[John]

Greater Basilisk wrote:

I’m 19. I’m not perfect, but I think I’m old enough to make my own decisions in this regard. My parents were fine with it too until my aunt and uncle butted in and flamed them.

Well, let’s see… You’re into dragons, basilisks and flaming griffins, you spend a whole lot of time conversing and ranting with others in the Windstone cult, you like to play with guns, your politics sound like they border on dangerous and your off to California to stay with people you’ve never met, which worries your parents. And if they ever find out what the rest of us are like they will surely lock you in your room, sever your computer cable and have your passport revoked!

And you are coming up to see us when you are here. Yes?

[John]

starbreeze wrote:

I wondered about model glue myself. There are a number of brands including Revell. Any hobby store should have it or Michaels.

Chessie, We have a dried up tube of vinyl glue at the shop which should be replaced or I think PVC pipe cement will work.

[John]

Nambroth wrote:

WolfenMachine wrote:

OOOO new idea…Nam, can you ask Melody if you can do prints of the male and female griffs? You could draw them flying or hanging out in a favorite tree or somesuch, and offer prints of said drawing through Windstone as options for ‘owning’ one of these beautiful griffs

Hmm! Offering prints though Windstone is a whole other legal ballpark. I’ll keep it in mind but Windstone is so busy with making so many things for you guys and trying to relocate to Oregon that it’ll probably be on the ‘back burner’ for a long time. I’m honored you like my work so much though!
We would love to offer prints of Jennifer’s work some day, should she agree to do so. We had intened to publish Amber’s work and maybe some new pieces of Melody’s as well but the project is on hold until we get settled again and can hire someone to manage it.

[John]

dragonessjade wrote:

I hope you had a good day and didn’t get water dumped on your head like this guy.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what my days are like.

Hey, thank you all for the greetings! Did Amber leak my B.D. or is my lovely daughter to blame?

[John]

purplecat wrote:

With the trouble stirred up by my work and the bad feelings I may have caused I doubt they’d ever touch me with a ten foot pole…ack.

Not to worry, we have a twelve foot pole. It’s called the Windstone forum and I’m continually impressed and amazed by you guys. I mean to say you could all argue the leg off a marble statue of Justice! At the least you have, within six pages, gnawed enough off to balance her scales to the point that I’m left with only a few scraps of misunderstandings and misstatements to clear up.

First, in matters of repaints, I have never told anyone that they cannot repaint a Windstone figurine. In fact I go out of my way to say that that they can do whatever they like with it in accordance with the prevailing laws. But, that does mean you cannot create new artwork that that infringes on another’s property rights and, in this case, as with the PYO pieces or any other artwork, it means not creating anything that is SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR to Windstone artwork.

The crux of a finding of copyright infringement is that the offending artwork is found to be SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR BY A JURY OF PEERS. I feel that within the forum we have a jury of peers so when it is noticed, by me or anyone else that there is work that appears too similar I take a very critical look at it. When more than one person is pointing it out then I have to believe there will be a strong consensus and I act on that.

Making it clear in a sale that the piece has been repainted is no issue here unless the seller was trying to pass off something as a work of Windstone that is not. The issue is copying the look of a Windstone piece and creating substantial similarity. That is an infringement no matter how much notice is given or how it is sold or traded. Keschet’s argument, although I’m sure it is intended to be constructive, is a total red herring.

In regard to the marketing of limited production and artist edition pieces please do realize that in the twenty-two years of Windstone’s existence we have employed, I would guess, well over a hundred artisans who became very skilled in their work and some of them exceptionally so, but we have only employed a few artists. As we stress with everyone who comes to us for employment, or who’s work we have the opportunity to critique, it is originality and the intellect in their creative expression that marks an artist. Although we are often humbled by the talent and skills of a great artisan, and we would all agree the world needs many more of them, it is the artist who breaks the ranks of convention who will be remembered in the end.

The PYOs have created the dilemma for us of betting on a route, or business model if you will, that will hopefully satisfy our objective of promoting the creation of artists within an arena of enjoyment for artisans. For instance, giving license, which we could do, within that arena to create pieces under the umbrella of Windstone copyrights would be a fantastic opportunity for both pleasure and business. Or is it too much counter to the objective of creating a balancing force to the art dumbing effect of the internet plagiarism that we abhor? (I refer to art here in the broader sense, not Windstone per sec). I really don’t know.

