What inspires you...

...to make a character that is inspired by an existing intellectual property?

Now this thread isn't about ferretting out those "generic-able" costumes and names, but instead to inquire about the WHY of making a character in name, appearance or bio that is inspired by such characters as Batman, Spider-Man, Spawn, Neo and Green Lantern.

Myself, I have always preferred to make a character as unique as possible with my own (somewhat limited) creativity, so I am just trying to understand the idea behind doing otherwise. For me, there have been only a few characters that I have made that are inspired by existing comic characters.

• Schwarzpunkt — He was inspired by Batman and Ozymandias... and as such became an acrobatic, smart, gadgety, villain who really thinks he is doing the right thing. His costume is all black, but that is about where the similarities end. I made him because I wanted to make a Stalker, and Batman sprung to mind...
• Hard-Light — This dude was inspired by me looking at the Vanguard sword and the Energy Shield and immeadiately thinking Green Lantern. However, I chose to make this guy's dominant colors yellow, and significantly alter his costume. I just liked the idea that the sword itself was his power.

I have a couple I made early on in my game time because I didn't have any ideas for characters and thought it would be neat to see them realized in a video game. These days I usually start with a name and powerset combo I like first and work forward to costume and concept.

Ya, I don't understand why someone would want to play a character that someone else made ... (CapCom syndrome as I just, right now, started call it). City of Heroes lends itself to making new stuff.

For instance, my new character on Exalted, "Water of Life" was inspired by the empty-brain jar Halloween helmet and the Clockwork body. He was a medical experiment in hydro-molecular computing. Developing sentience, and a high degree of intelligence, he's off to save the world. What comic book has sentient water as a major hero? (Note: haven't read comics regularly for nearly 12 years).

admittedly my Dual Pistols character was inspired by Burn notice, of all things

Hhhmmm...I get inspired alittle differently.

My necro/pain MM was inspired after I read the bio on Aleister Crowley.
My ele/sd brute was my idea on a slavic god.
My demon/therm MM was inspired from Anton LeVay after I read his bio.
My BR/SR corr was inspired after I watched some cheesy sci-fi(invaders from mars/plan 9) flicks.
My spines/wp crapper was a dream I had after I watched Creature from the Black Lagoon and River Monsters in the same day(Halloween fishman ftw).

And many others...about the only one from comic books would probably be my bots/ff mm who was inspired by Ultron.

I always make original characters, but sometimes I get the inspiration to make a character as if he/she were in a specific game's/anime's/etc world. My dual pistols character was inspired by Wild Arms, my Street Justice scrapper's gloves are actually his partner in 'weapon' form, and I have another character inspired by Eureka Seven that is able to use the planet's 'thoughts' as energy.

Though, playing a Wild Arms game recently, I've started wishing we had cool guns like these:

http://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery...-illust09.html

Really wish we'd get that Gunslinger costume set soon...

Simply put, I wanted to "live" the same characters that I have grown up reading about and watching in cartoons and films. But that was back when I started playing, because it was all I had to go on. I found it a lot of fun to see just how close I could get the costume creator to imitate some famous costumes.

After that brief initial phase, I found myself creating characters with similar power sets to my comic book idols, but with unique costumes and stories. I can go back and look at any character I created in my first year playing (that stuck), and I see power set inspiration from Iceman, Green Arrow, Ironman, The Human Torch, and Captain America.

Since then, concepts have been my own ideas, for the majority.

I've had some fun in usign the CC to recreate iconic characters, but never actually rolling them up, just having the costume there as a thought experiment, but I lost all of them when my PC got wiped recently.

At the moment, with Titan Weapons I'm attempting to come up with a TW/Elec Brute flavourfully pulling from Norse Mythology (as I often do) Thor is the obvious choice, given the hammer, some sort of futuristic techno Thor springs to mind.

Creating a costume and theme for him, while shying away from the Marvel character of the same name and background is going to be difficult.

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

Well most of my characters are inspired by other fictional characters to some degree. Not so much in the sense of making a direct copy but more along the lines of taking a character archytype I enjoy and then making my own interpretation of it.

For example my DP/Storm Corruptor Jack Steam is heavily influenced by Harry Dresden (magic wielding, film noir private detective) but his actual character differs significantly (he's a LOT more of a mercenary).

Similarly my Demon/Thermal Mastermind Lord Harrandeous was heavily influenced by the Temeraire and RCN series (and therefore indirectly Horatio Hornblower) and is a stranded mariner with attitudes similar to an age of sail Officer and a Gentleman. However his actual background as a dimension traveling demon differs a bit from the character's he's based upon.

