failingwind

[failingwind]

Well, there's been some interesting hubbub lately and since this blog seems to get referenced quite a bit, I thought I needed to dust it off and weigh in. 

Above, you'll see sei has finally acknowledged tracing but with nary a sign of remorse or apology (this is not new) and claims she has moved on from it. I clipped it down from a series of posts to save on scrolling. 

I have addressed her bullying tendencies several times before on this blog (or other people have addressed it by their own accounts), but the point of this blog was always about a lack of integrity as an artist, so without further ado:

To her credit, sei has posted a set of livestreams (heads up, she says she has technical issues) which has been broken down and critiqued rather thoroughly here. Kindly view both halves. You'll see in dapperpants' post references to partially traced poses where the untraced parts are incredibly awkward looking. To which, I would like to direct you to this:

(source for original here) where girlJude was drawn 9 months after girlHayden. You will also notice yes, this is the exact same pose she used in her livestream. In fact, for someone who is known for inconsistency (as per dapperpants' explanation above and also this old post), it is interesting she can do this without a lightbox (or a low opacity sketch hidden by low resolution and chopped up streams).

Also surfaced recently just by way of social circle: (from august, edit: source redacted at request of OP, sei's illustration from last week. Original artist was also a former friend and tells me she has hits on her blog from where sei lives)

Since the tumblr art community has enormously diverse definitions of tracing vs referencing, I don't really want to open that huge debate up again on this blog. Instead, I trust everyone will do their due diligence and put on their critical thinking caps and come to their own conclusions.

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So I am basically treadmilling with my asks and can't seem to clear them...! It seems to have reached saturation and I am getting a lot of duplicate questions so instead of trying to reply to them all privately and/or individually, I am going to try and address some common things in this post:

1) In the end, she never apologized publically and the only person I know of who she has discussed (directly or otherwise) the issue with was a former friend. Nor has she refunded the individuals whose commission sources have been found and shows no signs of planning to do so. I also can't say at this point whether or not it is "over" because that depends on whether or not she decides to make amends and start anew or simply make a new account and keep doing as she is doing.

1b) Corollary to point 1, I don't have any plans of where I want to take this blog now that her galleries are down and she seems bent on not apologizing. I am likely going to turn off asks and simply leave this blog up for posterity since real-life is also busy.

2) It is really hard to say which elements in her gallery are her own work. The best reflection is her traditional work but there's nothing more recent than late 2011 so I don't have a fair example to put forward. That being said, she does have an excellent grasp on textiles and drapery as far as I can tell.

3) Yes, I saw the A-C post. It can be submitted by any number of people and the chances of it being Sei aren't particularly high considering it is a place as high traffic as A-C.

4) Discussions about whether or not she received death threats or made them up are dicey. After being a bit too quick on the draw when this blog started (which I apologize for again), I am hesitant to take a stance on it. Interesting screencaps were collected if you are interested in drawing your own conclusions. To clarify a point of confusion on that blog, Sei removed the link to her askbox from her art tumblr some time ago when the artist-confessions post against her was made but didn't turn off asks until it was announced. (I am also told anonymous has been turned off even before that but that is unconfirmed)

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While I find this all hilarious, because Sei was a bitch to me about asking permission to use her art on a site, and she agreed, then took it back for no reason later.. Isn't design theft a bit much? I mean, gijinka of the same pokemon, there are only so many ways you can do it, and if you look up pokemon gijinka of a certain pokemon almost anywhere, there are so many that look nearly the same. The Darkrai art, I don't see it as the same, at all, but what determines 'design theft'?

A similar question was already answered here, and I will admit again that I was much too quick to jump the gun with those posts. But like I said in my last response on the matter, I have kept the post up for my own accountability. 

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Whilst I understand the situation, dedicating a blog like this is only going to make the situation worse. No wonder she started receiving death threats and whatnot - you are really only promoting the issue. If you want to make a difference, why don't you try personally contacting her and not dedicating something like this to her failings?

Hello! Once again, I'd like to reiterate that I am incredibly disappointed by the fact that anyone thought to send Sei death threats, and that I am very saddened by the fact that this all had to end up this way. I had even asserted before that I did not want anyone to go harassing Sei, and to approach this ordeal as civilly as possible.

