I just followed @Lee-White 's suggestion of watching the flip through without sound. Even though I had been a bit sceptical with the sound on it surprised me how few pages he compared and how dissimilar the page layouts were.

Even more obvious was how many pages of Parker's are skipped, and how much scrolling back and forward Dunn has to do through his own book to share the examples - the charge that the order of presentation is too familiar relies on the order he was showing in the video.

It is amazing how damning things look when presented with emotion and story.

Whether Parker has unintentionally absorbed too much of Dunn's terminology to have crossed a line in his headings. I don't know. But the claims that are being made against it that it is almost identical I don't think will stand up.

What a mess. It does seem a good example of confirmation bias. Suspicious of Parker's book from the few previewed pages, a shocked watch of a flip through had him pick out similarities whilst dismissing differences as attempts to disguise similarities.

I feel for him, it must have felt awful. But he could have raised concerns with his publisher and they could have got lawyers to look at both books and delay/stop publication if necessary.

But what he has done instead leaves him open to legal action for defamation and loss of earnings.

Absolutely gutting for both men. Both to believe that someone has stolen your work and to be accused of doing so. I feel for both of them. I hope Jake is ok and that the publishers and their lawyers can sort this out.

There are definitely elements that will be common to all instruction on the same topic, because they are the skills that are required to e.g. draw well. And there might be an element of someone teaching something so clearly that it seems the obvious way to teach it to people going forward.

What a horrible situation for you both.

Let's hope no one has copyrighted the idea of explaining one point perspective with a road with fence posts and telegraph poles or lampposts because that is in basically every book on drawing.

I understand why Dunn was upset at the similarity. The problem is once you think someone has stolen your work, it biases how you look at it, so differences, instead of counting against the theory, are interpreted as devious attempts to hide the similarities.

I really do feel for them both, thinking you have been ripped off is awful, and being publicly accused of plagerism when you were getting ready to launch a new book is awful. I hope this can be resolved through the proper channels.

I just wanted to add, given how many horrible comments Jake will be dealing with across social media at the moment, how much I learned from Jake's SVS course "How to Draw Everything" and how I value his teaching.

I was pretty good at drawing from reference but drawings from my imagination or if I wanted to change the perspective or angle of a reference I found it difficult and my drawings felt really flat (unintentionally!).

I found Jake's step by step approach to drawing solid looking 3D shapes and combining them and cutting into them very helpful to improving my drawings.

So helpful that if I were ever to teach drawing, exercises with 3d shapes would probably be part of what I share with others.

It is interesting the implications of be protective of copyright of teaching methods - whilst understanding why instructors would be protective of their work. (I'm speaking more generally here than this situation with Jake who had a prior history of teaching).

Does it mean that if you learn from a book or workshop or YouTube video that you are not allowed to teach? My knowledge is definitely a combination of the books, videos and practical experience I have. At what point does that morph from being derivative of the people I have learned from and become something I can teach myself?

A legal demand to the publishers to prevent publication until the matter was cleared up would seem to be the route to deal with arguments about copyright. As Will had with his kick starter.

Let's hope these things don't come in threes @Lee-White There's one experience that you don't want to have in common for the podcast!

I'm surprised the video is still up with that title and thumbnail considering the defamation. It's one thing to do it in anger and shock at thinking his work had been stolen, but the comments section of his video is evidence of the damage he has done to Jake's reputation and of how he has materially benefitted from the accusations (all the people buying his books in support and cancelling Jake's).

He must be very, very certain even in the cool light of day that there isn't another explanation even though he hasn't seen the actual book. Surely he must realise that this is better handled by the publishers and/or lawyers rather than a YouTube/Twitter/Instagram spat.

I'm not sure his followers have realised that the implication is that if they learnt to draw using his methods (which may have been painstakingly worked out independently - but are largely common to many art teachers) they can't teach anyone to learn to draw/ink the same way.

I've just been watching the first part of How to Make Money in Illustration. It's helping me to focus on what I need to do to make a business from my art.

Lee, you talk about the website that you had at the time and how people could buy originals, prints and licence the image right from the image page. It was really clever.

It looks like your current website has moved away from that model and I was wondering if that was just a feature you weren't able to replicate when you updated your website, or if you had consciously moved away from that idea - if maybe it wasn't working for some reason?

Thanks for the course!

Ethan Becker's take: https://youtu.be/_Xjli9kzkoU

It's not particularly flattering to Jake (it shows Dunn's accusations and he attempts to compare with other books and doesn't find close matches).

However, he is a bit sceptical throughout and his main takeaway is that just because one side of the story looks damning doesn't mean that is what happened, other explanations exist and this mob justice thing - even if Jake was guilty - is terrifying.

Perfect, that really solved my problem, thank you!

I only came across this channel when it was referenced by one of the channels who had also had a video about this plagerism situation and this is the only video I have watched of his. It definitely looks like he's on the entertainment side of art YouTube rather than educational

His comments section definitely seemed to be more sceptical about the allegations anyway.

Perfect, that really solved my problem, thank you!