That you all put this fascinating community of the Windstone forum first and, in the end, stand up (or roll over, as the case may be) and fight for the whole before the self does leave me in awe. Who woulda thunk. Is it something intrinsic in the powers of art? Or does life just work better when you involve yourself in fantasy? Oh geez, that just made me think of Bush, so I’ll go with the powers of art.

[John]

purplecat wrote:

But every piece I’ve done has dorsal shading and dark shading on the legs, wings, crest, and tail. It’s a mimicking of nature, almost all animals will have a lighter underbelly and under-areas….The pink is shaded the same….By making this call you put me entirely out of painting any sort of dragon or fantasy creature….mostly due to my skill level…If I did really bad quality repaints it wouldn’t be an issue. Sorry to respond in this manner but this is my only income as I’m an at home mom. This manner of shading is really the only way to paint this type of creature and it be a believable color scheme.

We just don’t want them to look like a Windstone piece to the degree that they could be considered to be substantially similar. We don’t have any rights to prior art or the hand of nature. Not quite, but, in the case of nature I’m not really sure where one would try to draw the ultimate line. I think it would be, as I explained in previous threads, when our “trade dress” hinges on it and imitators are creating confusion as to what is a real Windstone and what isn’t. Then again, Lizards are lizards and have particular and similar markings but if there is no prior art of dragons painted in “natural” coloration or markings, then what? Dragons don’t exist in nature.

There, how is that for another obscure and subjective answer? The whole issue is, of course, more of a subjective area than any of us wishes it to be. That said, it is always amazing to me how many times people recognize non Windstone pieces as knockoffs when I don’t see it at all (we never act on the truly marginal ones but they are sent to me all the time).

[John]

purplecat wrote:

One last thing….In my defense. The spectral is mostly gold and red, if the purple wings are an issue I could easily do them red and gold on any future pieces…this spectral’s wings were broken, which is why he ended up with me, and that’s why I chose purple on his wing area, it masks my imperfect sculpting repair. It’s near impossible to smoothly blend from gold to purple directly, the purple layers over the red so I couldn’t really do much different with the spine and still have red in his paint job….Also, EVERY dragon I do anything to is clearly labeled, “repair and repaint by TDawn Maddox.” I’m really trying to be careful and not step on any toes. I’m soooo sorry for the confusion.

First, thank you for clearly marking your quite nicely executed pieces as repaired and repainted. Now, my carefully considered answer to the question about similarity.

The answer I have always gotten from our attorney to the question “what would infringe a Windstone copyright” in regard to repainted pieces is (as I understand it) the following. You can paint them any way you want but if they are offered for sale, published, or done as work for hire, they had better not look like a Windstone. Remember, the standard is not one of exactness in replication. The standard is “substantial similarity” and it is the patterns and shading of paint that give Windstone pieces their distinctive appearance. So, is your piece substantially similar to a Windstone painted piece? I would have to say it is and that Jennifer is way right in her call on this one. And the actual coloration is not the issue. Although it certainly lends to the infringing character of the painting you just have to look at the pieces and ask “would a jury find substantial similarity?”. Pretty gray concept? Maybe, but how else would you do it? And when a lawyer is pointing out and arguing all the aspects of similarity to the jury “substantial” becomes a lot less vague.

I know that this sounds kind of petty on one level but it is one of the property protections that has kept Windstone products as unique as they are over the years and has allowed us to continue to offer Melody’s work for sale. The PYO line and the forum were both somewhat calculated risks as we knew issues of use would arise but we decided that there would be the added benefit of a chance to help educate by example and, to that end, I hope we are making progress. We should all try to maintain a clear understanding of the objectives of this forum so I also do hope that nobody gets overly upset, defensive or embarrassed when they inadvertently become part of the process.

[John]

skigod377 wrote:

We would have to determine the official opening date. I cant tell by the member list cuz some of them were tests. I wonder when it did first open?

Dragon could well have been a test. I think Ski was the first member, on the first day, July 4.

[John]

skigod377 wrote:

John says they dont really worry about the gargoyles too much because they dont really make alot of money off them.

