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Hello everyone, I am Octavius J Opus aka Octopus and I write weird stories for weird people. Today, I'm gonna teach you why the secret to art is to JUST STEAL! You heard that right, this video is all about how to rip off other people's original characters and why you need to start tracing over copyrighted art. Sound like fun? Let's get started.
For those of you who aren't familiar with my work, I've been writing a novel for the last two years about a woman who gets magically transported into a fantasy video game called Eagle's Quarry. The book takes influence from games I like, Majora's Mask, Crystal Chronicles, Paper Mario, the list goes on and on. I've shared snippets of this book publicly online and given it to some beta readers, reception has been pretty good so far. But the one thing I'm repeatedly accused of is that my supporting character MC Tentachill is just a copy of a certain Nintendo villain.
I mean... (retarded clip), subtle is not a word that describes me very well. Let's talk creativity for a second. What exactly is creativity? Well a lot of people think- and especially beginning artists think this, is that creativity is the ability to come up with a never before done idea off the top of your head, one by one by one, over and over and over and over. Uh, this is bullcrap. No matter if it's a story, an original character, a painting, a song, nothing artistic is created in a void. All of it takes influence from something and some of it is gonna be closer to its inspiration than others.
The real secret of the art industry is that ALL CREATORS STEAL! I will repeat that again just so that you remember it better: ALL CREATORS STEAL! We are all thieves wether we wanna admit it or not. (Incomprehensible Japanese name) based Naruto off of Son Goku from Dragon Ball. H.P Lovecraft based (possibly Cthulhu but it sounds like she says clul) off a poem he read about the kraken. Even fricking Shigeru Miyamoto who is considered a game design legend intended the first Legend of Zelda game to be a Peter Pan game. When he couldn't get the rights to the characters from (whoever the fuck wrote it I don't care)'s estate, he simply created an OC who just happened to wear a green tunic and have a pointy hat and pointy ears and play with fairies, you get the idea.
Now, don't go too far with this, it's still not good to brazenly copy someone else's work. Don't just paste paragraphs from other's fanfiction into your own fanfiction and try to get away with it. That's not good. But it IS possible, and a good idea to use someone else's work as a base for your own work, so that you can get the same kind of feel, case in point. Those of you who have your audio on are probably trying right now to remember which Animal Crossing game you've heard this very soothing background music in. Was it, uh New Leaf, is it (too quiet to hear), Wild World? The secret is that this music isn't from Animal Crossing at all, it's stock music (which is pretty funny because that's exactly what I thought it was anyway but I'll pretend to be shocked). That was a wholly original composition but was inspired by (weeb shit)'s work in the Animal Crossing series.
Now let's talk about my original character: DJ Blocktavio (on the screen are the words: "Totally not Splatoon!"), uh, I mean MC Tentachill. (Awkward laugh) So it's pretty obvious from the get-go that I used DJ Octavio, main villain of Splatoon's hero mode as a base for this character. What can I say, I love that big guy more than I should and Nintendo barely gives him any screen time or even content. So the first thing I did when I created my, uh, original character version of Octavio was try to figure out what basic ideas were at the core of Octavio's character, and then figure out what was OK to put into a new character and what was too Octavio-specific. DJ Ocatvio basically boils down to: high-tech elderly DJ octopus/shogun who uses mind control, lives underground and thinks music pods make him look BAD-ASS. So I used ALL of these base ideas for Tentachill, then began to make adjustments and playing with the elements to separate him from Octavio. The easiest way to turn an existing character into an original character is to utilise your headcanons, and I mean as MANY of them as you possibly can without ruining the character you're trying to create. The less support your headcanon has in the established canon the better. For example, in fuedal Japan, Shoguns and other rulers who live long enough were diefied. So I assume that the Octarians knew DJ Octavio as at least a minor kami. Now there's nothing in Splatoon's lore to suggest this is true, which means it's basically an original idea that I had. Which means that I'm also free to slap it on to a different character without repercussions since I came up with it (I can hear a smug smile through this sentence). In that case, I made Tentachill a literal immortal god with supernatural powers instead of a long lived mortal who is simply viewed as ascendent.
Another headcanon, because of how robust he seems I always imagined that Octavio uses advanced tech to keep his body at around, age 63 maybe? Again, no evidence to confirm or deny this so I modified the concept for Tentachill. MC Tentachill doesn't age but he is a god instead of a mortal and needs no mad scientist to keep him silky young-ish. Tentachill is simultaneously older than Octavio at 343 literal years and younger than Octavio with a physical and mental age of around 40.
Other things that I included in my book that I quote-un-quote "stole" are headcanons on what feelings you would experience under Octavio's mind control, headcanons about Octarian views on sex vs gender, as well as a variation of a completely non-canon entity I created for the role of host octarian. (The text at the bottom of the screen now says: "No, this video is not sponsored by Nintendo (as if a YouTube video detailing how to steal their ideas ever would be). I'm just tired of people ignoring Octarians.") By the way, if you are not reading the Splatoon artbooks, please do, lots of juicy lore in there.
