[John]

Nakase wrote:

I’d like to ask the Windstone Staff this question actually.

What kind of airbrushes do you use for the Windstones? I’ve recieved some birthday money, and was hoping to invest it into a nice airbrush, asscessories, and a few PYOs. Is there a specific brand that is the best? Certain paints, tips, etc??? All I have to spend is $350, and if I can’t get the airbrush, I’ll be looking into Corel Painter 11.

Thank you in advance for your replies and your time,
~Nakase

I am pretty sure that the equipment we use is not distributed here but you are probably better off getting a true double action airbrush anyway. The trigger guns are meant for production painting and don’t allow the control needed to make a fine line or a course stipple spray like the double action ones. For artwork you should really master the double action kind and the Iwatas are probably about as good as they get. They do come in many sizes and you should do some research and define what you want to do with it before deciding on a particular model. It also depends on the type of paint or dye you are spraying as to which may work best.

[John]

Arlla wrote:

John wrote:

Arlla wrote:

So long as you aren’t, I’m not! I’m just curious to see how things play out. I hope we can keep getting amazing prices like that! I think the only thing that still might concern me is how we do official PYOs in the future.

I guess the only thing I still need to know is the above – what do I do about my current commissions?? Do I finish up what I have left, or do I explain the situation to them and appologize? If I am allowed to finish the ones I’ve already taken on, I can spread them out inbetween official pieces.

Do you really want to finish them?

Well… Yes! I’ve said I’d do something for these people and I’d like to follow through. …plus, I have a bunch of paid for unpainted PYOs for the purpose. The tiger people I don’t mind blowing off so much because I must have told them all about a hundred times that they just may never happen. But these other person commissions, yes, if I’m allowed, I’d like to finish them.
We can of course reemburse you for the unpainted stock if that should become an issue but, first, how many are we talking about that would need to be painted? I would agree about the Tiger ones, but my main concern I guess is that this turns out to be fair to Jennifer.

We just need to get a level of comfort that is fair to everybody and, if you think that this is too public a place, you may each want to discuss the situation privitely with us to make a case for, say, what you feel fair compensation for painting should be, and then we could offer up our thoughts for you to consider on this board. So far prices have been kind to us and it hasn’t been an issue, but you need a safety net and we need to share in any windfalls. Right now Helen has no guarantee as I remember it.

[John]

No idea and Chessie says she hasn’t done any. And I’m sure Amber hasn’t either. Do we ask Shaun about it?

[John]

I will second Helen’s opinion of Jennifer! You guys are both rare individuals and I really do feel responsible for dragging you into this.

Maybe, however it is a good time to try and get some communication across about all this. Yes we should probably have had a real set of rules and regulations but then they do sort of work through these things on their own and some of the posts have started to make some sense. I should have done a Paint Your Own search before responding to her as I had no idea that it was in wide use. That was really stupid. But what I was saying was there could be a Trademark issue in her use of terminology that was taken from us and that is true. Trademark rights are perfected by use so I can’t give you a definite answer about the strength of a claim but PYO and Magic Invisible Paint have been used in association with Windstone for some time. When there is a representation that is taken from someone to sell another’s product in that way it is probably, when push comes to shove, illegal. Not as straightforward as copyright but there are certainly claims of unfair competition that one would make. I think it went way beyond rude. That said I probably should have someone else deal with it because, I have to admit, some of these people do piss me off when they do things as blatant as that. Really, I’m very sorry about this.

I think we can turn this into a much needed discussion and get it worked out so they aren’t afraid to post their art.

I don’t know about Laurie either. ???

[John]

Arlla wrote:

So long as you aren’t, I’m not! I’m just curious to see how things play out. I hope we can keep getting amazing prices like that! I think the only thing that still might concern me is how we do official PYOs in the future.

I guess the only thing I still need to know is the above – what do I do about my current commissions?? Do I finish up what I have left, or do I explain the situation to them and appologize? If I am allowed to finish the ones I’ve already taken on, I can spread them out inbetween official pieces.

Do you really want to finish them?

[John]

twindragonsmum wrote:

So do words fall into the category of “trade dress”? Did I violate Windstone’s copyright when I wrote “Poad™ Ode” for Ski’s pink wedding Poad™? I don’t know… Was it inspired by Melody’s work? Most definately! Did I ask permission of Windstone to use their concept in my work? No, I didn’t. I didn’t even stop and think that I might need to; I just wrote it…

Don’t know if any of this makes sense – I hope I didn’t make it more confusing 😳

twindragonsmum

No, not words. Words would be Copyright or Trademark. I just now posted a reply in the other thread, Koshii Art, that provides a link to Wikipedia and goes on to relate a Windstone story and what I feel it adds up to.

