Trade dress is designed to protect consumers for mistaking one product for another. In this case, the trade dress would consist of the app icon, description, and screenshots. These clearly show a radically different title with radically different design and mechanics. You could probably build a case around trade dress here, if you wanted to. After all, for someone to feel that your claim may not be justified, they would have to have a wide general knowledge of games, and understand how truly common these elements are. Someone less experienced may see two similarly striped hills as damning, but then again, someone less experienced might see a breakable brick block in a platformer that is not part of the Mario franchise in the same light. I am not judging anyone involved, but I strongly feel the need to point out that this course of action is both morally questionable, and bad for the industry as a whole.
Unfortunately for the accuser, the game that (I think has been influenced in style by his art) is way better and way more popular that his. Plus, as an illustrator myself, I always begin new designs with a reference point to inspire me (just turns out the mambc artist took reference a little too closely.) I think he has a case to be upset, but it doesn't take anything away from the fact that this game is straight up awesome
I just love how everyone complains about yet another Flappy Bird or freemiums but has no qualms if a dev TOTALLY RIPS OFF another devs ideas and artwork under the guise of "well this one is funner". Really?
As with many things I guess I would need to see the exact language of what the developer(s), artists are claiming is a problem. Anything less leaves the door open for interpretation. If this is just a general opinion thread of "do you people think these art styles looks alike", and then tries to build a legal case of why people's opinions are correct or incorrect, that is a hole I am not jumping into. Thanks for the transparency Eli. @karios - I don't imagine you will prevail in either the court of public opinion nor a legal court, although in the US that is your right to try.
You are trying way too hard if you see "valid points" here. I'll break it down based on the image. 1. First of all, using the same general starting point is just ridiculous. With an overhead map view like this, there are only two artistically acceptable places to start, because that is where the eye lands-- the front-left or front-right. That's a 50% chance. It makes no sense to start in the back, or far off to the side. 2. The Monsters -- They look nothing alike AT ALL. It's a simple cartoon style that is used by tons of people. Put side-by-side, there is no monster in this image that looks like another one. Period. Horns, beady eyes, teeth, and similarly bright colors are not in any way plagiarism. There's only so many features you can give your monsters. 3. Hills with stripes? WHOA WHOA SLOW YOUR ROLL HERE THAT'S PLAGIARISM. Or maybe it's that hills drawn with egg shapes are simple and clean. What should the hills have instead of stripes? Polka dots? Checkboard? Spots? There's only so many options one can choose from to make plain hills look less boring. 4. Wow, large hills or mountains with snow on them! Who would have thought that something at high elevation has snow? And how else would you draw said snow, hmm? With jagged lines which break the the smooth, organic art style? With downward stripes which make no sense? I know, let's draw snow on mountains using only triangles. That'll look awesome and inviting. 5. Holy shit a cavern in the shape of a skull. No one has ever thought of this before. A skull cave is such an original concept that hasn't ever been done before. And the lava flow-- it's either branching streams or one stream. There really is no other way to draw flowing liquid. 6. "Even the shadows are the same!" Again, any decent artist knows that in this sort of perspective, you either pick left or right. The shadows have to go one way or the other. It makes no sense to have a bright light shining from the front, blotting out detail, or a light shining from the back, casting long shadows right onto the important content. 7. Rocks - Who would've thought that soft, round shapes would fit right into the organic art style. Wow. Just wow. I am so shocked and appalled by this clear cut case of plagiarism. Clearly the accuser invented round hills, snow on mountains, hills with stripes, shadows, a starting point on the left, and skull-shaped caverns. Honestly, if you think this is plagiarism then you need to quit video games. There are so many other games out there that look much more similar than this-- Desktop Dungeons and Dungelot 2, for example. Or Wolfenstein and Doom. Or Terraria and Starbound. Or Diablo and Path of Exile. You could easily put these games side-by-side, and get MORE similarities than in the two games here. It is that much of a stretch. What happened here is two separate developers pursued similar cartoon art styles, making use of the basic rules of simple shapes and clean lines while doing so. They did this because it's effective and draws the viewer's attention in the most efficient way. They arrived at similar places not because one copied the other, but because that's just how this art style works, and there are not that many ways to differentiate without overly complicating the art. It is NOT plagiarism at all.
I've already expressed how I feel about these ridiculous claims in another thread, but I wanted to add something that hasn't been said here-- I downloaded this game and tried it on iPad 2, iPod Touch 4, and my Samsung Galaxy S4. NONE of these versions worked. I couldn't even tap on the "PLAY" button to get past the initial menu. Based on reviews, other people have had similar problems. The Google Play version has not been updated in three months. The iOS version, since Oct 2013. Maybe there's a reason the app never hit it big-- and it's not because the artwork was "stolen".
