Sarah Clarity Studios

Chapter 4: Ethics of Reference, AI, and Cultural Respect

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Ethics of Reference, AI, and Cultural Respect — Portfolio, Careers & Ethics

Environment concept art is not made in a vacuum. We inherit images, places, motifs, and technologies—then choose how to use them. Ethical practice is not a set of disclaimers at the end; it is a design constraint that shapes what you reference, how you transform it, what you disclose, and how you contract. This chapter maps a practical, production‑ready approach to reference hygiene, responsible AI use, and cultural respect, written equally for concepting and production‑side environment artists. It also includes guidance on targeted portfolios, communication with stakeholders, and contract clauses that keep your values and your studio’s risks aligned.

Ethics starts with sourcing. Build references like you build materials: as systems with provenance. Maintain a lightweight source log for every project listing where each image came from, the license or permission, the capture context, and any usage limits. Favor first‑hand photography, studio‑owned libraries, and properly licensed stock. When using Creative Commons, read the specific license, not the icon; some require attribution or non‑commercial use only. For photogrammetry or 3D scans, confirm you have the right to capture in that location and that no protected artworks, trademarks, or private identifying information are embedded in the asset. The goal is traceability: if legal or cultural questions arise late, you can answer them.

Transformation must be real, not cosmetic. Photobash and paintover are tools, but ethics requires clear authorship. Avoid direct lifts of distinct compositions, typography, or artist‑invented motifs. If a reference contributes a unique design idea—a particular cornice profile, an icon from a contemporary artist, a proprietary pattern—either obtain permission and credit or create a new variant from first principles. A good self‑test is “inspiration distance”: on a grayscale thumbnail board, could a reasonable viewer mistake your image for the source? If yes, create more distance through silhouette, proportion, material grammar, and cultural logic.

Avoid living‑artist mimicry as a business model. Studying masters is part of craft; selling look‑alikes is a breach of trust and a reputational risk for studios. When portfolios show pieces that closely echo a living artist’s unique voice, frame them as study sheets, not as deliverable style, and keep them out of production case studies. In targeted submissions, lead with work that demonstrates your own system grammar—metrics, trims, tiles, palette relationships—so reviewers see an author, not a shadow.

Fair use is narrow. Most entertainment production does not meet it. Do not rely on “educational purposes” or “transformative” as blanket defenses, especially for marketing images and shipped content. If you need a protected element—a landmark building, a brand mark, a distinctive graffiti tag—consult legal and pursue licensing or author a look‑alike with sufficient distance. In environments, close‑read text and proprietary patterns are the usual legal tripwires; remove or replace them before they reach downstream teams.

AI tools raise two distinct questions: what the model was trained on, and how you are using it. If your studio permits AI for ideation, seek tools and settings that allow opt‑out by artists and that offer enterprise controls and audit trails. Use AI to accelerate exploration—value studies, palette sketches, compositional prompts—and keep it out of final, client‑facing pixels unless policy explicitly allows. Always disclose AI use in case notes. Label which pages include AI‑assisted ideation and where hand painting, photobash from licensed sources, and paintovers took over. Do not use AI to imitate living artists’ styles; treat that as you would any other mimicry. If the studio forbids AI input in deliverables or training on their data, encode that in your contract and your workflow: segregate machines, disable uploads, and avoid commingling NDA material with any external tool.

Dataset provenance matters for compliance and reputation. If a model’s training set is unknown or includes opt‑out‑ignored or scraped copyrighted works, your studio may ban it. Favor tools with published data governance or internal models trained on licensed or in‑house datasets. If you are asked to deliver prompts or checkpoints, assume those artifacts will be archived and discoverable; write them as if a colleague will audit them later. Your captions should speak to why a generated exploration was kept or discarded in the same language you use for any sketch: readability, pacing, material coherence, and feasibility.

Cultural respect goes beyond avoiding stereotypes; it treats culture as living expertise, not a mood board. When a project touches real communities, build a short cultural brief that names who is represented, what is sacred or restricted, and what consults will be sought. Distinguish public motifs from sacred or clan‑owned patterns, and confirm whether certain objects require permission to depict. If you cannot secure consultation, narrow scope to invented grammars rooted in fictional materials and physics rather than borrowing meaning you cannot steward. In before/after or ruin scenarios, avoid defaulting to “decay equals exotic.” Show maintenance, repair logic, and contemporary life alongside age.