[John]

KoishiiKitty wrote:

But any way, being that this is the general feeling, and the general understanding is soo…..greyish, it even has me wondering if I should go and ask a lawyer,” ok, how much would this Trade Dress cover???”

This is probably not the easiest concept to understand but it isn’t all that vague either. I think I have tried to explain it a few times without a lot of luck so here is a link that should have some authority and more info. than you may want to read but it looks like it is very accurate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress

To illustrate how this can factor into business and our concerns over losing rights to the qualities that distinguish Windstone I will relate something that happened many years ago. There was a small collectable store in Orange county that was producing and wholesaling knockoffs of our dragons that were sculpted by the guy’s wife but obviously taken from Melody’s work. We even had someone go into her studio and found her working with a Windstone dragon perched right there on her sculpting table although, even without that, because the dragons were decorated with the same patterns of paint colored dots and gold trim as ours, anyone could see the similarity and could become confused. That similarity in the paint and trim extended to one or two dragons that she had sculpted that were not copied from Melody’s. We ended up in a lawsuit and the upshot of it was that we wanted, as part of the settlement agreement, to prohibit them from using our manner of decoration on the non-Windstone related dragons in order to preserve the rights to our distinctive Trade Dress which has always signified Windstone dragons. The guy was a tough old fellow from Eastern Europe and he just wouldn’t give up until we made some kind of concession in the settlement. So, in the end, he agreed to pay us a fair amount of money, stop making the knockoffs, stop painting the remaining dragons with airbrushed stripes like our dragons were painted at the time and stop putting colored dots on the scales. He just refused to quit the gold trim without us both spending a lot more in legal fees, so we gave him his concession and gave him a license, for a dollar, to use the gold trim. We didn’t give up our distinctive Trade Dress and we all moved on.

These are the types of situations that you just have to deal with when you have a commercial line of artwork. It always feels like a total waste of time and energy and we hate it, but, as we keep trying to hammer home to emerging artists or designers, the strongest asset you can develop is your originality. And you won’t ever find yourself on solid ground if you lose it. And all the skill in the world won’t replace it.

All of the above is meant to be informative and constructive and should not be construed any other way. If you truly want to sell your art in this world, and succeed, then go for it. But learn as much as you can about where you are headed and (this is pointed at on one in particular) prepare yourself with your strengths of originality. If you are even debating about the nuances of similarity, then you are probably headed in the wrong direction. Does that make any sense? I will continue to hammer at this as long as I have anybody listening (or a captive audience).

[John]

This has turned into a real mess of understanding, misunderstanding, unintentionally misconstruing, etc. and I do realize it is largely my doing for not paying attention to how much of what was being offered for sale on the forum. I have to stand by the decision to remove the casts that were for sale because they were definitely a commercial venture with a commercial website and I don’t ever remember sanctioning that sort of advertising. But I do remember removing some others.

I personally think we can provide a place for everyone to show their artwork but we all need to decide how to do that and define what is not appropriate and what is. We do need your help in doing this. Input is good. So if we can turn this into a conversation without extreme reactions we will figure it out. A lot of you do sell your artwork through other venues that are not, in my mind, as commercial as a store (be it web store or street store) and so it is pretty confusing as to where to draw the line. Or we should just say “no sales” to make it fair. We are still debating this and you can certainly join in. All I ask is that you all read the posts carefully and try to stick with the words and intent of the dialog so we can stay on the same track. I will see if we can get a thread up that opens with the key ideas tomorrow. It’s getting late and we need to go home.

[John]

Thanks to the both of you for getting this deep into the discussion and giving it so much thought. When Jennifer sent me the thread and said we may have a problem here I looked at it and she was obviously using the forum to solicit sales of her castings both painted and unpainted, calling them Paint Your Own and PYO’s and with magic paint I thought, OK, there may be a trademark issue here as we have been using those terms to market Winstone for quite some time and the public has come to associate them with our products. Those terms were of course used by Keeperoftheflocks because she wanted to leverage our usage into a tool to sell her casts. So I told her that first, the Windstone forum was never intended to become a marketplace for other commercial products un-related to Windstone and also that there was probably a trademark issue in the use of her terminology, particularly PYO and Magic Paint. And that I strongly recommended that she remove any Windstone derived (I don’t remember my exact words) that could be a problem from her website.

