Belle (IDW) Artwork Getting DMCA’d By ‘Boingkid’ Character Creator

[DaBigJ]

You smell that? It smells like...trouble...

That's no good.

[Slashy]

1 hour ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

You smell that? It smells like...trouble...

That's no good.

It is a ridiculous lawsuit. The dude's character looks nothing like Belle.

[Zaysho]

This isn't even worth worrying about.

The one who's making this claim had to literally add a feature from Belle (her hair) to their own character to claim they're practically the same.

Totally normal behavior.

[Rabbitearsblog]

4 hours ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

You smell that? It smells like...trouble...

That's no good.

I'm getting really sick of some of these people threatening lawsuits against the Sonic franchise. This happened before with "he who must not be named" and I'm not looking forward to see this happening again when the people working with the Sonic comics didn't deserve it.

[Zaysho]

1 hour ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

I'm getting really sick of some of these people threatening lawsuits against the Sonic franchise. This happened before with "he who must not be named" and I'm not looking forward to see this happening again when the people working with the Sonic comics didn't deserve it.

They're two completely different things.

Ignoring the number of stupid claims Penders has since tossed around on Twitter over the last decade (which are mostly for attention at this point), you can at least see some influence in Chronicles even if a lot of the details are different enough and its own thing. It was extremely petty and self-aggrandizing, but it wasn't based off of nothing entirely. Not enough, of course, to win him anything, but you can at least see the reasoning even if it has its own problems (and is extremely hypocritical when you look at exactly how he used influences in his own work, which was shallow).

This is just some clown abusing DMCA (which is extremely common) and pulling claims out of their ass (most notably, they claim to have pitched their comic to IDW for distribution and never heard back--and if IDW does their due diligence, they probably never looked at it. And in any case, Evan Stanley would not be privy to any of this). Evident by taking elements of Belle's design and applying them to their own character to pretend they are exactly the same.

[Rabbitearsblog]

9 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

They're two completely different things.

Ignoring the number of stupid claims Penders has since tossed around on Twitter over the last decade (which are mostly for attention at this point), you can at least see some influence in Chronicles even if a lot of the details are different enough and its own thing. It was extremely petty and self-aggrandizing, but it wasn't based off of nothing entirely.

This is just some clown abusing DMCA (which is extremely common) and pulling claims out of their ass. Evident by taking elements of Belle's design and applying them to their own character to pretend they are exactly the same.

I even went to their account and saw their "character" and their character looks nothing at all like Belle.  Also, I found it suspicious that they just now complained about Belle's appearance when Belle had been around since either 2020 or 2021.  You would think that they would have said something about it the moment that Belle first appeared in the comics.  But no, they just now decided to hit IDW with this.  Also, they seem to be a really small company and nobody has really heard of this company until they made themselves noticeable with these allegations.  I have a feeling that nothing is really going to come out of this since that person doesn't really have any clear evidence against IDW for this.

[JezMM]

Well, with 6 years development to their name and 33 twitter followers per year to show for it, I get the impression their venture hasn't been the success they thought it'd be and they're now grasping at "any publicity is good publicity" straws to try and give themself a boost, painfully unaware that there's pretty much never been a case of such a product going for that angle and managing to outlive the bad press, and that it just makes you come across as utterly petty and immature and therefore incapable of delivering a quality product.

I can only hope this person's project was just a cynical attempt to make some money with no actual real passion or love going into the character, coz if not, by their own hand, their original creation will forever be "that weird clown thing that tried to sue the Sonic comics for also having a clown".

[Rabid-Coot]

So from looking through their twitter feed the made a character and proof of concept game demo had a failed kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boingkid/boingkidtm

Followed a few years later by a few comic issues and a patreon https://www.patreon.com/nivstudio which again seems to have failed to get any attention.

Then everything goes quiet for over a year until we get this madness.

On 5/21/2022 at 4:51 AM, Rabbitearsblog said:

Also, I found it suspicious that they just now complained about Belle's appearance when Belle had been around since either 2020 or 2021.  You would think that they would have said something about it the moment that Belle first appeared in the comics.  But no, they just now decided to hit IDW with this. 

Not immidietly knowing whats going on in a sonic comic isn't too farfetched.

Just now, Rabid-Coot said:

So from looking through their twitter feed they made a character and proof of concept game demo had a failed kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boingkid/boingkidtm

Followed a few years later by a few comic issues and a patreon https://www.patreon.com/nivstudio which again seems to have failed to get any attention.

Then everything goes quiet for over a year until we get this madness.

Not immidietly knowing whats going on in a sonic comic isn't too farfetched.

 

[Zonic 2099]

I get that rejection stings and is upsetting but good god man, have you no dignity at all??

I'd say Disney would have a better time suing SEGA for Sonic over similarities towards Mickey Mouse than Boing Kid over Belle. And that's not even getting into taking this delusional anger out on artists who have nothing to do with this other than drawing Belle fan art.

