MAKING PICTURES FROM OTHER PICTURES, LEGAL?

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What's the legality of... let's say, getting the eyes from one rip and using them to replace the eyes of another to make a faceset?

And then, what about if you do that for a bust and replace clothing and hair.

Or if you use parts of rips to make a Frankenstein bust, (as in the process, not the monster)...

I'm sure these ideas aren't new, but I can't think of the word(s) for this idea...

EDIT: Remix!!! ... I feel silly, but I'm sure that covers at least the first idea...

Is there aspects of a Ship of Theseus situation here?

Edit 2: Apparently, I'm talking about Frankenspriting...
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
If you have the rights to use the original art you're taking the pieces from, then it's legal.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Yeah, if it's RTP resources, I think you're in the clear. If it's not resources you own or are allowed to use (say, resources from a commercial game or made by an independent artist), then you don't have the rights to them, and thus you couldn't sell the game commercially.
If the change is major enough it is legal. However how major a major change is... Well that is something lawyers argue about a lot I think.
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

No one will care if your game is free.
there's enough of free resources for frankenspriting anyways ;w;~
For those of you who don't understand copyright:

Copyright is to protect the profits of the original maker.

You could in theory steal profits from a paid product by taking attention from it to play your free game. But anyway. There are three distinct instances where a product is legal based from another product.

  • A parody. Still, you should credit the original.
  • A tribute. You can use the work as an inspiration for your own concept (like watching Slayers, and making a novel with similar characters to honor the show), provided it is not an outright rip.
  • Major alteration. Let's say you can't draw faces. If you take an anime picture with cute faced characters, spend hours changing the hair colors, background, etc it might be significantly different to be a new picture, even though the face is the same.
It almost sounds like you're talking about frankenspriting.
Taking something existing and making changing it until it looks like something new.
That's something i tend to do a lot.
Altering it until it looks different.
I'm bad about finding an existing style, and mimicking it.
Making something new but in style of something that exists already.
Yeah, 'Frankenspriting' sounds right... I didn't know it was called that... sounds obvious though...
If you use something as a base you can't claim it as yours. Pure and simple. Because you used something as a base. It doesn't matter how much you edited it or if you changed every single pixel, you still used something that wasn't yours as a base.

That said, if you had the image next to you then copied parts of it or used it as inspiration, that's different, but the moment something of the other image is added to your own physically it is no longer yours. IE: You make a sprite from scratch but can't get the arms right, so you copy/paste the arms of another sprite over your attempts, then edit them. Legally, that is no longer your sprite because you spliced it with someone else's work.
If you added the arms to another layer instead, and made a copy (but with differences) on a third layer, then removed the layer with the arms, as long as you didn't copy it pixel for pixel and just used it as an guide, you can still call that sprite yours.

It's semantics but sometimes semantics count for a lot.
As a lawyer I'd like to state Liberty is correct. Make it from scratch if you intend to claim it as your own work, otherwise it's a parody and you need to credit where you got the base from. Case and point was Fun Pimps 7 Days to Die having a zombie similar to one from another game and getting told that they had to change it or be sued. Because they are selling their game crediting is not enough. Never sell something you edited as your own, it doesn't end well.
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