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Hi Jeff,

First of all, a big thank you for this statement. It shines a light on a worrying and ever-growing problem that is taking place in the industry. The age old question, inspiration VS copy. I think yourself, the judges and the team have all solved it wonderfully and taken the right decisions. I'm certain it mustn't have been easy and has required a lot of time and thought.

Artists that come up with original visuals and that push the boundaries of the industry take years, decades of hard work to be able to produce such pieces. Seeing their work being replicated, stolen and then rewarded for such behaviour was deeply concerning. Unfortunately, as you said it happens so often now that it has become almost impossible to distinguish today.

I believe getting inspired by an image and doing something similar is more than fine, as long as it's not blatant. But straight up "copies" or "3D recreations" of already existing works shouldn't have their place in competitions. I fully agree with your view on this, but also acknowledge that it can be a thin line.

I have witnessed this exact problem happening in many, many competitions these past couple years especially, not only in Archviz but also in other fields such as Concept art, web design, illustration, etc. However, I had never witnessed until now one of these competitions acknowledging the issue and taking the proper measures.

This shows to me how deeply passionate you and everyone involved here are and how serious the 3D architect awards are as a competition. You deeply care about the artists, about the industry, and about any inspiring upcoming visualiser, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

I am looking forward to discover this year's winners. Congratulations to all the nominees and thank you for inspiring us to push ourselves and to aim higher once more.

Elena, a lot of comments here to reply. So I will address one by one.

>You have not contacted the people you are exposing through your website and this statement.

We contacted everyone involved where there was going to be an impacted as a nominee. As your submission was not impacted, you were not contacted.

> During the tentative nominees process the disqualification of people who break the rules was announced, but not a re-scoring. This confusion may lead to those people who do not take the time to read your post (which will be many), consider that the person that was a tentative nominee but is not a finalist has committed an illegality and therefore see their image discredited.

The concept of being a tentative nominees is as its name implies...tentative. That means it can be disqualified, re-scored, or manually reviewed by the judges. While I do not like having this process, sadly we have found it's the only way to ensure we receive the information from the industry about images and submissions that have either not met the rules or need to be further reviewed. Your submission provided zero information about the fact it was a direct copy of an existing photograph. As I mentioned in the article, this did not break the rules, but it should be self-evident that if you are going to enter a competition where originality is one of the key criteria, this fact should be made known to our judges.

> You don’t know if the participants you are accusing have contacted the authors or not, or where their inspiration comes from, since it is something that you do not require in the contest rules to register the candidatures.

You are correct. My comment was not specifically aimed at those who entered the competition, but the practice of copying work in general and best practices because this is an issue that goes well beyond our competition. We have an entire team that reviewed backgrounds of nominees in depth and their work and if the work they submitted was a copy of another's work. It's easy to find out. Again, it's not in the rules, but specifying the work being submitted is a copy should be self-evident.

>Scrupulous is a work carried out in a very thoroughness way, with care and effort, something that I believe is abundant in all the works presented, but not so much in your bases, which leave such important questions without mentioning or solving.

I am not sure I follow what you are saying here. Please detail how you feel the work of our judges and review team is somehow not fair.

> If this problem had not previously occurred, and as you say "In recent years the predominance of renderings in the industry that are re-creations of existing photographs or other renderings has skyrocketed.", it is probably because you didn’t found out, not because it didn’t happend, and that is a mistake of the organization of the contest, not a lack of scruples of the participants.

Try as we might, we sadly can not find everyone who tries to take advantage of the competition. I think over the last 19 years we have done a pretty good job though. And as I mentioned the rules evolve. What was ok one year is not in a subsequent year. It's easy to find fault when you don't have experience running competitions though.

>The seriousness of your contest is provided by its bases, where there is no mention of requalifications after the publication of the tentative nominees, changing them once published, causes them to lose credibility. Assuming your error and correcting it for subsequent years without damaging the image and work of anyone it’s your duty if you want the contest to be enriched.

As the name implies...tentative nominees, means tentative. We explain on the site that nominees can change on the nominees page. I beg to differ that we are losing credibility doing any of this. In fact, I think you will find most would feel the exact opposite.

Hi Jeff, I applaud the end of your post where you talk about the need for clarity and accreditation of works in the industry, I totally agree with you, but I think there are some things left to mention:

- You have not contacted the people you are exposing through your website and this statement.

- During the tentative nominees process the disqualification of people who break the rules was announced, but not a re-scoring. This confusion may lead to those people who do not take the time to read your post (which will be many), consider that the person that was a tentative nominee but is not a finalist has committed an illegality and therefore see their image discredited.

- You don’t know if the participants you are accusing have contacted the authors or not, or where their inspiration comes from, since it is something that you do not require in the contest rules to register the candidatures.

- Scrupulous is a work carried out in a very thoroughness way, with care and effort, something that I believe is abundant in all the works presented, but not so much in your bases, which leave such important questions without mentioning or solving.

- If this problem had not previously occurred, and as you say "In recent years the predominance of renderings in the industry that are re-creations of existing photographs or other renderings has skyrocketed.", it is probably because you didn’t found out, not because it didn’t happend, and that is a mistake of the organization of the contest, not a lack of scruples of the participants.

The seriousness of your contest is provided by its bases, where there is no mention of requalifications after the publication of the tentative nominees, changing them once published, causes them to lose credibility. Assuming your error and correcting it for subsequent years without damaging the image and work of anyone it’s your duty if you want the contest to be enriched.