I did express the idea of a trademark issue with Jennifer but, in my mind, the primary thing is the misuse of the forum. Why should anybody go nova because they are edited out of a forum where they are a guest and be mad about it and not embarrassed?

You know, there are only a couple of these people who are a problem and boy do they react! The Purplecat person is a serious issue and the way I have come to read it is she is simply manipulating Melody into a position that we will all regret. But she does seem to have a fan base that jump right on board. I have not been following her posts and have not looked at her website so I don’t know the extent of Purplecat’s selling on line or the forum lately. Melody says that she asked her to remove what she was selling on the forum and she did so. But I also sense from her posts on this thread that she is not happy about it. I wasn’t really serious about sending her a lawsuit Helen. But I don’t think that playing her game is productive either.

The Keeper person, on the other hand, has a pretty extensive commercial website (maybe Purplecat does too, I don’t remember) and really ought to understand that it is pretty disrespectful of that artist and her company that she says she idolizes to post what she did. The usual suspects were there in a heartbeat to stir thing up of course. So are they just clueless? Or what? I don’t know. But I do know that every time these things happen there seems to be no explaining anything to any of them as they refuse to listen and then distort the replies and postings. And you guys are completely right. I should know better by now.

So what now? TwoHuberts just called while I was in the middle of this to put in her two cents and offer to help moderate the forum. What do you think? Could she be of use as a moderator? A moderator who is no staff could be a very good thing I would guess and she knows a lot of these people and yet seems to come off as pretty neutral on the forum. I asked her to email the three of us with her thoughts about the hubbub.

I don’t really see the need to ban all sales including original artwork. I would vote for just commercial work that is offered for sale on a website, or in a store or gallery. That’s a pretty understandable definition. I can also see banning all sales but then do you keep them from saying “I intend to sell these” or what?

I need to go feed the troops and will try to address this some more tomorrow when my head clears. well, maybe whether or not my head clears is more correct.

[John]

Here is a quote from the forum and my response to consider.

Quote:

can you define what you mean by Sharing artwork?

for instance, how i see the word, If I share something, I do not make any money on it what so ever. It is posted to “share”, so people can share in seeing it, or I may give it as a gift..to share with some one…but no money is exchanged for it.

But the way you word your sentence gives me the impression that personal pieces of art as individual being sold( for example, I paint a water color, I sell the water color…but I do not sell copies of it)may be considered ok, as apposed to selling “production” of an art piece.

it sounds slightly confusing.

I don’t know either. We (the staff) are debating this and whether a senseable line can be drawn that won’t get abused or misinturprited. Sharing one of a kind artwork with forum members (and whoever else views the forum) certainly means letting them view it but if we say it’s OK to sell off the site then are we going to leave the door open a little wider for members to create links to comercial sites that will, one day, start the problem all over again? Maybe we should just set up a gallery for the sale of original art and really keep a lid on any attempts to use it or the forum for comercial gain. And by that I mean real businesses with websites or stores. ???

[John]

KoishiiKitty wrote:

John wrote:

A few thoughts on this.

We very much share your concerns about discouraging the sharing of artwork. I think that the thing that is getting overlooked, and that I have tried to make clear, is that we have had no real problem with members sharing their original artwork. But is it right for someone to advertise their paint your own sculpture business on the windstone forum? These pieces are for sale on a comercial website with the intention of them being mass produced. This was not an example of the sharing of artwork. Should we allow the advertisement of cars, real estate, computers, or any other commodity? I think we all agree that won’t fly. When a piece of artwork becomes a production commodity does it belong here? How about Harmony Kingdom, Sandicast or any other commercially produced artwork? Wouldn’t we need to include the commercial work of their artists?

can you define what you mean by Sharing artwork?

for instance, how i see the word, If I share something, I do not make any money on it what so ever. It is posted to “share”, so people can share in seeing it, or I may give it as a gift..to share with some one…but no money is exchanged for it.

But the way you word your sentence gives me the impression that personal pieces of art as individual being sold( for example, I paint a water color, I sell the water color…but I do not sell copies of it)may be considered ok, as apposed to selling “production” of an art piece.

it sounds slightly confusing.

