IU & Co. accused of plagiarising 'Chat-Shire' album artwork

[yohan94.livejournal.com]

American artist, Jessica H. Lee recently penned a blog post online in which she claims that her artwork was used without her permission for the cover of IU‘s latest album “Chatshire.”

In her blog post, the artist highlights the similarities between her own artwork and the illustrations on IU’s cover. Although the sketches aren’t exactly the same, the artist notes that the drawing style and coloring are extremely similar. She also writes that after doing additional research, she found that the artist connected to IU’s album cover art had previously contacted her on a different project in the past.

After reaching out to IU’s illustrator, the illustrator admitted to Lee that she had used Lee’s art as inspiration for her own work. However, after consulting with colleagues who expressed doubts, Lee argues that the artwork goes beyond simple inspiration due to the similarities between the two.

The artist has put together side-by-side comparisons of her own artwork with IU’s album cover.

My name is Jessica H. Lee and I am an illustrator/designer currently living and working in San Francisco. Since last October, I have been getting worried and surprised emails and calls from those who know my illustration saying that popular K-Pop star IU’s album cover artwork looks very similar to my work.

To show the similarities, I’ve compared her work and mine below.

The cover and map artwork included in IU’s album:





Below is a comparison of IU’s album artwork with My Work.





Comparison 1

- Identical Purple + Turquoise color combination and drawing method
- Similar look and feel/imagery
- Castle and the road leading to the castle similar
- Skull looks identical






Comparison 2

- Identical Purple + Turquoise color combination and drawing method
- Similar look and feel/imagery
- Spider web detail similar
- Shape and size of the small tree similar





Comparison 3

- Identical Purple + Turquoise color combination and drawing method
- Similar look and feel/imagery
- Volcano: Shape of the mountain and the lava similar
- Cliff below the castle and the side of the continent are depicted similarly





Comparison 4

- Identical Red+Purple color combination and drawing method
- Similar look and feel/imagery
- Volcano/Lava detail and ground under castle — similar to the dripping shape of the candle in Jessica Lee’s work





Comparison 5

- Identical color combination: Green+Purple+Orange
- Identical drawing and shading method, especially in the vine detail



source: Soompi, Jessica H. Lee @ Medium

Comments

[a-cheshire-grin.livejournal.com]

Pretty similar. Too similar in some cases.

I doubt that IU knew about that, but she'll definitely get the blame for it. -.-''

[premonitioner.livejournal.com]

he entire creative team is a mess....

[wintersjuly.livejournal.com]

mte. the sampling issues, zeze (although that's all iu. but why on earth did no one point out it was problematic?) and now this. it's like her and her entire creative team just want her career to fail.

[benihime99.livejournal.com]

The blame is on the artist who made the cover and IU's team, but she's the public persona so...

[jasmineakaiumi.livejournal.com]

Too many "coincidences" in the art style, elements chosen and put together, and colour scheme...sketch.

[frantastic.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone could have guessed this promo cycle would turn out this messy, yikes

[gathyou.livejournal.com]

There is something wrong with her team. Fuck ups happen, and it's allright as long as we know how to react and then learn from mistakes. But this round of promotion just have so many fuck ups. The Zeze controversy, the samples not verified on 23 which was confused with the other song called 23 which has IU involved in the composition, and now this... For IU's sake, I hope IU and her team will find what went wrong and correct it before the next album. This was supposed to be the album of her growth as an artist yet it's surrounded by mess and won't be remembered for the music at all...
In this particular case, IU probably didn't know anything about the plagiarism and can't be held responsible, but it's still going to fall back on her...

[ashiva.livejournal.com]

Clearly the artist who made the cover took a lot of influence and ideas from that other artist, but not enough for any legal plagiarism charge to be able to hold in court.

[miamaimi.livejournal.com]

mte

[kyrli.livejournal.com]

in before her stans claiming that iu cannot be held responsible for this, let me remind you all that she is the main producer behind this entire album. (her stans is so proud of her being the producer of the album but when people under her surveillance is fucking up, they claim that iu has no fault nor responsibility, how ironic).

the illustrator for this album needs to be blacklisted. starting from zeze's drawing when they draw zeze in pin up pose and wearing a fishnet stocking and now this? gross.

this album production is her first one ever yet it's her messiest album in terms of production (plagiarism issues and failed 'interpretation' concept) to date. smh iu.

[4minutesluts.livejournal.com]

what exactly do you expect her to do in order to ensure that an illustrator didn't copy another piece of art? How would you, as a producer, ensure that?

[staaan.livejournal.com]

yeahhhh no way is that purely coincidental

[ckino (from livejournal.com)]

Damn...she fall really hard

[seroquels.livejournal.com]

This has not been a good comeback for IU at all. Jesus.

[kamoteatmani.livejournal.com]

From evidence this isn't really a BLATANT copy. You can't call plagiarism if it's not exactly similar to already existing illustrations. A lot of artists usually end up having the same style/color combos, usually from taking a little or a lot of inspiration from one another. There's a hefty amount of style and color similarities here, but I definitely wouldn't call it plagiarism.

Reading the blog post from her right now. Saddened that this happened to her but I feel like legally there's really nothing to do. Stylistically it does look a lot similar but I don't think she can necessarily call it as her artwork being used without permission. SMH to IU's artist on an integrity level but I hope whoever he/she is learns from this.

