Sep 2020
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Sep 2020
Sep 2020
Darth_Biomech
Sep '20
Flauschwurm

I do it, you do it, everybody does it, whenever it's conscious or not. Every "original" idea is built on the foundation of previous experiences, and I "steal" the design of somebody's OC the nanosecond the photons from the monitor reach my retinas. Sadly, you cannot "unsee" things, or guarantee that they won't influence your own designs later on. But I guess you were talking about plagiarism? No, that's whole different issue, and yes, I absolutely do not support it in any way either, plagiarists are scumbags.
And people who steal OCs for personal use, I don't think they would care that they're shunned by the art communities forever, since they were'nt a part of it from the beginning. Somebody needs an avatar for their private roleplaying game session, so they go on the google and grab the first picture that strikes their fancy. Ethics is nice but sadly not everybody operates on the same rule set. There's even some "what do you mean you won't draw for free?" people. There's a couple of my artworks that found themselves on somebody' RP forums in user profiles. I could've raise huge stink about it and begin demanding that they tore it down and apologise and everything... But what's the point?

Uh, this is exactly my point about the commissions? you commision the artist to make a design for you, and just provide your input. You know, like they work in the industry with concept artists?
In my eye adoptable - in this specific situation, I don't talk about people who like collect them or specifically search for randomness - is akin to going instead to shutterstock and buying some clipart to serve as your design. It wasn't made for your project, so it won't fit in there seamlessly. Especially since I saw that quite a few adopts have licenses attached to them that explicitly forbid you from modifying the image or the concept in any way.

Yeah the problem is that I cannot not feel anything towards a bunch of pixels. That's why I watch films and become emotionally invested in stories and stuff.
Okay, how about "sell a piece of your own soul" then, instead? Any artwork is an act of self-expression, and therefore it cannot not have a piece of the author's very essence in it.

No? Nothing stops you from granting the, as the lawyerfolk say, "irrrevocable license" to use your ideas to your customers? Functionally it would be the exactly same thing, only that they wouldn't be able to claim that they come up with that idea since they have all rights to it.

I'm not. That's why I commissioned a few artist to make several concepts to me.

Again, I'll repeat myself, or clarify, I do not think that adopts are evil or wrong.

byelacey
Sep '20

Adoptables seem big in the furry community where having a drawn avatar is very important, but not everyone is an artist! It isn't inherently a scam (there are commission scammers everywhere!) it seems like a pretty neat way to provide unique character designs to people who want or need avatars.

I've also seen them become pretty popular within the TTRPG community as well, for the same reasons!

Flauschwurm
Sep '20
Darth_Biomech

I think the major problem is that you don't understand that its "Not that deep" as it seems to you.

Yes, of course an artist puts love/soul into a creation, but they always do, with every piece, even with commissions they draw of existing characters. That doesn't mean that selling the commission, or any art of that matter, would be somehow bad or robbing the artist of their soul.

I know for a fact that I dont have a personal connection to everything I design. The connection usually comes with the characters story and personality, if they dont have it, they're just a design I dont feel connected to, and had no problem selling to someone else who likes the design and might feel a connection to it. I'm sure other artists feel the same way, otherwise the adoptable market wouldn't be so oversaturated.

And to come to the point I mentioned again.
You can only commission an artist to manufacture a design for you if you already have an idea in mind of what you want. No everyone has that when looking for characters.
Sometimes yeah, you 100% know your character and what they're supposed to look like (mostly), then yeah, it makes more sense to commission an artist to bring your idea to life.

But if you're just casually looking for characters to own/use, without sth hyper specific in mind, adoptables are a great alternative.

And in the end, everyone is able to treat their intellectual property the way THEY want, if they want to sell a design now or not, and everyone can spend their hard earned money the way THEY want, and if they want to spend it on a 30$ adoptable they think looks cool I won't stop them.

Jophiel
Sep '20

I've seen my fair share of adopts in the other art community so these are mostly just inputs from an outsider; (I couldn't buy myself adopts because I prefer designing my own or I would most likely change the design, which I would tell on later on here as part of reasons why people buy adopts)

The community is oversaturated in a way (see closed species and whatnot). It's a large market, there is competition so some make-do with their prices hence why the gap looks big. Those that's usually priced high are because of high demands (+ auctions). Some buy them for sake of having a design of said designer and whatnot. Really, just look at closed species for an example hgfds

Now for the other point; Some use adopts as a base for another concept. Not all adopts are bought and kept as is, especially for a long time (so you see people rehoming them too if they really can't connect anymore as much). I myself have a few characters I got from others for free or in exchange for art that are mostly personal use and most of them I altered to fit my story/aesthetic better.

Customs are harder to come by because not everyone can visualize the design they want. Conceptualizing is one thing but execution is another. You may need to redo it over and over unless you really have a nice solid idea of what you want it to look like. Whereas in adopts, the design is already there. Maybe just a few tweaks. Plus they can get expensive than say something like the usual adopts (the community is more or less saturated).

Every designer/artist has a different TOS and I'm sure most of them would find no offense in being asked about clarifications or whatnot to which extent the characters can be used. That is to not say there are certainly other scams done with a suspicious ownership tos but for the most part, the character is yours and that's just it. It's a win-win for both parties, you get a nice character and the artist gets paid. :ok_hand: :smile_cat:

nostalgicroxas
Sep '20

Generally you're buying a few things

1 design
2 the "story" that the character will fit into
3 limitations in how you'll be able to use the character you've purchased

Limitations vary by artist and creator, but most of what I've read state generally that they need to stay restricted to the world type they were created for, ect. And of course, credit is always used, and there's a blurry line (sometimes addressed) on if the character would then have Rights to the Purchaser to use ie for covers of novels, in a comic, ect things that make money off of the "art design". And generally, the artist retains these Rights, unless you pay more to purchase those with your individual design.