However, this is also a good opportunity to also clarify why this blog even exists in the first place. While you make a point in stating that personally contacting her would have been the best way to approach her about these sort of things, judging by numerous past* instances of people trying to do so Sei has no intention of owning up to what she's done, nonetheless even acknowledging it. In fact, there are still messages from a few users in my inbox stating that they have not received word from her even after contact. She has also repeatedly ridiculed people (as seen in above examples), harassed them into deleting their own posts about her, and was otherwise constantly trying to sweep things under the rug in order to maintain a clean reputation. There are numerous reasons as to why contacting her privately has not worked, and believe me when I (alongside many others) say that I have made my fair share of attempts to do so.

(*note: In regards to this overlay.)

Furthermore, she has had her healingwind account blacklisted on artist-confessions, which in itself can ring numerous alarms. The single confession that did make it through only did so because it was listed under her primary account, not healingwind, and even then it was quickly taken down (post can be viewed here). As long as Sei kept control of publicly viewable content (such as policing through private messages or by hiding comments on her deviantArt wall), no one will have ever known what she has done because she would not have allowed them to know. 

There is a reason why this blog has its title. Calling her out through proxy is nigh impossible (as she has taken the extra measures to make sure that no word of her ever gets out) and contacting her personally only ever ended up on deaf ears. Please understand that what she has done has and will continue to hurt many people, and that what I am only trying to do is spread awareness of the fact that this was even happening.

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Regarding messages:

I have about 16 questions in my inbox right now and will get to them as soon as possible! I am not ignoring them at all, although they might take some time to work through because some are very involved questions.

Thank you for your patience and, even though I don't have as much time right now to dedicate to this blog as I did at first, your input is always welcome!

Finally, overlays are put on the backburner for a bit because they are actually really time consuming to find without help. Also I think the point has been made and, with the exception of commissioned (and similar) works since I would like to see those resolved, it is unnecessary to keep pushing the issue as aggressively.

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To the last anon, I believe tracing photos is only okay for learning purposes. It's fine to get a feel for anatomy and compositions, FOR YOURSELF. It's not something you should post publicly. It's simply for you yourself to learn and grow from. What's the point of posting it for people to praise you when essentially the work isn't yours and you did what just about any 4 year old can do? Tracing is NOT okay, ESPECIALLY if you post it public, claim it's yours, and try to make commission from it.

Well said, anonymous.

For the sake of this blog  not turning into a long discussion on the proper use of stock photos since it is even more finely nuanced than the proper use of tracing:

I think that, in a commissioned work, such heavy reliance on a commercial stock photo is not appropriate. It is, for one, against the useage permissions of Think Stock ("...may not, without obtaining the prior written consent of Thinkstock and the payment of additional Licence Fees: (i) use the Licensed Material in any posters (printed on paper, canvas or any other media) or other items for resale, licence or other distribution for profit" ).

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Excuse me... I'm not trying to bash you or anything, but isn't tracing from photos... somewhat okay? For commissions it never is, of course! But I dunno... I mean i do it sometimes to get a feel for actual proportions since holy crap I'm bad at that. Dunno... Using references is okay, and tracing isn't all too bad if you acknowledge it and use it for non commercial, anatomy/learning purposes, right? @n@ Sorry.

Oh no, of course! Tracing from stock photos is a legitimate form of practice, and is perfectly fine to implement, so long as you do not disregard/discredit the fact that you did use a reference! 

However, in this specific case, it was indeed a commission, and according to the commissioner Sei had made no mention of using stock reference at all. Furthermore, this is supposed to be a picture of Neku (from TWEWY) and Lenalee (from D. Gray-Man), but since Sei relied so heavily on capturing the technical details from the stock, she lost the essence of the characters.

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One of Sei's first commissions, dated back to Dec 24, 2010.

This gives us a timeline wherein she started tracing for commissions as early as 2 years ago and up until one of her last commissions in November 2012. By no means am I saying that each and every one in that period was traced but I think it gives us an idea of the scope of her dishonesty.