Keep in mind the artist making the claims has nothing to do with updating the app or the quality of gameplay. He was simply a 3rd party artist that the developer of that game hired to provide artwork for the game. The developers of Monsterup or whatever are not accusing the developer of MAMBC, the artist they hired, who is apparently a pretty respected artist (he was a major inspiration for Incoboto for instance) is the one accusing the developer of MAMBC. I think it's funny people want to jump to defend the current hot game without even looking at the facts simply because they like the game and don't know anything about the accusing party. The artwork is highly similar. I wouldn't say it's copied, but I wouldn't be surprised if the artist behind MAMBC was looking at the other guy's work while drawing his own stuff. People are focusing on the silly things like starting position and overall shape of the island, while the damning truth is in the details. The stylized pattern of river flow, the shape of the trees and their stylized shadows. The sheer number of similar details is pretty staggering, and no other map I could find on google shares even a fraction of these small similarities. Do I think the artist has a case? Probably not. The artwork I believe is certainly inspired and derived from his, but it is not directly copied. I just can't believe how many people are jumping on this guy for trying to protect his work, or for the quality of an app he had nothing to with other than the artwork.
If it's felt that there's a case then proper action should be taken; this court of public opinion counter-campaign is unprofessional.
Oops, didn't see that point earlier, and wanted to respond to it specifically. http://www.cartoonnetwork.co.uk/sites/www.cartoonnetwork.co.uk/files/blogs/toonix-map.jpg The map in question features a vaguely similar island shape and color. There are mountains located in the back part of the island, with one large, earth-colored mountain producing lava as the centerpiece of those mountains. The location of the large mountain actually matches the large mountains on both maps almost perfectly. There is a stream flowing from somewhere in the mountainous region, as in both maps. The trees in the map I presented cast similar shadows onto the ground. There are green hills with stylized snowcaps, utilizing the same exact three-curve shape, present in all three maps. And the most damning piece of evidence to someone who would not realize this is a completely unrelated item, is, of course... The horned, small-eyed, air balloon on the left side of the map, which closely resembles the monster designs found in both games! The most interesting part of this is that I'm not terribly invested in this debate, beyond thinking that the accusation is bad for the game industry as a whole. It only took me a couple of minutes to find a "similar" map and to highlight a bunch of superficial similarities, which a good lawyer could definitely weaponize in court -- against EITHER of the two games! Sincerely hoping I've made my point here. Honestly, both games look great, and Ilias Sounas is an utterly terrific artist. I just don't think that there is anything conspicuous or confusing in the similarities between the art of MonstersUp Adventure and Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake. Just presenting my opinion as an impartial third party.
Didn't gameloft make a monster game that copied almost exactly how crescent moon games paper monsters look? And they didn't make a big deal out of it. The maps are similar but it's not like they copied everything like gameplay. And btw i bought monster up adventure to see for myself, and it's probably the worst doodle jump clone i ever played. Obviously MAMBC is a much better game so calm down.
If the argument is one of "trade dress", it seems like this is an issue that should be raised by the company, not by the artist himself. However, if the company were successful in this line of reasoning, it would be poisonous to the artist. He couldn't use his own style elsewhere without violating the "trade dress" of the designs he himself created. His former collaborators could prevent him from ever working again in his own style. This sort of reasoning has reared it's ugly head in court before and been struck down.
Just looked at the alleged copy. The guy is probably want free publicity. Having a skull-shaped mountain or little pieces of land around the island isn't copy... ffs. He is trying to pull a Threes! x 2048 thing
Hats off to you sir. After 4 pages of reading stuff from people who most likely didn't even bother to see who was asking what and why I read this. This is exactly what I have been trying to say all along. I am the founder of Karios Games but in this case I am acting just to support mr. Sounas claims because I personally believe they are just.
Yes, that is correct. Sorry I didn't make it clear before. I am the founder and game designer of Karios Games Ltd.
This depends on the agreement the company has with the artist. In this case, the artist is free to reuse his style. Also, I mentioned the trade dress violation to make a point, and the point was that the similarities are so many that it reaches a trade dress violation issue. I am not trying to start a publich court here to reach a verdict.
Another one who didn't understand what is going on. Please study the infographic on Mr. Sounas blog first and count the almost identical elements "repurposed" for MAMBC.
The reality is that when creating artwork, most illustrators will look at others work for inspiration/help. Especially when learning their craft. After time and once you become better, like Sounas, you discover and develop your own style. Undortunately for the artist in question, most of those early, heavily influenced designs, don't make it into such a public sphere. Usually you will have developed your own style before doing such large a project as MAMBC.
The styles of the two artists are shockingly similar, that is for sure. I'm not familiar enough to know if the style originated with Mr. Sounas, but it does look pretty damning to me. I know I would be annoyed if it was my style that was being mimicked that closely. I think the stylistic similarities extend far beyond the map screen. They're present throughout the entire game. (Well, I've only played a handful of levels so far.) However, I showed the info-graphic to my 10-year-old son and he said "Every game looks like that".
