In Romania, artist Iani Papadopol has come under fire after he allegedly used various video game concept art in his critically acclaimed art exhibit “UpDate 3D Loading.” Among those pieces said to be plagiarized include the works of the Chief Art Director for NCsoft North America and Studio Art Director for ArenaNet, Daniel Dociu. This has made a big splash both in Romania and the video game community.
At that moment, critics said about Papadopol that he was the artist who transformed digital in art and that he gave shape to the three-dimensional art. They also said that Papadopol was born in the future and brought fresh air in the local graphic. The exhibition caused a series of immediate reactions into the artistic world. On the Neptun TV website, people from the Romanian and international artistic environment brought evidence which showed that Iani Papadopol would have stolen the art work from a very famous Romanian artist, Daniel Dociu. Since 2009, Daniel Dociu has been part of the video game designer’s elite. He was counted in the 2009-2010 edition of the Best 200 Illustrators Worldwide magazine.
The third comment on the accused artist’s blog by “tinfoil” is from Daniel Dociu himself. You can use Google Translate to get the general gist of this polite but very strong statement.
