Andrew Loomis made some of the best books ever for teaching illustrators and artists. I have bought several of them on eBay, but for very high prices ($100-$250) since they are out of print. And this is a crying shame. So I decided today that I'd scan them some day and put them online.
So imagine my joy when I found out somebody has already done this.
Update: new page with the books.
If you know somebody who loves drawing, point them to this.
Is this legal? I'm sure someone holds the copyright and would love to make money off of ... well, ya know, sittin' round on their butts not publishing the thing.
ReplyDeleteFrom my rough understanding of copyrights in the USA unless it's held by a corporation (ie Disney) a personal copyright of a written work usually expires 50 years after the author's death. So since Loomis died in 1959 there's just a few months left in the copyright. (though a century has already passed if we're following Eolake's calculations)
ReplyDeleteHere's what I thought it was. Not sure who's right; this is just my impression from before entering this conversation:
ReplyDeleteThe copyright expires after the copyright is no longer extended. It automatically extends at LEAST 75 years beyond the individual creator's death (they upped it to 75 for "the Disney Rule" change recently), and thereafter the estate can choose to extend the copyright indefinitely, as long as it's gone about being careful about continually managing the means of production up to the point of renewal.
That's the case for written documents published by traditional means in the USA. Not sure about something heavy with illustration, like the work in question; or something published before the Disney Rule (is the 50-to-75 change retroactive?).
Thanks Eolake. What did you use to open the file on a Mac?
ReplyDeleteFor the Mac iArchiver works. I just tried it.
ReplyDeleteWell some info I dug up from the wikipedia article on Loomis is that the Loomis family who still own the copyright have stated they have no plans to republish the book. However, if you want a legit book they were recently published in 2004 by an Argentinian publisher in Spanish.
ReplyDeleteThat aside I dl the books.:p
Thanks for the link. Its a beauty - but - did you see the horrible dessicated scarecrow-like so-called "ideal" proportions for a woman? With a bum like a deflated balloon?
ReplyDeleteIt gets better, though...
Jeff R.
Ah yes, "ideal proportions" ... entirely another question.
ReplyDeleteI recall looking up the ancient Greek statue called The Doryphoros, and finding out the various dimensions of its musculature. It's a late Hellenic (IIRC) depiction of an "ideal male athlete" and so I, in my weight-lifting phase, thought I might go about becoming as much as I could like that. Turned out my thighs were already too thick for my height. Other people have undertaken similar projects with that statue, Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and other "ideal" characterizations. I wonder which ones women go after? Barbie? The Winged Nike of ... where, Athos was it?
I couldn't get them to open.
ReplyDeleteWow, what a good resource! If we're talking about U.S. copyrights, this could fall under "fair use," since it is not being posted for monetary gain, and is educational in nature. That would only become an issue if a suit was brought, and even if the fair use argument doesn't apply, it could still be used. Also, I don't think there's any law against Eolake offering a link to the book, since he didn't scan it. Even if there is, the U.S. doesn't (officially) claim universal jurisdiction (like Germany does), so our government couldn't (officially) go and nab Eolake from the Netherlands for violating some copyright law. Did I forget to say "officially?"
ReplyDeleteTo the person who couldn't get them to open, if you download the zip file and then extract them with Winzip or some other compression program, you shouldn't have any trouble. There are 6 books in the zip file.
ReplyDeleteWhat program is used to read 'rar' format files?
ReplyDeleteOn the mac, StuffIt Expander will do.
ReplyDeleteOn Windoze I'm not sure, do a search on shareware.com or versiontracker.com
the only problem with these scans - they are terrible made. Except two books they are weird. It's good than nothing, but hope that somebody make a good scan ,)
ReplyDeleteYour links are dead, but i found the books here: http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/
ReplyDeleteThanks, very kind of you!
ReplyDelete