I just got spammed for architectural renderings from a John Singh in Florida. The email reads:
To whom it may concern:
We are Milestone 3D Studio in Florida. We provide high-quality and cost effective architectural rendering and animation services for architects and developers.
The price for eye level view renderings are from $400!
If you want our architectural rendering and animation services, please call us or send us an email: office@milestone3d.com
Regards,
Milestone 3D Studio
2119 W Brandon Blvd. Brandon, FL 33511
Tel: 813-658-5128
Fax: 515-474-1283
Normally, I ignore these emails but today I clicked on the link and noticed that this guys website looks almost identical to my own for which I spent years creating the “unique” look and feel:
I wrote him back to tell him to cease and desist immediately. I’m also pointing him to this thread as a starting point. What else would you do?
I’m not sure - they’ve definitely nicked the layout but they’ve done a fairly poor version of it - the source code is quite different too. It almost looks like one of your pages has been saved, opened in msword which messed with the code and it’s been saved out again due to the poor layout and inconsistency in the fonts.
On a side note…your site is great and have always found your work inspirational. I found it interesting when i clicked the link it opened into a new tab and there were Chinese characters while it loaded…then it was English. And why would the phone and fax have different area codes? That’s kind of weird too.
Not sure what else you should do though…you could always take a trip to Florida. I googled that address and its not too far from the beach. You could knock on the door and tell him to quit stealing your stuff in person…then go and forget about the whole thing on white sand and blue water.
Thanks guys. The images could always be better. I see tons of stuff wrong with things but I learn as I go along. I’ve also stopped posting a lot of my images on this forum because quite honestly, I’m afraid to hear what people will say is wrong or looks bad lol.
But, I will add that most those jobs are live with short deadlines - only so much you can do before having to stop and move on with life.
I’m just getting tired of people copying stuff - I have a few images, notably the ‘heart grenade’ image which has been copied and used as avatars, etc. It’s been turned into tshirts sold on Zazzle as well as even jewelry.
People don’t have any idea of the hard work we put into things - if it was a piece of electronics equipment and you took it out of a store without paying, you’d get into huge trouble and perhaps even jail time. The same idea should apply to artwork.
As for that guy, I don’t know how he survives if he’s only charging $400 per image. He can’t live in the US and must outsource his work probably back to India. That’s only one days worth of work and most of you guys would agree that each image probably takes at least 1 week to complete (and often longer with changes.)
You can certainly tell they copied the overall look of the site, but I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape over it. Ask them to stop, and if they don’t, just move on with your life. I do like their work though.
delete those posts!!! otherwise I will post something about your website too. I don’t what they’ll write lol.
Email 2:
we got the images from our partners in china, it is their/also our work. you are copying our works!!! I will take legal actions too if you do so. Lol. I never copied anyone’s work.
But it’s interesting to note that this site redirects to China.
Tell them you can produce max files, psd files etc, and ask them if they can do the same Why even waste my time really if they’re that stupid to say something like that in the first place. I can produce working files but that’s besides the point.
You know, I just worry that these companies con people with their outfits and take away business from real people and places that are actually trying.
I got off the phone a few weeks ago with a US company that sent work over to China. She said that they wasted more time and money waiting for changes, explaining themselves, waiting overnight hours, and remotely managing them overseas than they would if they simply did the work locally here in the US.
to be honest I dont think they have necessarily copied your site - a left hand column on white with a centred logo bordering a full height image…
its not a unique format by a long shot - yours has better balance, proportion and attention to detail - and surely they’d have copied the layout exactly if they wanted to rip it off
to be honest I dont think they have necessarily copied your site - a left hand column on white with a centred logo bordering a full height image… Wow. I can’t believe you would honestly say that. I’m in the top 10 search results for the field. I get copied ALL the time unfortunately. Even the text on the page is written very closely to my own - which I may add, was carefully constructed for search engines and badly written to squeeze in as much information as I can.) And my site dates back to 2003…
The colors? The background? The colors of the links? The bars above and below the navigation?
They even got the copyright in the same f*cking location!
Are you blind? Or are you just trying to royally piss me off???
The other thing I should add is that I recently updated the entire website - his is currently copying my older design (which didn’t change too much.)
its not a unique format by a long shot OMFG. My site was and is original. I have never seen a site like that when I first started out back in 2003. I coded it myself and figured out a way to get a page PERFECTLY centered vertically and horizontally. The only other way I had seen it done was with Flash at the time.
surely they’d have copied the layout exactly if they wanted to rip it off though they’re clearly a dodgy outfit. No, because whoever did it is a moron in a hurry. Honestly, my code is not an easy code to figure out and would leave most web designers dick in hand. It’s pages linked to pages and scripting.