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concerning this post/39398809672 why is it considered as design theft when i can only see 3 similarities (hair+dress+rose)? not defending her at all but there's no need to point any similarities as theft... (if that is the case)

Regarding these two posts: 1, 2.

The second post was uploaded by myself, and I will admit that I was rather hesitant to do so; the similarities (as the first anon mentioned) are very sparse, and like ~allusi noted there will always come a time where designs from different artists will end up very similar. I understand that it was a bit of a stretch to post that without any firm evidence proving it as design theft instead of merely taking inspiration, but please also understand that Sei had cited Patty as one of her favorite artists numerous times in the past. She would very often draw fanart of Patty's Luxray gijinkas, which could have been found in her dA before it was put into storage. However, I realize that calling it 'theft' may have been a bit too heavy-handed, as it could have been a mere case of taking heavy inspiration. I apologize for even making such an accusation, but I will keep the post just in case any proof does come up, as well as for my own accountability.

However, the first post was submitted by the original artist, Astroliner. As noted in a previous post, I had approached Astroliner after they had made numerous posts on the matter. They had mentioned that they were fairly certain that Sei was still frequenting their blog through Google analytics data, despite showing no intention of following them; apparently Sei had spent a good amount of time on their blog during the corresponding week after they had initially posted. Astroliner had also stated that they used to be close friends, and was often a first hand account to the numerous ways Sei had approached drawing and designing (more can be read about that here).

However, Astroliner also personally requested that we did not submit their conjecture with the pictures, but instead to note the close amount of time one was posted after another. There is possibly much more to this specific situation that I am not aware of, but I am afraid that that is all the information I have on the matter. 

[failingwind]

is her kuroko no basket au things traced as well?

It is hard to say. It isn't out of the question, but I don't want to commit to an answer either way without solid proof. There is some discussion of taking heavy influence from existing designs. But if anyone has any solid proof any theft happening, that would be welcome. In the meantime, I can leave you this Niso face which I posted a variation of earlier:

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I am assuming this is asking about me finding out about the tracing (but please correct me if I am wrong, anon). I don't have a long personal history with Sei at all. This is more of a story of how this blog happened and my investigative process, complete with more overlays and several side by sides.

Pre-tumblr era:

-She was often very vocally salty about about Reversed which had recently gone on indefinite hiatus, when people asked about it. She alluded to conflict with the other artist in which there was a lot of mean words allegedly said to her* . What was basically playing victim then, I mistook for low artistic self esteem. The same "I am not going to post art anymore" comments that are happening on her deviantart also took place back then.

(* note: Recently, this was debunked by both Shirogane, the artist in question, and someone else who caught my eye in this blog's notes, Astroliner. Both very telling accounts)

-When her art started to do this months down the line, alarm bells started ringing everywhere:

Tumblr Era:

Fast forward several years, and I found Niso's post about being stolen from. In case anyone was wondering what the Kise thing meant (I was also wondering), I got this submission yesterday night:

Healingwind (5 months ago) pixiv (July 20, 2012) - Nisoniso (June 19, 2012)

Healingwind (4 months ago) pixiv (September 18, 2012) - Nisoniso (August 24, 2012)

So thank you to that user. 

- Sei then asks for Niso's help in sweeping the incident under the rug. Niso empties her blog leaving only those two posts and apparently leaves tumblr because of this.

- Upon investigating, I noticed her work was very inconsistent. Case in point:

  Both done around the same time. 

-Erring on the side of caution, I considered them two separate styles as artists often work with more than one. But even having multiple styles should have consistent and apparent understanding of anatomy, especially with the amount of polish in her work. This was definitely not the case, looking at these two similar poses:

The second one (which was also done much later than the first one) shows 1) a much weaker grasp of how clothing demonstrates the form of the body underneath it and 2) A much different structure of the body and face in general from almost all of her other work. 

- I came across a tweet from another popular artist I follow who doesn't want their tweets posted, but they recognized another trace and chose to keep the issue private. Sei took it down with literally zero backlash despite the Niso incident months before.

- The artist confession post makes its rounds and appears on my dash.

- Approached Astroliner, who made numerous posts on the subject, who indicated that Sei was stalking her tumblr thanks to evidence by Google analytics (mentioned in the post linked above) and knew, in good confidence that there was thievery happening.

