Are Colored Bases "Real Art"? - Discussion

apparently, you're not allowed to do/advertise any sort of adopt or ych that's on a base that you didn't create yourself, even if you paid for the right to use these bases for personal profit.

this has started a conversation on other platforms regarding this rule and what constitutes "real art", if people who use bases for profit "cheating", etc, so i became curious about how other people really view bases and their use.

this is not meant to drag up arguments, fights or personal attacks. merely a sort of open ended poll

I understand the reason for the rule because I don't think they can moderate who actually have the right to use the bases and who doesn't. It's just easier to manage. 

That said, if you have the right to use it, then by all means. As long as you let people know that it's a base, then I don't think it would be 'cheating'. You aren't lying about how the thing was made. Whether I consider it "real art" or not...I don't even know what I consider that to be. Apparently taping a banana on a wall is art so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>I understand the reason for the rule because I don't think they can moderate who actually have the right to use the bases and who doesn't. It's just easier to manage. 

that's the part that i don't really get though? like it's not their job to monitor who has "rights" and who doesn't - it would be the artist selling their linework to do that. and i mean, obviously you can't be on every site everywhere at once, but with p2u bases, you're not going to actually have the linework unless you traced it or someone else who bought it shared it with you. and again, that's an artist side problem and not really a site problem. if it cropped up in their userbase they could freeze/suspend the account for art theft or whatever, but there's literally nothing stopping someone from doing the same thing to someone else who had posted art on wolvden, versus somewhere else.

&yeah if someone was all "nope, totally my lines, i made this 100%" and they didn't, that's clearly not cool.

I just wanted to clarify that Veila is pretty much on the money with their comment about "they can't moderate who actually has the right to use the bases and who doesn't".  The rule isn't in place because we don't consider coloured bases to be "real art".  The rule is in place because we take the rights of artists incredibly seriously.  We do not want a Wolvden player to steal someone's base/lineart and profit off of it without the artist's permission.

We understand it can be annoying to be told you can't actually profit off a free-to-use base/lineart unless the artist has a Wolvden account and posts their permission on your sales topic.  Unfortunately, that's just how things are on Wolvden.  These rules were discussed with one of our site artists, who has been in the art game for decades.  Art theft is extremely prevalent online and we don't want anyone to feel as though their works have been stolen or used without permission; thus, why our rule is "the artist must have an account and post clear visible permission for you to earn a profit".

"that's the part that i don't really get though? like it's not their job to monitor who has "rights" and who doesn't"

It's more that they might not want to promote having stolen artwork sold on their site. Allowing bases opens up a kind of can of worms that would allow art stealing to go practically unnoticed and they don't want that (I'm assuming). There also might be legal aspects but take that with a grain of salt because I have no idea on that front.

Ah, thank you Katze!

>We understand it can be annoying to be told you can't actually profit off a free-to-use base/lineart unless the artist has a Wolvden account and posts their permission on your sales topic.

except it isn't just free use bases, it's bases that i paid for? like the free use ones cannot profit, i get that part. there are a lot of base artists out there who are explicit in saying you can't use their free lines for profit (or you have to purchase a profit "license" or "donate" to them to do so, etc) and you can't monitor that. that's fine.

i guess veila has a point with it opening a can of worms regarding the free/paid bases. there just wouldn't be enough man power to verify what's free and what's paid, and it's easier to just not allow them at all. but the point remains that yes, it's very frustrating!

this conversation re: the rules wasn't my only point of discussion though lol
outside of wolvden, how do people (nebulous you) feel about bases and their use in profiting?

side note/edit: i wasn't accusing the site staff believing that base aren't isn't "real art" but it had been an anon comment i received on tumblr along those lines that sparked this line of thinking

Pay-to-use bases/linearts also fall under this rule as there isn't really a way that we can verify someone has the rights to use that base/lineart.  Receipts can be photoshopped, emails can be forwarded/faked, etc.  It's extremely messy to try and moderate, so rather than have our staff members spend time trying to figure out if someone is able to profit off of a base, we ultimately decided it's a lot easier to disallow them completely—unless an artist is willing to sign up to Wolvden, verify they are the artist, and post permission for someone to profit off their works.