RE: Ed Repka image removal.
I've had a few people message me about this, so rather than wait anymore, I'll go ahead and address it. I was waiting, because I was hoping I could get more examples from Repka to support the post, but this will have to do.
Last week I posted an article on SBT about the new Gruesome cover. In it, I showed examples of how I felt Ed Repka cut and pasted elements of photos (which I believed to be copyrighted) into the cover. At the time, I did not believe that he cut and pasted and left them un-edited but rather I assumed he did that and then painted over them slightly in Photoshop.
Mr. Repka wrote me and sent me the following image showing the process for the foreground mummy on the cover and it shows that, at least for this specific mummy, the artwork is hand-drawn and then colored digitally.
On his request, I removed all examples of his art from the blog.
The reason why I removed them is because this has now entered a very grey area for me with this artist and his work. I don't have any problem with an artist properly referencing pictures, even copyrighted ones. I don't have any problem with people "pose swiping" as they do in comic books either. At least, not as far as the blog goes (personal feelings are another matter and I will not go into those at this time, but feel free to message me if you want more commentary in that regard).
Formally, I apologize to Mr. Repka for suggesting that his cover for Gruesome was plagiarized in any way shape or form without ample proof of my accusation.
As for the blog itself, this has taught me a very valuable lesson with regards to future posts. No longer will I be making posts where photographs are the primary offender on the piece. Make no mistake, you can get in a LOT of trouble for taking copyrighted photos from the internet and using them in your commercial artwork. But because of the difficulties for me to research if something is copyrighted, from free stock photo website, whether permission/license was granted, or whether it was traced/referenced ethically, it is more trouble than it is worth to feature articles about that type of plagiarism. And considering photo-manipulation (or "photo-bashing") is a legitimate method of art and design when done ethically, I am just going to have to give the benefit of the doubt to artists even if I have my suspicions. I will also likely be going through the blog soon and hiding other examples where photographs are the primary point of the post.
The soul of the blog is and was always meant to be about ARTISTS stealing from OTHER ARTISTS. That is much easier to call out when I see it and there is no defense when myself or the community at large finds these examples.
I appreciate Mr. Repka sending me the below image and I'll do my best to keep it in mind when making future posts.