Flauschwurm
Sep '20

I've personally never heard of a world restriction, unless it's a closed species :fearful:

nostalgicroxas
Sep '20

I'm not "in" the community generally, since I haven't personally seen a use for it. But the few artists I've followed on dA ... pretty much all of them have a world restriction to them and I don't recall them stating that they're closed. Rather that in some cases, I recall it being "open" but that it's restricted to the sense of... The artist created a few for themself, and made more and more in this world, and their fans came to them wanting characters to interact in that world as a community... Kind of an interesting evolution in that people came to them to ask for the adoptables.

VibrantFoxRegular
Sep '20
Flauschwurm

I've seen instances like that with fandom based design (i.e. Sonic, My Hero Academy, BNA, etc.) they usually/sometimes don't want the design rehashed or altered for something else as it was intended for that universe specifically

VibrantFoxRegular
Sep '20

yeah it's roughly the same with what @nostalgicroxas explained about open/closed species so if there's adopts open for that species it's sometimes limited to the world the artist made those species for

nostalgicroxas
Sep '20

Basically just that each artist, and even within an artist's creations, might have different rules set up for different adoptables set.

A leafy adoptable might be Open, free to use however you want, credit where and when needed ect
Limited, free to use how you want but was designed for this world and shouldn't be used outside as the characteristics don't line up, usually permissions needed for ... wider usage needed
Closed, super limited, and likely even if you pay extra, you will not be able to use them as however you want, and severely limited in Rights/Copyright Transferance ect

Iris-Grimoire
Sep '20

An extra point, sometimes it's a species created by the artist and people respectfully pay them to get new characters. There's homebrew Aasimar variations, for example, or a cute critter that got really popular on social media. People won't use them outside of the main purpose, but you're paying for a commission that's instantly delivered, which is fun! (I just wish I was good at selling adopts :'D)

Prometheus
Sep '20
teacup_creations

I don’t necessarily think they’re a scam. I’m just merely trying to understand them. To be honest, I’m looking for new avenues to sell art and stuff, and I keep seeing people selling adoptables. I looked up some stuff on them online and there were videos and other things about people saying adoptables were iffy or could be scams. So I wanted to see what other artists on here thought. Thanks for your insight. It’s very helpful. :slight_smile:

Prometheus
Sep '20
potatogirl

By “highly priced”, I’m talking about people unfairly pricing, like using bases for multiple designs, where the character isn’t well drawn, or you can tell it took half the effort good artwork should have taken. I do agree that artists should sell based on their time and effort, and how they value themselves.

Prometheus
Sep '20
1
VibrantFox

Painting the entire community evil is not what I meant to do with this post. I apologize if it came off that way, but that was not the intention. I was just wondering about them because of what I’d seen online, and I trust this forum, being full of creators and artists, more than others just saying things on different websites. My asking about if it’s a scam wasn’t to directly say it’s a scam. I want to get into adoptables and am trying to figure out more about them. Maybe I should have phrased my topic post and question better.

VibrantFoxRegular
Sep '20

phrasing definitely may have helped your case so i apologize for jumping to a conclusion. As for online videos some of those tend to intentionally go for discourse framing, cherry picking some of the worst cases or making sweeping assumptions or generalizations (one of the reasons I try not to turn to those too often).

But I will say some of the replies here kind of cover what your looking for with explaining what adopts are, that being character designs offered for sale or for bidding (the latter depending on demand and quality). I've seen them sold on sites like deviantart, twitter, maybe instagram, but most definitely FurAffinity. I imagine there might even be discord servers for adopts as well to find buying and selling circles (though i wouldn't know personally). Pricing can vary widely so it's good to research and see how other folks are pricing their work taking into account the style, level of detail, type of adopt and so on. But I hope you're able to figure things out (and apologies again) :sweat_02:

Prometheus
Sep '20

No worries! Yeah, I think I should have prefaced my topic with more detail as to what I was intending. Yeah, everyone’s replies have been super helpful, and I’m really grateful for your insight and everyone else’s. Thanks for taking the time to share what you know! I like asking questions here because there’s Such a good variety of creators here, who know about stuff that I don’t. :slight_smile:

nostalgicroxas
Sep '20
Iris-Grimoire

You also know exactly what it's going to look like, and generally if it's a character the artist was going to use, you also gain access to any other art of that character. So you immediately go out and start creating a little story for the character and buying commissions of it with an existing image. :smiley:

rajillustration
Sep '20

It's like getting clothes from a store--you see the clothes you want, you buy the clothes. The pricing of the clothes depends on how well they brand themselves and how good their work is. Not sure why you mentioned scam in the original post--other than maybe being scammed from a person saying they'll buy their work and then not?

Adoptables are kinda like clothes for RPer's, from my understanding. It does open yourself up to getting your work stolen, but at least one good person is out there buying these things because the adoptable community is alive and active. I personally don't do it, I prefer to sell my art other ways, but it works well for some.

Prometheus
Sep '20

Yeah, I mentioned scam because others had mentioned it over other websites, or seemed really put off towards adoptables. To be fully honest, I wanted to do some investigating because I want to start making adoptables. Mainly because I make so many designs and never actually use them. But I wasn’t sure if they were rip offs or not. (I couldn’t see why they would be scams or anything, so I took to these forums to see what everyone else had to say.)