That’s not quite right. We will stop any knockoff that is easily shown to be an infringement. In the world of gargoyles it is often somewhat harder to seperate those sculptures that infringe from the ones that are created under the influence of Windstone but don’t quite infringe. For instance, we can’t claim a right to the stone finish, (but, if push comes to shove, anything that is mistaken for a Windstone piece because the appearence created enough confusion could be said to be an illegal use of our “Trade Dress”). With the dragons, kirins, etc. we have copyright protection of the decoration as well as the sculpture so it is often more clear cut.

[John]

asinnamon wrote:

I really like it, and thought it was easy to use. My only suggestion would be to add USPS shipping, maybe like Priority, as an option. I know for me personally UPS takes FOREVER to get over here, like 7 or 8 business days….I’m so impatient!!

USPS is supposed to be an option for shipping and it is the only way we like to ship international orders. For some reason, yet to be discovered, it isn’t coming up as a choice. We are working on it.

Tom has now put a link on our directory page to the store. Still hard to find, but we will make it more obvious when the store is working 100 per cent.

[John]

SilverArrow wrote:

Dragon Master wrote:

skigod377 wrote:

Dragon Master wrote:

Can we get this topic to ba a sticky so it’s ALWAYS at the top of the page for General Windstone posts???? This way we can always find the store

Why dont you just go to the home page and find the store? It never moves.

I could not find it on the home page that is why I asked

Yea, I didn’t see it there either. I just used Nirvana’s link.

The store is “a work in progress” and we are having problems with international orders and the normal debugging stuff like the text color. I will try to get on it this week and get our web guy to figure it out. Please continue to keep us informed.

Tom didn’t put up a link on the home page because we don’t have all the pieces in the store yet, just the limited production ones. We will soon do the whole line and link it better. Glad you like the way it works and looks. We wanted to get it up and running before we tweeked it into shape but I am also pretty happy with how it looks and works so I don’t think we will have to do anything major to it for a while.

[John]

pegasi1978 wrote:

Pam Thompson wrote:

The wings ARE off of the mother griff gargoyle!

Wow didn’t know that. Hmmm makes me wonder even more if I should submit it to John.

This piece is a good example of one that may have been inspired by us but is an original sculpture that I don’t think infringes on our copyrights. If someone were to have a whole line of pieces that were inspired by us and buyers were consistantly confused in thinking they were buying a Windstone product it would be an infringement on our Trade Dress. That gets pretty hard to prove however. The fact that you guys questioned it shows just how strong and recognisable a look we have created.

[John]

Nirvanacat13 wrote:

Where are you from? How did you start sculpting? How did you get together with Miss Melody and Windstone Editions? That should get us started Hope to hear from you soon!

Maya does intend to jump right into the dialogue but I know she has been quite busy and is a bit unfamiliar with the forum and gallery protocol. You should, however, hear from her soon and I know she also intends to put up captions that explain her pieces in the gallery. Next time she is in town maybe we can get together for archery and another great meal.

[John]

SilverArrow wrote:

foxfeather wrote:

I’m particularly interested in the Heron/Bird Woman figure in your gallery. What is the title and is there a story behind it?

Yes, I would love to know about that one as well.
Well, here’s the story. It wasn’t Maya’s piece. We made a mistake and posted an image of a sculpture by one of Maya’s friends that was on the disk she sent us. It’s close enough to Maya’s style that we didn’t catch it. Chessie has taken it down. oops.

[John]

Nytetyger wrote:

Hi-

Yeah, I know, 99.99% of the posts here are about the other part of windstone, but I figured this was a good place to ask a Journeystone question too.

Melody? WIll the journeystone pods ever be released in another color other than the creamy white? I just got my first (Healing) and LOVE the organic feel of the curves; I spend more time HOLDING the darn thing that putting it on a shelf, and the tiny size is perfect for that!

I’m about to buy another… and prolly another… they’re so darn NEAT, but I’d love one in a steely grey… or a soft chocolate… or an onyx… or even better, a deep blue.

Any hope that might happen? And please, tell the artist I ADORE her work, and that I think I now need to now save up to get the larger pieces to place all over my home.

Nytetyger

I think there is a problem with your email address. I keep getting bounced PM notices. And I can’t mail to your address.

[Author]

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