Let's say I create a fire-based character that has a flaming skull. No black leather jacket with spikes, no chains, no motorcycle (cuz we don't have any), no "Ghost" or "Rider" in his name.
My question is if the flaming skull by itself would make my character infringe copyright laws. I get confused with this sometimes, I really would like to use this concept on my character, but attracting the Big Mouse wrath to this game is absolutely the last thing I want.
So, is it cool to follow with this, or should I abandon the flaming skull concept for good?
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I have a flaming skull headed heroine called Hellrunner... mash up of Flash and Ghost Rider and have never had an issue.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
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Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Epic Stronghold
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Here's my character "Hell Toupee" who is meant to be a blatant parody of Ghost Rider. Business man with a cursed Toupee that turns him into a flaming skeleton of vengeance, complete with fire chains. It's not against copyright laws because it's not an exact copy. He wears a business suit, and his powers come from the flaming hair piece.
On the other hand, I did have a Mortal Kombat homage character named Voltaic. He was meant to be an electric ninja in the style of Scorpion/Sub-Zero. I designed his look based off of their costumes and thought I was safe with my mix of Black, White, and Light-Blue color schemes, while using costume pieces that had electric, or lightning bolt, patterns. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and the character got Defaulted.
There are, of course, shortcuts - if your flying brick is a white man with conservatively-cut black hair, wearing blue tights with red trunks, cape, and boots, and a yellow pentagonal symbol on the chest, you're probably going to get badnamed for copying Superman, no matter what you call him. But usually, it takes something like dressing your speedster up in a red outfit with a yellow lightning-bolt motif and then calling him "Barry Allen" in your bio (something I've actually seen) to get gigged on this.
Yours is pretty clearly homage, not copy. I mean, you could make a Ghost Rider straight-up copy in here, although he'd have to be on a hoverbike, but what you've described isn't it.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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So a parody who doesn't outright copy the look or name is probably safe.
Let's see if I understood correctly then:
Just made this bad boy, it's a Casey Jones homage. His name will be Home Run or something baseball-related.
[x] Hockey Mask
[x] Baseball Bat
[x] Punk look
Since I'm not naming him "Casey Jones" and the color scheme is different from the comics, it won't be a problem, right?
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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About the skins, the best I could do so far was duplicating the same costume with different weapons and then switching the costume slots outside combat. It would be awesome if we could differentiate skins from SB, DB and HW.
Now that's a good idea, with a flaming baseball bat