tumblr user pirikko is kind of imitating your style? idk if that bothers u but I just wanted to let you know?
Usually I answer in big chunks of text, under a cut but I wanted to answer this.
Yes, I am aware and yes, I’ve seen their comics and the asks sent to them inquiring about style similarities.
Nope, doesn’t bother me one bit. I love seeing people take bits and pieces that they learn from other people and apply it to their work. I do understand why it could be a concern to onlookers because we’re socially trained to avoid theft. That’s a good thing. Don’t steal from people because your intentions are coming from the wrong place (greed, desire for quick recognition, misdirected craving).
But when it comes to style? I mean, that’s how we learn. In Early Modern Europe (an elective) today (I can’t believe I’m applying an elective), we learned about how quickly new technologies would spread throughout the Old World (Asia, Africa, Middle East, Europe during the Middle Ages) because the land mass was connected. If something was useful, the knowledge of it spread. People used it. We give credit to the people who we believe created the technology, but humans are…everything anyone has made has been been built and honed on the shoulders of giants. We’re products of our time and our inventions are half owed to creative persistence, half owed to good timing. We give credit out of gratitude and we make use of whatever came out to better ourselves and help other people.
Some history about how I started to draw: in middle school, I copied screenshots of Inuyasha and drew lots of teenage boys that couldn’t be differentiated from girls (still proud of that). When I went into college, I copied (subconsciously) a whole lot of the visual language (how to draw hands, stagger my lines, stage a character in a background) from fellow students because I thought what they were doing was really cool. Nowadays I have Igarashi Daisuke’s manga open beside me when I thumbnail panels. For the Overwatch comics, you bet I used photo reference to draw the interior of the helicopter /and/ the exterior. I don’t know how helicopters work but I do know how to research and fudge the heck out of what I learn.
When you’re learning, you’re half blind to what you’re doing, half pressured to meet your own expectations, so sometimes what you draw comes out wee too close to the source material that you love. One of my life drawing assignments from third year looks…way too close to being Matsumoto Taiyou fanart (my mistake, but I diverged from that). I’m sure everyone has that one piece (or ten, or a year’s worth of pieces) that looks like someone well-known drew it.
So shrug that all off, draw some more. I know that plagiarizing is an issue, but I think y'all know when you see yourselves taking short cuts and start copying blindly without thinking. You keep drawing until you get confident and start making weird artsy decisions of your own. The day will come when you feel like a rebel and say, bah. I’m going to do it another way. Humans crave novelty.
You’re allowed to disagree with all of this, by the way. Philosophies on what art is, how it should be done, what is allowable changes all the time. Look at that art movement with the toilets mounted onto walls.
But with whatever I put up on this blog, feel free to riff off of, make into music videos, display icons, whatever. You don’t have to credit me, just do your thing and put a spin on it if you want to.
Don’t claim saved jpgs of Harkbus art as your own because that’s lying, and don’t sell it because that stops you from doing new things that you could be proud of five years down the line. But otherwise, be free. With my art, anyway. Ask other artists how they feel about their stuff being used for icons and whatnot because they made their art and I am only one voice in a sea of the multitude.
(Ride on pirikko! I like seeing Gabriel Reyes in any shape and form.)
tl;dr : You guys can do whatever with the stuff on this blog (that’s not for profit). Copy and learn and diverge. Grow your own autonomy but if you want to use the art on here as a jumping platform then by all means please do.
Also - you are allowed to disagree with what anyone says on the Internet (me included). Their fame is not the right measuring stick for their opinions. But you know, be nice, have fun, we’re all just dying over Overwatch (aha, we’re all just doing fan art and using Blizzard’s IP anyway).
And to the anon that sent me the message, I’m not trying to put you on the spot and everything is cool. Thanks for sending me this ask so I could make a response!
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