It is time to go CSI Cyber on the Paprium artwork by Watermelongames.
- CSI: Paprium (Forensic Sprite analysis)
- Controversy
- Evidences
- ShowTime Vs Samson
- Dice Vs Ruth
- Baba Vs Chin Gentsai
- MonaLisa Vs ChunLi
- MonaLisa vs Ryu
- SOR3 Ash
- Golden Axe 3 Dead Frame
- Baba vs Fuuma
- Bonny vs Whip
- MonaLisa vs Storm
- L.Ektra vs Athena
- Murdock vs Rugal
- Murdock vs Duke
- Tug vs Uriem
- Dice vs Terry Bogard
- Scaling Effect
- Rondo vs Heavy D
- Rondo vs Rajon Rondo IRL
- Tug vs Heavy D
- Alex vs Lilith Aensland
- "_" vs Wolverine
- Level tributes
- Inspired by Stalone
- In Closing
This repo will examine the "fair use(?)", or "inspiration" in historic games as reimagined by Paprium artists: Tori, Tim Jonsson, Luis Martins, Gwenael Godde(Fonzie), Andrew Bado, Piotr Radecki, Shane Stevens (deceased?), and unnamed "chinese animators" that were "contracted by Fonzie".
As CodieKitty put it "The lines between reference and inspiration, and swiping and plagiarism can be murky". This will be an educational trip into "Fair Use" and DMCA exemptions in which we will criticize, research, and comment on claims that Watermelon games "stole" sprites from other games. In the process some techniques will be taught for identifying stolen works.
Some people claim that 3rd party hires are responsbile for the "stolen" feel as a result of this historic job post: "Animation & pixel art quality no less than: Final Fight (arcade), Street Of Rage 3 (megadrive / genesis), King Of Fighter (neo geo)"
We seek to clarify what happened either way. Please submit new "evidence" through the Issues page. Accepted issues will be added to this information tome via Pull Requests.
There has been a long raging debate about how much of the Paprium content is "stolen", vs an "homage", or "inspired by" other games. There is now plenty of animation data to examine to academically determine if there is any truth to this claim.
Per fair use guidelines the animation frames, and sprites in this repo are shared for the purposes "such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research".
Oddly enough Kenshiro vs. Stalone is often refrenced by Paprium art director Luis Martins as a landmark example of inspiration rather than piracy.
It is without question that Luis's own words on these subjects frame the discussion on theft vs. inspiration: "Most of the character designs inspiration came from watching all kinds of cyberpunk anime and from playing tons of great beat em ups from the 90’s".
In tweets that have now been deleted Luis openly stated that "a animator" before him was responsible for the Paprium artwork, and he only touched it up.
It is not up for debate, that the Paprium art has a long murky history. The question we want to answer ultimately, is how murky?
"To be clear, initially some chinese animators where contracted by Fonzie, then it became clear that that quality wasn't there, so we hired proper animators" - XGoldenboyX