I don’t know either. We (the staff) are debating this and whether a senseable line can be drawn that won’t get abused or misinturprited. Sharing one of a kind artwork with forum members (and whoever else views the forum) certainly means letting them view it but if we say it’s OK to sell off the site then are we going to leave the door open a little wider for members to create links to comercial sites that will, one day, start the problem all over again? Maybe we should just set up a gallery for the sale of original art and really keep a lid on any attempts to use it or the forum for comercial gain. And by that I mean real businesses with websites or stores. ???

[John]

Pam Thompson wrote:

Jennifer wrote:

things that are one of a kind (such as originals) are okay… things that are not made in quantity such as prints, sculpture casts, etc etc are NOT okay

Wait, huh? OOAKs are ok, things not made in quantity are not? If something isn’t made in quantity, isn’t it an OOAK?
Pam- That has got to be a typo. I will edit it.

[John]

Adaneth wrote:

drag0nfeathers wrote:

It’s just my humble opinion, I’m not mad or anyhting, just a little emotional for my fellow artists.

For what it’s worth, that’s how I feel too. Not that my artwork’s good enough to sell or I even want to do so, (and it seems like strictly 2d artists aren’t having much trouble) but when I see this ‘trade dress’ being bandied about in such a way that it seems to be crushing the dreams and works of the next generation of fantasy sculpting artists…well, just because it’s ‘legal’ doesn’t make it ethical, and it’s really distressing me to see this happening multiple times with different artists.

I saw so much stuff for sale on this thread over the course of the last year and a half that it never occured to me it wasn’t being ‘policed’ the way the other subforums are.

No, it wasn’t really being “policed” very well and maybe that was contributing to the misunderstandings here. There is a line somewhere that must be observed and, although we know that we cannot always trust the forum to chart its own perfect course, we also don’t want to police it at all. But sometimes it needs a little correction…

We have always tried to make an exceptional effort to inform emerging artists in how to create artwork that will hold up to the tests of originality and be successful in the marketplace. And we will continue to inform anyone who asks. We have both spent many hours of our lives consulting with strangers in matters of business and the production of artwork. We in no way feel we own the marketplace but, because she has never taken a thing from others, we do own the rights to Melody’s artwork and that is the important lesson. As an aside: I do think that this has created a healty exchange and debate that will help us to try and articulate some kind of policy that is acceptable to all, and restores a level of comfort so we can all get back to work, be it art or business in general.

[John]

A few thoughts on this.

We very much share your concerns about discouraging the sharing of artwork. I think that the thing that is getting overlooked, and that I have tried to make clear, is that we have had no real problem with members sharing their original artwork. But is it right for someone to advertise their paint your own sculpture business on the windstone forum? These pieces are for sale on a comercial website with the intention of them being mass produced. This was not an example of the sharing of artwork. Should we allow the advertisement of cars, real estate, computers, or any other commodity? I think we all agree that won’t fly. When a piece of artwork becomes a production commodity does it belong here? How about Harmony Kingdom, Sandicast or any other commercially produced artwork? Wouldn’t we need to include the commercial work of their artists?

[John]

First, you, Helen, Amber, Chessie, etc. are Windstone related artists as far as I am concerned (maybe less so in Amber’s case) and I see nothing wrong with promoting anything you do as long as it isn’t creating your own line of sculpture. That was the whole intent of getting you involved. To try to get your name out there in a positive way that would help your career. Whatever you guys do in the way of art comes back to Windstone in enthusiasm to collect your Windstone pieces. What these artists like Keeperoftheflocks and Purplecat are doing is to try and build businesses on the back of Windstone and get a free ticket to sales. That’s just not right and I think that most people would never have the nerve to go there.

I think Melody is making a huge mistake in interacting with Purplecat and not just sending her a lawsuit. I think a whole lot of entitlement issues and manipulation is being passed off as misunderstanding.

We do need to define a policy and I would think that the line for posting artwork would simply be that no commercial artwork posting is allowed. We could create a separate site for non-sculpture commercial work such as graphic novels, drawings, and paintings but even that can be hard to retract if we should start publishing stuff again, so it’s probably a bad idea. Maybe one of a kinds only?

Jennifer why don’t you go ahead and post something to the effect of what you said about your size and need to be somewhat protective. Not that Disney would put up with anything of the sort either.

[Author]

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