Being Influenced By A Level Design But Not Copying It Exactly

I must confess that I am the OCD type that feels like doing anything is copyright infringement when it clearly isn't. I know that developers get inspiration and influence from other games which makes its way into the final project.

I don't exactly make level art yet, but I practice with smaller elements to get the feel of how larger maps work. I am mainly a hobbyist 3d interior concept designer. I design elements that can be implemented in real life that are highly inspired and influenced by different video game worlds, mainly color palettes and architectural elements. I don't want to copy an element directly because that looks kitschy and trashy on my part. It's good for practice, but not good for a final product. Yet. I constantly feel OCD over what I am doing as if it is wrong when it is clearly different. This mindset has led me pretty much to give up art and design completely because I fear that greedy rich companies are always watching me and want me to have no inspiration from their work whatsoever. It's kind of impossible not to have inspiration from others. I don't want to take things exactly. I like originality. I have done a few concept designs already inspired by Skylanders, Spyro the Dragon, and others. Other than color palette, it really doesn't imitate anything I feel because I try to make things look realistic at the moment. Note I haven't been to game design school yet.

Here is an original image from the LOS games Here is my concept design



I can't really see at all where there is any copying. People on Deviant Art were not able to see any level of copying whatsoever. I could share more images if you would like to see them. It is impossible for me to do this level of detail at the moment. If I could, I would already be making my own games! So what do you think? Is it okay to be inspired by and use a level's color scheme? Many games have similar concepts and styles. I'm not trying to rip anything off because let's face it, rip offs are horrible. And anyway, this is a real world concept design at the moment. I don't see where it would be wrong to do a real world design commission for a video game fan inspired by a game he really likes. I believe I over think too much.

 

What you are doing is perfectly fine, and nicely done by the way.

I think if you want to straight do a 1:1 remake of something, you call it fan art, and as long as you aren't selling it I believe that is fine. I think this, but don't know for sure, because I see fan art all the time on artstation.

Nobody has a copyright on color palettes or *general architectural designs. Humans have been doing art for awhile now, so there pretty much isn't anything you can create that doesn't have a very similar twin somewhere already.

 

That's exactly what I was thinking. I get my best ideas from influence in other games that I enjoyed as a child. Here's one I did influenced by the very first Spyro the Dragon game. I feel that I can do better with it though.



The original scene from spyro

 

Keep in mind the finished piece though. Don't compare your chapter 1 to the references chapter 10. What I mean is, you have to visualize how the lighting and other factors will play into your piece.

 

Yeah. I suck at lighting right now. I'm a noob. I have been trying to get the photorealism thing down for a while now. It's harder than they make it seem.

 

Man, lighting makes a huge difference. I mean, depends on what your artwork is intended for regarding how you will design it, but I know that when I make a game asset, it may look like puddy while working in my 3d engine, but once you get it under some decent lighting and apply a few post effects in a rendering service, and it can look 1000% better

 

Keep in mind some of the most influential game designers in our industry get there influences from real life and other forms of media, little things like ants, and big things like black holes and planetary ecosystems.
A lot of people have grown up on games and they know names of characters within games, better than they do 2nd cousin names.
There isn't anything legally wrong with getting inspiration from games, but it will become more and more difficult to create things that look original, or outrageous but believable because it is inspired by real-life, if you don't expand your internal inspirational database. Food for thought.

 

Generating art with good productivity usually includes use of references in early stages. This is true for models, sprites, backgrounds, HUDs and GUIs, color schemes... Sometimes photos from real life are used, often a collection of images from other works are the starting point.

If a concept looks too similar to its reference, and you decide that that's a bad thing for any reason, consciously lean away from the inspiration in small ways as you refine the work.

This principal is the same for non-visual art, too. Music can have a pretty similar process, for example, especially when a mood or theme is specified.

 

I have a silly conspiracy theory - which I prefer not to look up the correct reason and spoil the story in my head;
I think this is how chibi and super deformed character came into being. Reference was being used and iteration after iteration kept coming out too much like the original so finally the artist extremely over exaggerated the proportions and - someone thought it looked good so it stuck!