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Inspiration or stealing?


vfxjensen

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Hi guys!

 

I have decided to create my demo reel. But it has been really hard to find something original to create. I have always liked the island from the Gorillaz almbum "Plastic Beach".

Would I be concidered to be a theef if I create an island similar to the one in the music video?

 

40 mins in the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yxlTcoqNJ8

 

Cheers!

Theis

Edited by vfxjensen
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Hey,

 

I wouldn't worry about it too much. And it isn't that hard to give it a bit of a twist in terms of the theme. (You could change it to a Jungle/Goth/Candy/Furry/Metallic/glass/boxified theme and it would look very different.)

For example, for my undergraduate student project at Bournemouth I was fascinated by the (birth of) 'Sand man' effect-sequence in Spiderman 3. So I recreated it, but with a twist, so it became something different. Sure it was inspired by Sandman, and people in industry could probably grasp the underlying tongue-in-cheek parody of the Sandman effect, but on the other hand the piece could stand by itself and be just fine.

https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1431&Itemid=279

 

Have fun thinking of some themes, might be nice to do some sketches/color studies to come up with your own designs.

-- you could also mix from several pieces, such as: Coraline, Nightmare before christmas, Cloudy with a chance of meatballs 1 & 2 --- 2 has some impressive environments, up. -- Or look directly at environments from nature.

the 'nature' subreddit is pretty good to get some inspiration:

http://www.reddit.com/r/nature

eg: http://i.imgur.com/dZalO.jpg

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I think Peter's "twist" recommendation is a great idea.  Not so much to avoid potential for plagarism - there really is nothing wrong with a genuine tribute to something you love, (and Gorillaz are awesome :-), but actually to avoid falling into the trap of looking poor by comparison.  I've seen many people attempt to recreate Star-Wars scenes verbatim over the years, and various other classic geek-fayre, and the result can only really be one thing - your efforts aren't going to measure up to those of a large team of experienced professionals, no matter how good you are.

 

Inspiration is pretty much required - most creative work is inspired by a bunch of other work that came before it, and there's rarely such a thing as a completely original thought... so embracing inspiration is nothing to be concerned about.  Just try and spin it off into your own piece of work, simply because it will almost certainly be better for it.

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