The whole Kranvoc and “Ghosts” by Kavan The Kid Thing

 And I was like, oh FFS. What was worse (and amazingly interesting if I wasn’t stressed enough) is that the first link to this image on google that I could find was a post called “Photography Can Turn Sadness Into Happiness” which if you drop the photography bit is pretty much an exact description of Kranvoc’s function.

For completeness sake here’s what I posted to Facebook:

Hey all,

So, having slept on it all I have deleted all the Four Devils from the site and all the other places I can. I feel this is the best move for me given what happened. (For those who don’t know the new art turned out to be pretty much the same as another photo by the same photographer and the first link to it in google even has a mental headline: https://www.viewbug.com/…/photography-can-turn-sadness-into… )

Now, a few things I want to mention.

1, You are all amazing people and thank you for all your input, support and advice. I love you all.

2, Drawing is my job, this is what i do for a living and anything that has the potential to threaten that I have to take very, very seriously. Being seen as an artist that rips off other artists is something that is extremely hard to come back from. This is the big concern. This is the big issue here. This is why I brought the whole thing up in the first place.

I do use photo reference in my art, I have done photo tracing on portraits, and I use 3D models too – and all that sort of stuff. That all feels fair and OK to me and I have always been open about that. This is different, this looks like I am directly stealing someone else’s art – twice.

3, I am in no way surprised by the magick, or synchronicity of all this – I know exactly how this old magick game works. I am, however, massively concerned about how it work looks to an outsider – and it looks really, really bad. No amount of “that’s magick” or “sync” is going to convince most non-magick people of anything other than I ripped off the artwork- twice!

4, I have contacted the Photographer and as yet no reply.

5, Sadly, I must also renege on the promise to send out new prints to people who bought the old ones. I just want to put all of this behind me and making new prints and sending them to people just seems like keeping the fire going.

6, Here is the link to the printable artwork for the Four Devils for people who want to have that. I will delete this link in 24 hours. https://drive.google.com/…/1PEYM0-ppeuKDOf8bKSlrp8tbX…/view…

7, I may at some point come back to The Four Devils and completely re-design them, but for now I need to step away.

Sorry for the hassle and everything good people, but this is what feels best and right.

So, I just deleted everything from the blog, social medias and any where else I could.

Cut to yesterday when I get an email from a super friendly awesome guy called Kavan The Kid, who was chilled about the whole thing and was happy for me to continue to use the image. He suggested adding an “Inspired by” which I am very happy to do. So, that’s awesome.

The Four Devils page is back up and you can download the artwork again. For the “official” Kranvoc artwork I am sticking to the original art, with the extra image just been a bonus.

Very weird and stressful experience but all worked out in the end.

So, yeah… Magick, eh?