Location ethics apply even when the culture is your own. If you reference private spaces, obtain permission. If you include faces or license plates in bashes, anonymize them. When scanning or photographing, respect site rules, do not damage surfaces with powder or markers, and do not share waypoints to protected or fragile sites. Ethical capture reduces harm and reduces the chance your studio must pull work late.

Portfolio transparency is a hiring advantage. In targeted portfolios, add small provenance notes under process pages: “All photo sources are self‑shot unless credited,” “Stock from X with extended commercial license,” “AI‑assisted ideation on page 3; final concepts fully hand‑authored,” “Cultural consultant: Y (compensated).” These one‑liners build trust with recruiters and legal teams and demonstrate you understand studio risk. If you reused third‑party kits for block‑ins, label them and keep them out of final paint. Avoid NDA‑adjacent content; if a design idea is still under confidentiality, rebuild it with new shapes and remove trademarks.

Communication with stakeholders should move ethics from the margins to the brief. When you pitch, include a paragraph on reference scope and consultation. Propose a small budget line for cultural review if appropriate, and define what “approval” means: one round of notes, sign‑off milestones, and attribution practices. During reviews, surface ethical risks early—living‑artist lookalikes, unlicensed signage, sacred motifs—and present options: redesign, seek permission, or swap to invented systems.

Contracts encode behavior. Ask for clauses that clarify IP warranties, indemnity caps, and ownership. If you use AI, add language that forbids training on the client’s data and defines acceptable AI use in ideation versus deliverables. Include a representation that all third‑party sources are licensed and documented, and that you will provide a source log upon request. When work depicts real cultures, add a cultural review clause that names who approves and how dissent is handled. Include kill fees tied to compliance requests made after you followed the agreed brief; this discourages late ethical pivots without compensation.

Attribution and compensation are ethical, not optional. Credit collaborators clearly in case notes, including photographers, modelers, and cultural advisors. If a community provides guidance, budget to pay them; “exposure” is not compensation. When shipping, request that in‑game credits reflect cultural consultation. If marketing will use imagery derived from a specific place or craft, advocate for acknowledgements where appropriate.

Design your symbolism from physics and craft to avoid cliché and appropriation. Build sign systems, knot grammars, and repair logics that follow material behavior, then layer invented meaning informed by research rather than by borrowed sacred iconography. Use “inspiration distance” again: could a culture holder point to a single living pattern you lifted? If so, re‑author the motif until it belongs to your fiction.

Accessibility overlaps with ethics. Keep emissive values and flicker patterns within safe ranges, validate signage in color‑blind modes, and provide captioned videos in your portfolio. If a scene uses storm flashes or dense emissives for mood, include a safe‑mode LUT variant in your handoff notes. Ethical environments do not exclude bodies by accident.

Downstream hygiene keeps ethical intent intact. Deliver a tidy source log with your packet and keep third‑party assets in clearly named folders with license files. Provide a short “do not use” list when you hand off, noting motifs or references that were explorations only. If you used AI during ideation, do not ship prompt files with the production packet unless requested; store them in a separate archive with a readme explaining scope so they are not mistaken for shippable content.

A compact example can ground the practice. You are designing a cliffside shrine inspired by coastal architectures. The reference plan begins with self‑shot photographs of rock, rope, and salt‑stained concrete, licensed stock for wave patterns, and an interview with a local craftsperson about rope splices. You avoid living religious iconography and instead invent a knot grammar tied to wind direction and maintenance. Process pages disclose one AI‑assisted palette exploration, discarded for readability reasons. The cultural brief states no sacred symbols are used and notes sensitivity readers engaged for text signage. Contract language forbids training on the client’s art and requires attribution for consultation. The final kit includes invented trims and tiles, signage in an original pictogram system, and a patina logic grounded in physics. The portfolio case shows provenance notes, a source log excerpt, and a clean handoff. Ethics is visible as craft, not apology.

When teams disagree about ethics, move the conversation into systems. Evaluate risk against the source log, portfolio disclosures, and contract commitments. If the team wants to keep a risky motif, frame options: seek permission and budget for it, redesign the system to increase inspiration distance, or cut the motif and reassign emotional work to light, palette, or composition. Document the decision and the reasoning. Ethical clarity reduces churn and protects schedules.

Ultimately, the ethics of reference, AI, and cultural respect are not obstacles to creativity; they are scaffolds that keep creativity honest. When you treat provenance, consent, consultation, disclosure, and accessibility as part of your design language, your environments gain authority and your portfolio reads as trustworthy. Studios hire artists who make shipping safer; players remember worlds that tell the truth about how they were made.