images are not referenced/stolen, they are purchased from image stock sites and DAZ 3D. Please get familiar with the EULA of DAZ and the terms of Royalty-free license from Shutterstock.
http://www.shutterstock.com/licensing.mhtml
http://www.daz3d.com/eula

2. "The baby griffin is highly referenced from Aywas griffin!"
Please show me at least one matching line in these 2 artworks. I don't think that if someone draws an animal in a sitting at 3/4 pose, then no one can draw it anymore in this pose. The pose can't be copyrighted. Otherwise it would mean that if someone draws a galloping horse, no one has rights to draw a galloping horse again. You know that it's not true.

I had a similar complaint about a year ago, several persons from the pet site were saying that I'm plagiarizing from Kamirah. To have a third-party judge, I posted this as public dispute on WetCanvas. I offer to do this again. This is a highly professional community of artists from all over the world, and I think that their opinions are quite weighty arguments. We're open to your suggestions about another third-party judge too.

Edit: By accepting the new pose as an original art and not an art-theft, the users who complained about the baby griffin and Aywas have automatically accepted that the only thing which were "copyrihted" is pose. I will concern this a violation of our rights and an attempt of harassing us in order to create the problems because of the competiton in the same market segment. The pose can't be copyrighted. 

Please check lawyer answers on here on Avvo.com for a similar question if you're not sure about how copyright works in this case.

3. "The dragon is stolen from a famous anatomical dragon reference!"
We provided the credentials for reference author in the Terms and Conditions, and we personally asked him for permission to build our skin art upon his reference. An update will be posted here as soon as we get a reply.

Edit from March 9th, 2013. We got a personal permission from Eugene Arenhaus to use this anatomic dragon reference as a reference for our skins.

4. "The author stole pets from art-angel.ru!"
Probably you've noticed that we have GMT +2 timezone :) It's my personal site. I posted these artworks there just to show them to people before the game was launched. All of them were created specially for this project.

5. "I’m also 90% sure that I’ve seen the unicorn image before"
Maybe you're trying to remember this image which was a style basis for the unicorn here. It's one of my horse coats on Howrse browser game.

6. "Who is the author of your logo?"
Our logo was made by a hired russian designer Solly.

7. "Your human characters and store images has completely different style! Did you stole them too?"
All of our human characters and store images are created by another Russian hired artist Marina Pavlova.

Hoping for your understanding and wisdom,
BeastKeeper Team and personally Angel

If you aren't going to redraw the baby gryphon, I wish we could see the photograph that you claimed to have referenced in response to me ("Hilary, the only references which were used are photos..."). I know some people were searching around for a reference with a similar pose to yours and the Aywas' griffin and none turned up.

If you cannot produce the photo you used as reference, it can only be assumed that you used the Aywas pet as reference, and too heavily for copyright comfort. You should redraw it if that's the case, and Slash would probably forgive you if you apologized.

"The author doesn't mind using the reference in non-commercial purposes. Where's the criminal here?" The problem comes from this being a site that will eventually offer currency for sale, making it a commercial venture. Even if the artist of the dragon (that was not simply referenced, but copied--note that this is different from tracing but is still copyright infringment) is fine with use in non-commercial work, they may not be fine once the site begins to turn a profit in-part by using their art.

It seems like the biggest issue here is that you don't think that referencing images so heavily is a problem, when it is. Using references is fine, it's good, but in the case of something like this site or any commercial work, you should be using multiple references to combine into the new, original picture, as well as adding personal flair, as opposed to using a single reference that ends up being far too similar to the finished product. The dragon is copied, it is not referenced--it may not be traced, as I said before, but it is copied. Reiterating this in the hope that you will understand and rectify this--using a single reference and ending up with a piece that is clearly from that reference alone is copying, and it is a form of art theft, even if no lines match up with an overlay.

In order to remove some of the bad taste in people's mouths, I'd suggest redrawing the baby gryphon and the dragon, and any other art that was done without the use of multiple (preferably free-use) references. If you refuse to do this, you'll be alienating a very large portion of your potential player base, and the site may ultimately fail because of it.

I really like the build of this site. I like the battle system, I really like the genetic aspect, and I like the idea of crafting, but if you refuse to address this problem in a professional manner (claiming "Not because it's hard but because I'm fighting for our rights" is not professional, it's petty), I and many other users will be leaving, and will turn others away as well.

"The author doesn't mind using the reference in non-commercial purposes. Where's the criminal here?"

Everything on this site is being used comercially, you are a business and as such anything added to the site becomes comercial use rather than personal use.

We got a mail where it was said that some parts of the griffin are realistic and some are cartoony, and there are lighting inconsistance. I'm posting the 50% size base image since I do not see anything "cartoony" except some Disney-styled proportions there. Also I'm posting an image with lighting scheme. I never said that I'm a professional artist and there are CAN be lighting inconsistance but the lighting scheme is solid for the whole artwork.

http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac326/gryphoness/little_griffin_zps6f39f22a.jpg

http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac326/gryphoness/little_griffin_light_zps7d01c62e.jpg

RyaArashi, did we charged money from you to register? Did you paid for anything else to be able to play? It's a free-to-play game, what commercial use are you talking of?

While the griffin is in pretty much the exact same pose as the aywas one, it's a rather generic pose. And there is an overlay of the griffins,

just so you can see. I really think these two are fairly different though, especially taking into account Aywas's very cartoony style.

I think RyaArashi means when we'll be able to buy Gold Coins - that makes it commercial, I'm afraid.

Also a note about using stock images:

"16. Use or display an Image in such a manner that gives the impression that the Image was created by you or a person other than the copyright holder of that Image"

Ariento, I don't know how involved you are in artistic communities, but until an outside reference (or multiple references) of that pose can be found, it really can't be called a "generic pose." The feet are very similar. The spread wings, the head turn..Any artist worth their salt would tell you it's too heavily referenced.

Thank you so much for this Angel.

I have never understood how people can accuse you of that. I have studied every image and have not seen correlation on the images anywhere but the gryphon, and I do not in any way beleive that that was intentional. 

Hilary, search babygriffin (no space) and count how many times you see almost that exact pose. The very first image that pops up has almost that exact pose. Sitting with wings up, tail out back, and looking over the shoulder is a very common pose. A bunch more have this pose without looking over the shoulder.

Luminesque, until the supposed "photo" reference is shown to us, it is very naive to think it wasn't intentional.

lililira, I have searched Google and have found no pictures with the same pose. Can you show me an example of what you mean? Regardless, we should be shown the reference (or references) Angel used if she wishes to clear her name. All she needs to do is post it/them.

But this is the main thing: intent does not matter. It is copied, it is art theft. If doesn't matter if the artist thought it was okay to reference so heavily, the point is, it is not okay. Once the artist is alerted to that, they should be mature enough to admit their mistake and redo the artwork.

If Angel is willing to put all this hardwork into the site, why should it be a problem to draw a few things over, or to hire someone to draw them? It would be a huge waste if this site went down the drain because of a stubborn, defensive attitude.

Yep! Here are only some of the most prominent pictures. They are all very similar poses.

One

Two

Three

Four

...Are you joking? Every single one of those is in full  or 3/4 profile. It's a completely different pose and could not have been used for reference.

None of those are as exact as the aywas comparison.