- The first thing to catch my eye on her tumblr is this questionable but suspicious overlay:

- Noticed this shortly after. It wasn't a great overlay but parts were lining up line for line. More importantly it was only a month old so I knew there had to be more. Knowing that Niso knew many more cases than her blog showed (based on her commentary), I started in her bookmarks.

- And then I stumbled across This Drawing in Niso's bookmarks. And then I found Temari.

- That brings us to the most recent thing of suspect on her former blog:

December 20, 2012.

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Ah, just in case no one has clarified yet, the ~users入り tag is used on pixiv to give the general idea of how many bookmarks something has. Usually other pixiv users that are not the original artist will add on things like 1000users入り to something when it has been bookmarked 1000 times. The pixiv encyclopedia says that "You might risk yourself getting your account suspended, or tarnish your image/reputation by attaching these tags yourself so please think twice beforehand."

I got a few clarifications and and requests for clarification on this, but here is a pretty good summary one for those of us who weren't too clear on the tag thing and why it is an issue.

Other details I received:

- ~入り is a tag for how many users have bookmarked said thing. because the popular button for browsing is for premium members, browsing popular art is more easier that way. you type in the number of users, eg. 1000入り after the tag you're after, to get you pictures from the tag you're after, that have been bookmarked by 1000 people.

- these tags are divided for different fandoms (Ib, KuroBasu, etc), e.g. 黒バス1000users入り would be a tag for the KuroBasu art that have 1000 bookmarks, and Ib5000～users入り would be for Ib art that have 5000 bookmarks. 

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Now that Sei is purging all of online accounts, the pixiv and dA are suddenly dropping in submission numbers, does that mean this is over?

Quickly typing this between classes so please forgive if it gets unclear at points.  Basically the situation has escalated very quickly and I presume it is because it has finally made its way into the pixiv community which, as you may know, takes matters of tracing, eyeballing, and any other synonyms of copying very seriously.       When I started this blog, I ( as mentioned before ) intended it to be a means of awareness and a way to apply pressure onto Sei so she knew that we know of her theft and hoped itwould encourage her to acknowledge the incorrectness of her behaviour and make changes. It would appear that I have underestimated the nature of Anonymous and social media and essentially she has been bullied out of the art community. It is unfortunate that it has happened that way and while I will not take responsibility for others' actions, I apologize for my part in unintentionally enabling it. It is a direction I would have liked to avoid and would like to enlist my followers to help intervene and prevent inappropriate behaviours such as death threats where possible. To address the actual question though: no, it is not really over.The fact of the matter is this:At the time of writing this, she still has not, in her own words, admitted to or apologized for tracing. She still has not acknowledged that she has done anything wrong and is content to play victim. Nor has she refunded the commissioner if the Aomine at the beginning of the blog despite continued communications between the two of them, ongoing since about the time the artist confessions secret was posted. I will stop posting temporarily, except to address some leftover asks later in the interest of taking some of the heat and harassment off her. But I will continue to monitor the situation. At the very least, I will until the commissions are resolved and possibly longer depending on how the situation plays out.Thank you for your attention. Feel free to leave any other questions and comments and I will try to get to them later today. 

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On attacking people.

"telling me to cut my hands off and kill myself is where i draw the line (and why i’m disabling ask as of right now)." This was just posted on her blog and I am not sure about the legitimacy of it but whoever is sending messages like this needs to stop immediately. A line was crossed today and regardless of a person's actions it is never, ever appropriate to tell someone to hurt or kill themselves. I appreciate the positive response to the matter but now that this has happened I want to make it clear: Art theft or otherwise, there is no reason why something like that needs to be said to anybody.

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Not tracing or anything, idk if you pay any attention at the ～users入り tag in pixiv? usually other users are the ones who give to the illustrations. But she usually tag those to her own works with those tag. (the * before the tag symbolizes that it was the artists' own tags)

Oh? I am actually still learning my way around navigating through pixiv, to be honest! I've never taken much advantage of the tag system, since I can't read Japanese, so I am not quite sure what this refers to. Would it be alright if you could elaborate a bit on this? I am sorry for not understanding...