Hi,

I'm having trouble working out how to control the line weight when I'm using the brush tool to stroke a pen tool path. I have tried using a couple of differently shaped brushes, and I have tried increasing and decreasing the size of the brush tool but I keep having the following issue:

I'm getting extremely varied line weights when I stroke the paths. It can look beautiful (much more so than when I use the brush tool alone!) but it means I can get extremely thick bits - which I can control a bit by reducing the size of the brush, and I get extremely thin/non-existent tapers to the end of the lines.

This means I'm having to redraw lots of them. Is there a setting to stop it tapering to nothing? Or some technique I'm missing?

It is lovely to have some variation rather than rubber hoses, but the hairline thickness is too slim for printing, and causes problems when I'm trying to select areas for colouring etc.

Trying to search the issue just brought up how to stroke paths entirely so I don't know if I'm missing something obvious or if I'm missing a helpful search term.

Thanks for your help!

I only came across this channel when it was referenced by one of the channels who had also had a video about this plagerism situation and this is the only video I have watched of his. It definitely looks like he's on the entertainment side of art YouTube rather than educational

His comments section definitely seemed to be more sceptical about the allegations anyway.

Ethan Becker's take: https://youtu.be/_Xjli9kzkoU

It's not particularly flattering to Jake (it shows Dunn's accusations and he attempts to compare with other books and doesn't find close matches).

However, he is a bit sceptical throughout and his main takeaway is that just because one side of the story looks damning doesn't mean that is what happened, other explanations exist and this mob justice thing - even if Jake was guilty - is terrifying.

I've just pre-ordered Jake's book. It isn't delayed for long.

@George-Broussard @Lee-White and Tom Bancroft (whose art books I have also enjoyed) have spoken up on Instagram in comments - there are probably others but those are the names that I recognised.

I just followed @Lee-White 's suggestion of watching the flip through without sound. Even though I had been a bit sceptical with the sound on it surprised me how few pages he compared and how dissimilar the page layouts were.

Even more obvious was how many pages of Parker's are skipped, and how much scrolling back and forward Dunn has to do through his own book to share the examples - the charge that the order of presentation is too familiar relies on the order he was showing in the video.

It is amazing how damning things look when presented with emotion and story.

Whether Parker has unintentionally absorbed too much of Dunn's terminology to have crossed a line in his headings. I don't know. But the claims that are being made against it that it is almost identical I don't think will stand up.

What a mess. It does seem a good example of confirmation bias. Suspicious of Parker's book from the few previewed pages, a shocked watch of a flip through had him pick out similarities whilst dismissing differences as attempts to disguise similarities.

I feel for him, it must have felt awful. But he could have raised concerns with his publisher and they could have got lawyers to look at both books and delay/stop publication if necessary.

But what he has done instead leaves him open to legal action for defamation and loss of earnings.

I'm surprised the video is still up with that title and thumbnail considering the defamation. It's one thing to do it in anger and shock at thinking his work had been stolen, but the comments section of his video is evidence of the damage he has done to Jake's reputation and of how he has materially benefitted from the accusations (all the people buying his books in support and cancelling Jake's).

He must be very, very certain even in the cool light of day that there isn't another explanation even though he hasn't seen the actual book. Surely he must realise that this is better handled by the publishers and/or lawyers rather than a YouTube/Twitter/Instagram spat.

I'm not sure his followers have realised that the implication is that if they learnt to draw using his methods (which may have been painstakingly worked out independently - but are largely common to many art teachers) they can't teach anyone to learn to draw/ink the same way.

Let's hope no one has copyrighted the idea of explaining one point perspective with a road with fence posts and telegraph poles or lampposts because that is in basically every book on drawing.

I understand why Dunn was upset at the similarity. The problem is once you think someone has stolen your work, it biases how you look at it, so differences, instead of counting against the theory, are interpreted as devious attempts to hide the similarities.

I really do feel for them both, thinking you have been ripped off is awful, and being publicly accused of plagerism when you were getting ready to launch a new book is awful. I hope this can be resolved through the proper channels.

I just wanted to add, given how many horrible comments Jake will be dealing with across social media at the moment, how much I learned from Jake's SVS course "How to Draw Everything" and how I value his teaching.

I was pretty good at drawing from reference but drawings from my imagination or if I wanted to change the perspective or angle of a reference I found it difficult and my drawings felt really flat (unintentionally!).

I found Jake's step by step approach to drawing solid looking 3D shapes and combining them and cutting into them very helpful to improving my drawings.

So helpful that if I were ever to teach drawing, exercises with 3d shapes would probably be part of what I share with others.

It is interesting the implications of be protective of copyright of teaching methods - whilst understanding why instructors would be protective of their work. (I'm speaking more generally here than this situation with Jake who had a prior history of teaching).

Does it mean that if you learn from a book or workshop or YouTube video that you are not allowed to teach? My knowledge is definitely a combination of the books, videos and practical experience I have. At what point does that morph from being derivative of the people I have learned from and become something I can teach myself?

A legal demand to the publishers to prevent publication until the matter was cleared up would seem to be the route to deal with arguments about copyright. As Will had with his kick starter.

Let's hope these things don't come in threes @Lee-White There's one experience that you don't want to have in common for the podcast!