I'm not 'anti people using my stuff'. It's far, far more complicated than that. Over the years if I have had something that helped others I would be all for letting them re-use it. Things, such as, reel bands for example. If (like recently) I've sat down and drawn them as vectors and they don't exist otherwise then fair enough.
I prefer to help people learn to create their own stuff, rather than them just pinching it and re-releasing it. That's not learning to do anything.
And that's how it's always been.
Good source art has always been something quite hard to obtain in FME land. And that's because usually those obtaining it are not aware of how it needs to be 'shot'. For example, just recently Steve said he would shoot me his Happy Viper top glass. He took a few, then I sent him over a sample of how a fruit machine glass should be shot. The next set of photos he sent me were absolutely spot on, he really nailed it.
However, 99% of the images (and flyers*) that end up doing the rounds are bloody horrible. This then leaves some poor sod to spend hours, nay, days or weeks sorting them out. Big Ghoulies for example had some of the worst base art I've seen as a layout creator. It was absolutely awful. As such I spent probably closing in on a week, at a good 8 hours a day cleaning it and drawing back in areas that had disappeared under a camera flash.It looked OK. Not perfect, as redrawn art is never perfect (graphical programs build things out of pixels, so you'll always end up with jagged edges) but as close as you can get using an app like Photoshop.
Then some one takes that art, says he's going to change the side art... Hang on a minute, now you're taking the f*****g piss.
It's easy for people who don't understand any of this to pass comment. Of course it is. It's much easier to give away someone else's hard work, but would you do that with your own? of course you wouldn't. If you went through life watching people steal your hard work then you would no doubt be very annoyed over it.
And FME does not automatically grant people liberties they would not get elsewhere, sorry. There's being decent and sharing things and then there's taking the f*****g piss. And there is a line drawn, just as there is anywhere else. FME does not have an immunity that the rest of life does not.
The sooner people realise this and understand it and stop with the behaviour the better. Once people start treating others in FME as they would real life people the better it's going to be.
It's time that those who do not make the layouts try and understand what goes into the layouts instead of being so bloody flippant.
I'll never, ever forget the time Oldskooler asked me to show him how to make a layout. I think he got to about four hours before getting up and walking away........
*most flyers have printing marks. I have a SCSI scanner that can remove them as it is being scanned. Pretty nifty bit of kit, but I would bet that 100% of all of the flyers scanned and uploladed did not have such a function and thus, the artwork is poor.
Edited by Deathclaw, 10 May 2014 - 09:10 AM.