[failingwind]

Incoming mailbag post!

Sorry for the lack of replies lately. I know I mentioned that I would post them last night, but I have recently decided to implement a batch system for replying to asks and am also contemplating on choosing a specific day to respond to them. However, I've amassed a sizeable amount over the past few days, so I will be posting these first. (This is my first time making a batch so large! I realize I've put some of these asks out of order, I apologize.) Please understand that I may not publish every single ask, due to many of them saying or asking of the same thing. 

I would also like to take this moment to thank everyone following this blog again, and to mention that many of you have been incredibly helpful and encouraging! Now, onto the asks:

brbchurch: We're discussing two very different sites here, but the policy is basically the same. Tumblr is a media sharing space, and she can't get in trouble with the site and its TOS (its users are a different story) anymore than, for example, a fyeah_____ blog.

DeviantART is more of a complicated matter and its policy on tracing (full thing here: http://realitysquared.deviantart.com/journal/CEA-UPDATE-20090130-Issues-Involving-Copying-214186526. But in summary, in the interest of getting as many users as content as possible, and because the risk of getting into legal trouble is very small for them and it isn't worth the trouble to enforce. My favorite gem is "To be honest a large percentage of copied artwork involves one fandom or another and in general the very nature of fan art means that it is unoriginal and copied from another source we didn't see any real reason to place any restrictions on the Fan Art galleries. After all, whether you've copied an Inuyasha screenshot or just free handed a drawing of the character Inuyasha you've still essentially copied something that someone else did first.") is one of the many reasons why it has been under fire for not being a "legitimate" art site by several corners of the internet for years. 

This is complicated even more because while tracing in is already something no one seems to want to agree on because it is such a deep, deep subject, Sei has managed to find the exact line where her work is traced but also not and you could easily make a case both ways. And she toes it knowingly because the discussion itself (see below in critiques) will keep most people from being able to solidly to speak out one way or another. More importantly, it places her work just into the side of "tolerated" for DeviantART (especially by being largely fanart) and unless the artist she stole from approaches DA and expresses that they feel they have been ripped off, they are going to let it slide.  

#1: I've recently sent them a message through tumblr, though they have yet to reply. I have also heard that a number of others have also tried to contact her, though I can not say for certain if she has responded to any of them.

#2: Thank you for the tip! I have recently given the site a try, and it has proven helpful already. This may take a bit of getting used to, so if anyone else manages to find something, I encourage you to share! 

#3: Sorry about that! There should be links underneath the 'About' section in the sidebar. 

If it is not appearing for you still, let me know! I will be sure to try and figure out what is going on.

#1: Thank you for the head's up! It seems that she's locked her entire deviantArt so only members can view it. So if you log in to your account, everything should be accessible! However, it does look like she's put a lot of her pieces into storage, which rings rather suspicious.

#2: I can completely sympathize, Anon. :( When I first heard the news, I couldn't believe it either. But this also proved to be a huge wake-up call for me! After realizing she was profitting from pulling this sort of act, as well as trying to hide the fact that she was doing so, I finally came to understand that this was not admirable behavior. By turning a blind eye for so long, I realized that that wasn't right. 

ono-mono-pia: Thank you for the encouragement!!

Since I don't doubt a lot of the followers on this blog were once her fans and/or aspiring artists, I feel this is a good opportunity to point out that I'm not trying to make everyone suddenly disavow ever liking her work. In fact, I am really just trying to apply public pressure to make her make a public apology and right her wrongdoings and start using her gifts (which she clearly possesses) to learn and create the legitimate way. It's a far off dream considering how aggressively she has been sweeping this under the rug, but at least in the meanwhile she will hopefully profit less hugely and scam fewer people with her thievery as word gets out.

The asker, in particular, saw a lot of good come out of their interactions with Sei by finding the inspiration to push past an artblock (something always a huge feat, I know).