Uh, there's nothing in Nintendo's notes about any of what I created. Uh, I made it all from scratch (completely misses the irony of this statement), and that's exactly how you're supposed to come up with your original ideas, by bouncing your thought process off of someone else's thought process. Another thing I should add, when you're 'stealing' an existing character and making them into a new one, you NEED to add characteristics to them that the base character wouldn't make sense with. Now, don't just take a bunch of traits and invert them, if I did that to Octavio, Tentachill would have ended up as young, classical musician octopus man who frees people from mind control and rules over a kingdom in the sky. Uh, sure, you can invert a small amount of traits but if you go overboard it's just as obvious as keeping everything exactly the same. At some point, before finalising your copycat character, you need to have altered the base character significantly, if you don't, you're doing the bad kind of stealing instead of the good kind of stealing (??????).
So, what did I add to Tentachill? Well, the main difference is morality. Octavio is kind of a despicable (cad?), he tries to brainwash people with his music and even kidnapped Callie and forced her to try to kill her best friend. Tentachill isn't like that. Now don't get me wrong, he COULD brainwash you if he wanted to, because I love the whole concept of mind control EDM. Yeah, if you're actually a threat to the sea cave domain where he rules, you probably are going to end up with your mind wiped and your personality altered. This is because the octopods, his people, think that's more human than torture and execution. But one of the twists in my story, and this is obviously kind of a spoiler, is that Tentachill is decidedly NOT evil, despite being the main villain of the video game he lives in. He's a very caring guy, and a lot of what he does is to help his people thrive instead of bend them to his will. Now admittedly, this still comes from a kinda sorta headcanon and I'll explain that too. I REALLY like the idea of DJ Octavio being morally grey instead of strictly evil. I want to see Nintendo take his character in this kind of direction, but Nintendo's main line series generally don't give their big bads redeeming qualities. Unless you count Bowser being a good dad to Bowser Jr., which kind of- not really.
So, I honestly don't think this is in the cards for Splatoon, which is a big reason why I made Tentachill in the first place. I love the duality of a scary looking mind controlling cephalopod who ends up having more wholesome morals than you'd expect. It's fun, and it's one hell of a twist on the idea that heroes should look one way and villains should look another. And let's face it, Tentachill looks like a villain. That's the kind of thing you should be doing for all of your quote-un-quote "stolen" characters, take them in a direction that the original creators DIDN'T. Once you do, your character will start to write themselves in a different way, you've got a character who is distinct from its source. It ALWAYS happens.
The only thing I kept exactly the same from Octavio to Tentachill was the way that they talk. What can I say, I'm a fool who thinks it sounds cool. But even then, I didn't COPY any of Octavio's dialogue from the game. MC Tentachill is not gonna remix your face or give you (some nonsense about beatdowns), there's a line to be drawn, and even if that line is further out in the sand than most people think, you still have to be careful not to cross it.
Anyway, that's most of my thoughts about borrowing elements from other's characters. Now let's talk briefly about why you should be tracing copyrighted pictures.
Before I start this section of the video let me put up a mini disclaimer: DO NOT CLAIM OTHER'S ART AS YOUR OWN! Don't do it, DON'T DO IT! It's scummy, it demeans the other artist's hard work and it makes you look like a sad little clown. Do you wanna be a sad little clown? Didn't think so. So that being said why do I endorse tracing other people's finished pieces? The answer is- and I wish someone would have told me about this when I was a kid, is that it's an ideal study for building a deeper understanding of what makes a successful picture. The first way to copy an image for a study is to trace over the line art as if you're making one of your own pieces. You can copy the original artist's lines EXACTLY if you want to emulate their style and need help understanding it, or you can play with line weight and variations to try to hone a different inking style, when that's done you can do the same with colour. You can replicate the original colouring style or experiment with a totally different kind of colouring, and see how that affects the mood of the piece. Either way is good and both have a place in improving your own original art.
The second way to copy an image is to pretend to start from the bottom up. Draw an entire underbody for the image, uh, make a grid for the head, draw that naked barbie doll body before adding the clothes on, uh, draw the hair in chunks before breaking it up into smaller strands. Go step by step, while trying to stay within the guidelines of the original picture, so your brain has a better understanding of the process it takes to create an image like the one you're copying. You can also do this without tracing if you want a different type of copying challenge. Michelangelo approved. This method also works for helping you design original characters. You may like the general feel of someone else's character or the look of a certain pose, so as an early test for a work that's not a copy, try tracing some parts of the image and then adding different elements. Uh, change up the hair, change up the clothes, move an arm. Uh, this will help you get a better feel for what you want in your non-copy pieces.
(Outro that just promotes the same things in the description)