I've got a lot of Amberite characters running around, but that's because they're all based on my Amber Diceless Roleplaying characters. None of them are "canon" from Zelazny's books, they're the children and grandchildren of those characters, so it's definitely inspired-by and not a ripoff-of.

I've never tried to duplicate a comic book character, really... but there is a bit of Stephen Strange in Talisander's personality. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but I can't deny it's there.

Also, the Unquiet Bride's name came from the lyrics of a Decemberists song. I had the name first, and built the character and her background around it. I suppose that counts as inspiration of a sort.

You'd be hard pressed not to come pretty close to at least one of the comic book characters created over comics' 70+ year history with almost any character you create.

On a recent Usteam, the devs said Street Justice was influenced by Batman, so the devs do it, too.

I like to take an existing comic book character I like and alter them enough so that even though you can guess the source material, it isn't genericable because it's just too different to be called a copy.

A certain sci-fi MMO coming up blatantly uses famous characters as their templates too, saying you can live out the "smuggler-guy fantasy" or the "dark lord fantasy" in their promotional videos.

Heck, even the various comic book publishers have done this to each other other the years! Captain Marvel vs. Superman is a great example. Original work or rip-off?

Maybe someone in this game wants to live out the Batman fantasy or the Superman fantasy. Nothing wrong with that so long as you inject enough originality to call it your own.

WARNING: I bold names.

The odds. When the odds against me surviving are overwhelming I become inspired. For example I was doing a BAF the other day and things suddenly went awry. The Adds got way out of hand and the league window was full of the red names of the dead and dying. But somehow, with just seconds to spare, we rallied and were triumphant.

Interesting question.

Most of my toons are unique.

However, I do have a small handful inspired by characters in books or movies, etc.

In those few cases, my rationale was - "I wonder what those guys would be
like, and how they'd interact if they were in the 'City of' world".

For instance, I have a Brute that is a Tolkienesque Tree Ent, who slumbered
for aeons, and woke up to find themselves in this radically changed "Middle Earth".

I have another toon that is Arizona themed (for an AZ SG) that is based on
a Hopi-Indian legend and it is built based on what I read of that character on
Wikipedia.

A couple characters from some movies I like have found their way into Paragon City
and the Rogue Isles, one of which was purely a "pun" name about existing game
powers and the character's name in the movie.

I'm doubtful the Ent or Hopi-inspired toons are copyright issues at all, and some
of the movie characters weren't IN the movies but were inspired by the movie's setting.

A couple of my "movie" toons might be copyrighted (I have no idea), and may possibly
be an issue as they are those characters, transported here in "City". <shrug>

Whether they are or not, the reasons *I* made them were because they "fit" (for me)
in the "City of" universe and they're sort of a tribute to a movie I liked. YMMV.


Regards,
4

I, too, have a few toons inspired by movies I have loved. (I even try and make at least one costume as close to the movie version as possible, and try to get the powerset as close also.)
A few of my toons are in honor of characters that I admire. I created The Lone Ranger's daughter...


the long-lost and unknown sister of Superman...


and Zorro's child...

These all belong to an SG I made called Legends Live On, and are for the relatives of well known folks.
I also love to create toons with a 'play-on-words' name and matching powerset, like HareTrigger...


My inspirations can hit me any time, any place. It could be a concept, a word or whatever. I LOVE the creation part of the process, and seeing my idea become a reality is very self-gratifying. Even after seven years it has never gotten old.

I pretty much never deliberately copy any Intellectual Property for my characters.

Recently it happened accidentally or subconsciously. I was desperately searching for names to go with a powerset I wanted to play (Street Justice/Energy Aura). I was fishing around and found the name Witch Boy. I made the character in a suit because I was thinking he could be a witch boy in witch school, but that he was more interested in fighting than in magic.

Around level 8 or so I realized I had a character named Witch Boy who looked just like Klarion the Witch Boy. Ok, mine didnt have grey or blue skin, as Klarion often has. And my guys hair was blonde, not black. And my character doesnt cast spells. But he was running around in formal clothes and his name was Witch Boy. So I radically changed him to look like a swamp gas spirit, so he is just a pitch black fey entity who gives off a ghostly fire. No clothes. Just a burning hole in reality. His mom was a witch. Kept the name. Not even remotely like Klarion now.

So I avoid IP infringement aggressively.

Lewis