In fact, a lot of people saw her work as motivation to keep learning and keep working and even though her decision to "stoop to this level" for lack of a better way to put it was the wrong way to go about her artistic career, everyone should remember to hang onto the inspiration and sparks of imagination the work brought to them. But on the other hand, should definitely not forget the deep cutting sense of betrayal from finding out she was a (so far unrepenting) liar, not so you can hold it against her, but so if you ever feel that you aren't making enough progress for your liking and want to take the easy way out and steal, trace, or take from the intellectual and creative property of others you remember how intrinsically wrong you knew it was (and is).

seedysunflower: Thank you very much! Though I cannot say much about her being self-righteous with confidence, one has to admit her attitude towards being called out is rather revealing...

#4: Thank you for letting us know! I didn't even notice until you mentioned it. It looks like she is very intent on keeping this hidden from her watchers. However, hiding one's gallery (and comments) from the public now will not help keep suspicions anymore at bay, so to speak. 

#5: Thanks for the kind words. Hopefully I am able to keep this up for a bit longer; it is actually tough work finding these overlays, haha!

#6: Yes, thank you! I've gotten numerous tips of this as well, and pointed it out in another post. Though, I think having to hide all of your comments from your front page would ring more suspicious than not, in my opinion.

#7: Well, I've never seen someone get away with it for so long either! Hopefully all of this will be resolved one day, now that the art community is all the more aware of her art stealing. But like I said before, judging from how she is reacting, I cannot say for certain where this whole ordeal may actually end up.

oshiawase-ni: Not really, but I didn't really intend on maintaining this blog for an incredibly extended amount of time; I can see how this is all a little ludicrous to some though. But I do think it is for the best that people be made aware of what she has done, and that maybe Sei could own up to her actions one day instead of constantly trying to sweep it under the rug.

I think the better question is, do you think it is alright for someone to be paid for somebody else's hard work? Think of it like this: you have a job where it is your goal to get something done, and you do your job diligently and finish it off! You're proud of what you have made, but then someone else manages to take your end result, puts a bow on it, and then hands it directly to whoever asked you to do your job saying that they did everything. The credit for your work then goes to them, and thus they get the pay you deserved for the work you did. Is that fair? 

Then, is it fair for the person who paid, who had no idea what was going on, to be lied to and give their money to someone who didn't actually do any of the work they requested? If you were the first person, how would you feel? 

You're right in saying I may have a little too much time on my hands, but I hope I am at least being of help to a few people.

Anon:  Ah, well if you want to cite modern interpretations of Mona Lisa as a means to justify art theft, then here goes: the Mona Lisa modernism movement is a form of pop art. There was a similar argument I saw carried out in other posts, but the gist of it is that the technical details of modernist Mona Lisa portraits are not what is being valued, as many of them are parodying the original painting itself. What we, the audience, are supposed to glean from the painting is that fact that the Mona Lisa is so prevalent in pop culture, to the point where the words 'masterpiece', 'fine art' are often greatly associated with it; the Mona Lisa is the pinnacle of Renaissance art.

Furthermore, the difference between tracing in traditional media than digitally is the fact that, digitally, it is a whole lot more convenient to do so. Please keep in mind that many of the artists that did re-interpretations did not have the luxury of taking the Mona Lisa from the walls of the Louvre, slapping another piece of paper on it, and tracing on top of it. The idea of doing so would be ridiculous to even consider! (Plus, the constucts of canvas often prove rather difficult to trace anyways.) Also, please consider the reasons why art theft from museums is often seen as a huge crime...

Whereas through Paint Tool Sai, Photoshop, or any of those other art programs, people can simply open a picture in one layer,  lower the opacity, and painlessly trace over the lines. And that's it! You're done!

On top of that, citing Da Vinci is rather funny, considering the man himself did extensive and intense studies on human anatomy, was a known anatomist (as well as dabbling in numerous other fields of study), dissected both human and animal cadavers to understand how parts of the body connected and functioned with each other, and created what is probably considered as the backbone of human anatomy and proportions. And the only examples he could have taken to do all of this were from observation. 

A quick and painless Google search for 'DaVinci' could have told you all of this. I hope this explains the reasoning behind this blog a little more.

[failingwind]

Moving away from Temari for a bit because by no means does she just take from one person: Mozilla was also a target.

Sei was also asked to credit the drawing by anon. So she decided to link it to herself. Strangely ironic mocking occurs.