[moomoo-moonstar.livejournal.com]

Come on people, I'm no IU stan but this is REALLY weak.

It's literally taking tiny background elements from Lee's illustrations and comparing them like they're major elements of the work that were stolen. You could probably take any two artists on DeviantArt with a vaguely similar style and draw the same conclusions.

The colours used are complementary colour combinations that are widely used in all art. You won't find many artists who don't use Red/Blue or Green/Purple to some extent. And by the end they're making some HUUUGE stretches to try and make their point. The idea that the under-castle detail might have been inspired by that candle image don't hold up to even the briefest scrutiny. And as for the castles themselves, Lee's castle is a fairly stock fairytale style that you see turn up in a lot of work, but even so the IU castle looks nothing like it.

The only thing they've got going for their argument is a sort-of similarity with the general line style, but even then Lee's is much more clean and precise, with the Chat-Shire art going for a much sketchier feel.

I'd say it's completely possible either artist never even saw each other's work, and that you could easily make similar comparisons with many other Alice In Wonderland/John Tenniel-inspired pieces. The only real similarity I see is with the style on the Skull, but even that feels far enough removed to be inspiration at best. Plagiarism? I don't see it.

[kamoteatmani.livejournal.com]

I read the original artist's blog post and apparently she has been contacted by IU's artist for a much different project and he/she has admitted to taking inspiration from her work. I do agree that her claim is a BIG stretch for legal matters, but as someone who is in the same line of work as she is, I think this kinda says something about IU's artist in general as there still is a huge similarity with their work, and given the context of it all, saddens me a bit that there are artists who can't develop their own unique style and resorts to copying heavily that of their peers.

Crediting like Jessica Lee hoped for at the least, was something they could've done too but sadly not a lot of people do that esp when you're not someone like James Jean or someone of equal caliber.

But lol fr this is such a huge stretch to claim a blatant copy.

/tldr I have mixed feelings about this issue. :(

[empyrealmaiden.livejournal.com]

Even though the style is really similar, it's not really plagiarism. Many artists share similar styles of art. That said, this is just going to provide more fuel for people looking to criticize IU. There are a lot of valid criticisms to be had but I don't really think this is one of them.

Anyways, this promo cycle has been a MESS.

[sra-interesante.livejournal.com]

you're talented girl
(some of your draws are waaaaaay prettier than chatshire artwork)
get that free promotion iu antis will give you
i have a song tho

[bomsnose.livejournal.com]

agreed and now watching s club 7 vids one after the other

[yohan94.livejournal.com]

this won't hold up in court so the rest is just where you draw the line between inspiration and imitation imo.

also chat-shire would've come out looking much better and not cheap if they had actually hired lee and let her do it instead of peeking at her work

[mspopstar.livejournal.com]

Should have pulled a Rihanna and scrapped the entire concept/album imo

Her 2015 was a mess

[cherrypop.livejournal.com]

It's not "plagiarism enough" but it's "inspiration enough" that it's not out of line for me to say the entire IU team doesn't have a creative bone in their body.

Then again, Korea doesn't have a creative bone in its body. Plagiarism runs rampant here.

[amandaplan.livejournal.com]

idk the laws in korea but some images seem close enough and it seems they definitely stole the artistic style.

i really dislike when teams steal inspiration/art from others. even tswift when they have the $$$ to pay for it.

[iznanassi.livejournal.com]

The only thing pretty much identical are the skulls and the vines, but what this looks like to me is that they didnt want to pay someone else to draw so they just redid a lot of her drawings.

It's quite clear that the drawings are based off another and regardless of whether there could be a court case or not, it's still a problem???? Idg some of the comments in this thread but hey I'm just a hating misogynistic IU-anti or something.

[mya13.livejournal.com]

"hating misogynistic IU-anti or something."
lmfao srsly tho omona has become way too much lately. once you criticize someones fave all of a sudden you're an anti out to get them!

[donutism.livejournal.com]

I mean, even if there is not enough of a case for plagiarism, clearly they took inspiration from the design. someone in this company needs to be fired for how messy this whole thing is. IU needs to go take a few year hiatus or something

[mjspice.livejournal.com]

FFS why can't they just pay the original artist or ask them to make the cover instead?

Edit: Actually now that I look at it again, lot of the stuff is merely inspired, not stolen so yeah the person doesn't have a good case unfortunately. :/

[jeliza]

She has a point, given the previous contact & the album artist's saying she used it as inspiration, but I don't think she has enough to have a case. I think it is odd that the actual name of the accused artist isn't used; what that artist's previous work looks like is pretty important to the determination.

[burqaswag.livejournal.com]

These comparisons are laughable. How can she say the skulls are identical when they're absolutely not?

[iznanassi.livejournal.com]

They are tho? Like it literally looks like someone saw her skull, and then re-drew it save the body. Like they have the same forehead lines, the eyes both going the same direction, same teeth, same eyebags, only thing different is the nose and that isn't even by much.

And it's not even a standard interpretation of a skull???

[violentiak.livejournal.com]

I can see that some points might be inspired by Lee's work, but some of those details being plagiates is a pretty lousy claim. If I was randomly told to draw a castle on on mountain, dripping candle, volcano or a tree without leaves, it would look pretty damn similar too.