"The Devil's Radio"

Today (well, yesterday now), I participated in a roleplaying game for the first time in quite a while (last summer was the last time, I think, or thereabouts). There's three of us playing, and Ev is game mastering. It looks like it'll be a fairly interesting game, with a fairly easy and intuitive game system that Ev cobbled together from three or four others. I'm playing a philosopher thief who is better at convincing people to let him take their stuff than he is at just taking someone's stuff. It'll be an amusing character to work with, I think.

I read something over at PVP that I found rather interesting, though the rant has since disappeared (and this is just in the last few minutes, mind you...I'd think I was slightly insane if I wasn't positive I just read the damn thing). Scott Kurtz was talking about a guy who'd created a webcomic with characters startlingly similar in appearance to characters in Kurtz's own comic. He'd apparently had communications back and forth with the guy drawing this other comic, and the other guy said something about how apparently Kurtz was afraid that someone with a similar style would be intimidated by this newcomer because he (the newcomer) had fresher ideas and something new to offer, while Kurtz was just rehashing the same schtick over and over.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I've incorporated elements of other artists' styles into my own. I've adapted things I liked--the way one guy draws hands, or another draws facial expressions, or whatever--and applied those things to the way I draw my own characters. I don't lift whole characters or character designs just for shits and giggles, though, and then claim they're mine. I think Scott Kurtz was completely justified in his annoyance and outright anger with this other guy's stuff, especially when the guy pretty much flat out admitted that he was lifting Kurtz's drawing style. That's like saying you borrowed the tune from, say, the Beatles' "Yesterday," but then put slightly different words to it (that analogy probably tells you everything you need to know about my opinion on musical "sampling" in hip-hop and rap, but that's a rant for another time).

For me (and for Kurtz, I imagine), the issue here is not "who can make the best jokes using this art style," as the other guy seems to think it is, but rather an issue of intellectual property. Those character designs are the product of Scott Kurtz, and someone else claiming them as his own (even if slightly modified, as these appear to be...though only very slightly), and not only that, but trying to make money off of those designs (the guy had a Paypal button with one of "his" images on it), is inexcusable. It's one thing to have a similar style, but it's another to have the same character designs.

Scott Kurtz kind of has a reputation as a bit of an asshole, one which is probably drawn from his tendency to simply say what he thinks without filtering it through a "how would other people react to this?" filter. Admittedly, that's not such a bad thing all the time--sometimes, we need folks to say what they believe before really thinking about it. I may not always agree with his opinions, but I think Kurtz has the right to voice them, especially in his own webspace. I also happen to think that he is in the right here, and that this other cartoonist is doing something which is unfair to Kurtz and not entirely honest.

This sort of thing can be taken too far in both directions, though. Let someone do what they will with your art and your style, and you have no control over your own intellectual property. But then there are guys who take even fair usage too seriously (there was an example of this being discussed over at Penny Arcade earlier this week and, prior to that, about two or three months ago...all involving the same idiot). There's a fine line to tread between claiming something which is clearly based on someone else's work as your own, and using something fairly (as, say, a forum avatar...which was the case in the Penny Arcade incident I mentioned). One is essentially stealing and not bothering to come up with original character designs. The other is actually a completely different issue, though both perhaps deal with copyrights and the like.

All in all, I think I have to agree with Kurtz in this instance. The other guy, from what I can gather (there was no link nor mention of the name of the offending comic, and I couldn't come up with anything in my search, so I can't actually verify much of what Kurtz was arguing except from the snippets of this other guy's art which Kurtz had to compare with his own work in the rant), is in the wrong here, and ought to have working a little harder at coming up with original characters. Plagiarism is a serious offense, whether in writing or art or whatever. As a writer myself, and as a scholar especially, I take that sort of thing seriously. Intellectual property is very, very important, and with something like this art style and character design debacle, citing your source simply isn't enough.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Moxy Früvous, "Green Eggs and Ham"