☆PicsAndPixels

That was. . like the opposite of inspirational. . "imitating others instead of being myself ultimately ended up freeing my mind and teaching me not to avoid copying others out of fear, and granting me knowledge and self-respect that I had never known before I started imitating!" As a sprite artist, and a game and story designer, I try to avoid unoriginal ideas as much as I can. I believe if you have a good idea, it should stand alone as it's own thing. People might say "Hey! This reminds me of (Ristar, or NiGHTS for example). . " but it only FEELS like it. It doesn't take anything FROM the game. But since it was inspired from the game, the energy it gives off draws parallels to the original idea it was inspired from. Another thing: If you aren't actively TRYING to borrow ideas, you should feel no guilt about making something. Don't try to AVOID SEEING EVERYTHING BECAUSE GEE GOLY GOSH PEOPLE WILL THINK I'M STEALING IF IT HAS SOME SIMILARITIES. It's perfectly fine to watch or play something and be inspired from it, but in my mind, the line is drawn when your project is no longer an original concept inspired by a feel or style, and instead directly copies elements from something else, even if you go so far as to change some elements to make them your own and try to mix them in with the original flavor (like if you recolor a sprite and call it a different character than the one it's recolored from), it makes the whole recipe taste conflicting, and poorly-made and makes it taste awful. . They just don't mix. And they can't mix; and any amount of tweaking to the recipe will not make it taste any less cheap and flimsy. No good idea can exist without inspiration Things that become lazy edits of other ideas and hide behind "inspiration" as a crutch feel very half-hearted and unimaginative as a result. Hi. I'm Pix ^-^