Germany CD Cover Pic - Verification Needed

[cocoacoconuts24.livejournal.com]

Hello! First time poster here! I've read the community rules, so hopefully I'm doing things right. =)

This pic was taken from Zerochan: http://www.zerochan.net/1460479

I have not seen this pic anywhere else, and I was wondering if someone can verify if this is official. Because it REALLY looks official.

Comments

[brivi.livejournal.com]

this is from an artist on DA Rosel-D (http://rosel-d.deviantart.com/)

[tarafishes.livejournal.com]

It's fanart (http://saucenao.com/search.php?db=999&url=http%3A%2F%2Fs4.zerochan.net%2FGermany.full.1460479.jpg).

Remember not to hotlink images!

[cocoacoconuts24.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I see. Thank you! Shall I take this down?

[tarafishes.livejournal.com]

You don't have to; it's up to you, really. But if someone else has the same question it might be a good idea to leave it up so they can see.

[lildeadkitty.livejournal.com]

What does hotlink mean?

[tarafishes.livejournal.com]

It means link or use directly from the source. For example, if you hotlink from Himaruya's blog, you're using the image file directly from his fc2 as opposed to reuploading it somewhere, which is what you're supposed to do. (That is, you rightclick it, click "copy image URL" or your broswers equivalent, and then insert the URL into the img src code. It can break an image and take up people's bandwidth and stuff. What you should do is save the image and then reupload it to your own server, somewhere like imgur or your photobucket. Hotlinking doesn't really apply to images hosted on, say, imgur or tumblr because they don't have bandwidth rules.)

[dubtalia-ap.livejournal.com]

As the others said, fanart.

I never trusted Zerochan as a source.

There are people who can imitate Himaruya's art style. In Pixiv, it is tagged as 野生のひまさん (http://www.pixiv.net/tags.php?tag=%E9%87%8E%E7%94%9F%E3%81%AE%E3%81%B2%E3%81%BE%E3%81%95%E3%82%93) aka Wild HImaruya!

[cocoacoconuts24.livejournal.com]

Thanks everyone! =) This artist is way too good! haha

[dubtalia-ap.livejournal.com]

Just kind of annoys me that when artists copy Himaruya's art style, people assume it is made by the original creator. It gets worse when it comes to sourcing materials on Tumblr. Too much sources from Zerochan and WeHeartIt, which basically steals images from Pixiv, DeviantART, Tegaki, etc. When you know a site that steals DA's stuff that is often known for stealing as well, you know there's something wrong in this world.

Whether it was Rosel-D on DeviantART/Pixiv or a plain Japanese fan artist on Pixiv, if someone posted up an art imitation without sourcing, people would assume it's by the creator himself.

[lildeadkitty.livejournal.com]

I remember one time I tried to explain to a girl that a Philippines fan character that was drawn in Himaruya's style wasn't actually an official picture. Despite the fact the picture link she sent me had the words 'fan character' in the url. She never did believe me and eventually she just stopped replying to me.

To invert the situation a little, I saw on tumblr, a picture that a pixiv member had stolen from Himaruya's blog and hardly anyone on tumblr seemed to had noticed (and it had A LOT of reblogs too) that it was actually Hima's artwork.

[dubtalia-ap.livejournal.com]

Guess not even in Pixiv is safe from art thieves or even tracers.

I know there are certain ways a person can tell if it was made by Himaruya or not, may include going through sites like SauceNAO/Google Image. Of course, if it was by Hidekaz Himaruya, then they really have to have a photographic memory of where was the image made. Was it recent or very old one that it might have gotten itself deleted?

[lildeadkitty.livejournal.com]

It was a more recent one I think ,it showed up on my dashboard a little while ago. I'm not sure if the picture's still up on pixiv or not though. It was a reupload of this picture of prussia http://himaruya.blog61.fc2.com/blog-entry-1215.html

I like to think I'm pretty good at telling apart fanart and official art, generally there's subtle differences, in the face outlines are curved, the line thickness, the size/angle of the noses, the hands, the shading, the eyes. There's some pictures I've seen where I it simply just 'doesn't look right' to me.

[fairywine.livejournal.com]

Next time you're not sure about something like this, google image search is your friend. Go to Google Image, click little camera icon, copypaste url and usually the original source will be among the results that pop up. Simple and a reliable way to properly source art.

[boo-sagara.livejournal.com]

That artist also has a tumblr http://cioccolatodorima.tumblr.com/
And don't worry, her drawings really look a lot like Hima's!

Another good way to check if the pic was from pixix is to use http://saucenao.com/ you also have the option to install an extension in wich you just right click the image and choose "saocenao search" and it links you to the artist's gallery. But it only works for pixiv; if the fanart was from DA, you'll have to use google reverse image search.

[maple-and-music.livejournal.com]

Looks like Rosel-D's artwork. Their art is really like Hima's ^^