Daenerys Targaryen for the iron throne!
Game of thrones’ tumblr published my picture Fire and Blood o/
This is an article about the take down of my latest design “Pop Tard Cat” on society6 by NyanCat gif creator, prguitarman, you can first see the tweeting conversation (a bad place to have this kind of talk but whatever).
I made screen in case those disappear..
The reason I’m writing this article is first to reach him (Hi there!) because I can’t find his mail at the moment and a tweet doesn’t say much… The second reason is to inform people about this kind of things concerning copyright, fair use and working with pop culture in general..
Like I said before in my tweets, my design, PopTardCat, is purely a parody/spoof of NyanCat. We can see that in the tittle pretty clearly.. there’s a pun because NyanCat is also known as PopTartCat… Yay \o/
We can also see it as a crossover beetween Tard the Grumpy Cat and NyanCat.. two big internet phenomenons people recognize instantly when they know the source… Legally working with pop culture isn’t easy due to copyright.. but in the case of parody, the spoofed artwork and artist doesn’t see its copyright expand to the parody.. In my case, prguitarman can’t decide to take a parody of his work down (well he can if the parody is offensive of course).
But that’s what happened here, I receive a mail from society6 this morning telling me my design was removed from the website :
I wanted prguitarman to see this mail, society6 doesn’t admit that the design is violating any property, I even have the right to respond to this removing of my work. I won’t for two reason :
-First I don’t have the time or the will to do so.. on the other hand prguitarman sure seems to have it.. I wish him the best looking thru the interwebz for all the parodies or even the forgeries of his gif… That’s quite a hobby regarding that we are in 2013 an the internet is a strong source of duplication and streaming of picture of all kind.
-Secondly I wish I didn’t make this design spoofing his because I think it’s not funny anymore because of the aggressive respond towards a simple design parodying his. What’ next ? GrumpyCat’s owner is going to murder me with a machete?
I understand it can be frustrating to see people trying to make some bucks using a pop culture/meme when you’re the guy who made it. But in some case they are in theirs rights, (sometimes they don’t). In France (were I live) parody is considering as fair use as in the US.
You can check what are the issues about copyright or parody here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody#Copyright_issues
There’s a thing that’s pissing me off, I was okay to take the design down by the end of the week.. But prguitarman decided it wasn’t soon enough finally without telling.. man come on.. if it can reassure you I didn’t sold any and I will not try to do so in the future.
About disrespecting the work itself (you can see a great gif made for me here http://i.imgur.com/ERVDpqe.gif ). Well, I too can put two pixels side by side so I didn’t need to work on top on the original NyanCat.
For conclusion I’ll say that this whole thing makes me kind of sad, because we are two artists about the same age (I guess), living the internet the same way and knowing that by the moment you put something small on the internet it can easily grow big (that’s what happened with NyanCat and I think it’s great). So why react like a frustrated executive telling people they’re not allowed to be inspired by his work?
Yay, free shipping on all society6 thru Sunday, you can buy stuff here if you like to.
PopTardCat is avalaible on society6. You can check it here or whatever.
//Daenerys Targaryen for the Iron Throne is available in my society6 store.
sadly it’s not animated there.
Also free shipping on my store (excepting framed prints) thru May 12 if you click this link
And also FREE Shipping until April 14 in my society6 store
//The votes close in a week, please go to designbyhümans to get my design printed o/
"You're so talented and creative, so why the pixel characters from television? I'm genuinely not trying to criticize it just confuses me that somebody as talented as you would be pushing work that is so lacking in content."
It’s a ludic way to create, I’m having fun doing those, and pixels are great to play with.. trying to say a lot using a few, getting to the essential. I don’t picture myself doing elaborate portrait of these kind of characters.. at least not now
Thanks for the rough compliment though
"Good timing. TonY- Executive Editor, EatSleepDraw"
Yeah, good to have the show back
