A lot of artists have it in their tos weather or not the commissioner is allowed to have another artist color their work. For some artists its a-ok and other people are just incredibly greedy about it. Some are just weird. Like 'no I don't color, no you can't get it colored its MINE'

I guess our digital world has changed my view slightly on "ownership"

If your commission results in a physical copy being sent to you, you can have anyone colour _that copy_. If you want to make another copy of the B/W work and colour that[1] or make copies of that coloured physical piece, you need permission.

This has been the way things work for decades.


[1] This in inherent to digital work.

For DECADES???? Somehow I don't think so. I think that might just be going opinion, but I don't think it's carved on some digital stone tablet. At least not as far as I've ever seen.

Yes decades, it has nothing to do with the work being digital but simply how copyright itself works. It's just as true if you were to pay someone to take a pencil and draw on some paper.

Remember that the US was the last major hold out on "work for hire" being the default, and that ended in the 1980s. When you commission a work, unless you have a contract that says otherwise, the copyright for that work remains with the artist. While you can do things to a physical copy you happen to own[1], you can't actually make more copies without permission of the artist, (either express or implied[2]).


[1] The precedent setting example is a guy who was selling Elfquest buttons he made by punching disks out of the comics and mounting them on a blank button.

[2] e.g. A digital commission would include the implied permission to make the mostly incidental copies needed to store, access and display the work.

fair enough. But basically unprosecutable.

Only in the sense that it's hard to catch someone doing it unless they make it public.

So about as hard as people who strip signatures and post the work as their own.

I could see that. Glad you educated me on that bit. Not that it affects me because I wouldn't care--I'm of the mindset that you paid for those 1s and 0s, so do with them as you want. The thought stemmed from all the (IMO) lame stunts pulled by artists these days for the sake of turning a buck, clinging to a copyright and honesty on the Internet. What is to stop them? What is to stop someone from copying the style of another artist under that auspice and undercutting? I'm not saying dont have laws to regulate, but interjecting reality. Well, Internet reality--whatever that's worth.

I got my ASS chewed off (almost literally) for doing that without permission

I still have the originals, and they are still B&W, but the digital versions got colored by an artist that REALLY needed the money (bills, drugs, or something at the time)

so, burned once, I'm make sure it was ok with the original artist first.

I'd have to go with this being a likely sore point with the artists:

Having someone else color the lineart as a separate commission will likely be looked upon as lost income due to an underhanded tactic. IF the artist only does B/W work or has so much commission traffic that they almost never do color, I imagine that it would be better received if you asked permission up-front before the commission is formalized. And if the artist in question does do color, don't expect this to work, unless the person you're considering for the color job has godlike skills that you wanted to see applied to the first artist's lineart, and you frame the commission as a collaboration.

Imitating another artist's style in a commission has the same even better potential for ill will. Anyone entering onto a commission intending to copy someone's else's style at a lower price should probably keep quiet about all those details and hope it gets chalked up as coincidence by viewers. If the artist being copied is sufficiently popular, someone's going to put 2+2 together and call out the torch-and-pitchfork brigade, as one artist whose style resembles Jay Naylor's (fisk) found out. And those images weren't even commissions if I recall correctly, Naylor had to personally tell his fans to knock it off in a journal (since deleted).

As for adoptables, I don't have any experience with them, so I'm going to say it depends on the artist. Ask first.

A lot of good points.

If there were an artist who could feasibly copy several artists style sufficiently enough to bring out the nastys, likely that artist would be a very good artist and wouldn't do it. But I see a lot of people doing work in other folks style as a sort of gift art?? I have tried to imitate the art in Disgaea on several occasions. I always feel like I fall short of the mark--like to the point that unless I told someone that's what I was doing, it wouldn't be instantly recognizable. Crybringer on DA emulates that style fairly well. R4 has been drawing for a year (he says) and his style is close to Doxy/Onta/etc.

I'm just floored by the distances people go to turn a buck out in "these mean streets." I just find some of the things that are selling as commissions these days to be a poor effort in creating art and more of a manufacturer of BS 90s era taiwan knockoffs.

And incidentally, I'm not a big fan of Fisk's work. He seems to be able to get fame from quantity not quality.