Hope the attention was worth it because this'll be all Boing Kid will be known for.

[Rabbitearsblog]

This is basically like the Penders situation all over again (although the circumstances were different). I honestly don't know why some people keep attacking the Sonic comics, whenever they are doing well.  It just frustrates me to no end.  But hopefully, this will go nowhere and we will still see Belle in the comics, as well as keep seeing the comics going.

[josiahblaze]

43 minutes ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

This is basically like the Penders situation all over again (although the circumstances were different). I honestly don't know why some people keep attacking the Sonic comics, whenever they are doing well.  It just frustrates me to no end.  But hopefully, this will go nowhere and we will still see Belle in the comics, as well as keep seeing the comics going.

My guess is, they attacked the comics because they couldn't even create a weak case to DMCA otherwise. They created Boingkid in 2015, meaning that the only Sonic characters they could "claim" as copies are those introduced after that era. So they just saw Belle and thought "Hey, I've got a great idea to get tons of Sonic fans to hear about our game." And in a way it worked. I wouldn't be talking about the stupid game if it wasn't for their false claims, but in the long run, they've done something they'll live to regret. Because the Sonic fanbase never gives in without a fight, and I expect the Boingkid franchise to always be associated with this situation from here on out, just like how Penders is always associated with his lawsuit. They've really crossed the Rubicon with this one. There's no turning back now, which I assume  is why they've made no attempt to.

[Darkvizardberrytan]

No one is attacking the comics. They do it cause they know fans will give them attention. I think the guy has less than 200 followers on twitter.  They do it cause whatever product they are working on is getting next to no traction in both terms of marketing or no one cares for their product. So they do things like this. And what is the outcome? Fans start retweeting and talking about it and give them some attention to their product to begin discussion around it. Thus giving him what he wanted. Attention for his product. Many will take any form of attention even if bad sometimes. hopefully sega and idw shut it down soon.

[Rabbitearsblog]

2 hours ago, Darkvizardberrytan said:

No one is attacking the comics. They do it cause they know fans will give them attention. I think the guy has less than 200 followers on twitter.  They do it cause whatever product they are working on is getting next to no traction in both terms of marketing or no one cares for their product. So they do things like this. And what is the outcome? Fans start retweeting and talking about it and give them some attention to their product to begin discussion around it. Thus giving him what he wanted. Attention for his product. Many will take any form of attention even if bad sometimes. hopefully sega and idw shut it down soon.

That's the problem when some people do dumb things like this.  They want to get attention for the wrong reasons and they don't realize that they are just dragging their names in the mud and making it harder for them to sell their products or get their works off the ground because many people will hate them for what they did.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Hasn’t Belle been around for a while? At least a few years?

I would think they’d have been quick on calling foul prior til now. Word tends to spread fast these days that I can’t imagine they didn’t already see this character a year or so ago when she was revealed.

[Celestia]

11 hours ago, Rabid-Coot said:

Not immidietly knowing whats going on in a sonic comic isn't too farfetched.

 

This is a good point imo. As ridiculous as this all is that part isn't weird at all.

 

That design comparison that had to add some of Belle's features just to make the point says it all, huh. It sucks people can abuse DMCAs so easily but...what's new, eh?

[Rabbitearsblog]

4 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Hasn’t Belle been around for a while? At least a few years?

I would think they’d have been quick on calling foul prior til now. Word tends to spread fast these days that I can’t imagine they didn’t already see this character a year or so ago when she was revealed.

That's what I've been thinking.  This comic has been out for years now, so how could anyone (who has been reading the comics or at least has been keeping up to date with the comics) just now accuse the comic of copying a design when they could have done it when Belle was first introduced?

[ZERO_ninja]

My only minor concern is if SEGA end up annoyed by this. I imagine IDW will be able to handle it alone and it'll totally be a non-thing. But there is a minor part of me that worries SEGA just broadly and unfairly view this as the comics creating legal issue with Sonic again and affects their relationship with IDW as well as desire to have a Sonic comic out there.

But as said, that is probably unlikely and IDW will just be able to handle such a spurious accusation themselves.

[Celestia]

1 hour ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

That's what I've been thinking.  This comic has been out for years now, so how could anyone (who has been reading the comics or at least has been keeping up to date with the comics) just now accuse the comic of copying a design when they could have done it when Belle was first introduced?

Okay so some important clarification here:

So yes, they claim to have contacted IDW at some point about this before the DMCAs. I don't disagree this whole thing is ridiculous even with this additional information (it doesn't really change much), but I don't think the timing is a factor at all.

Even if it did happen out of nowhere, I just want to reiterate it's not that crazy someone wouldn't know something about a Sonic comic, hell even if this person is a Sonic fan. Especially since it's a comic we're talking about. Sure, IDW Sonic is doing well...as far as comics go, which isn't exactly millions of sales per issue.

[VRiderCh]

Okay, now I'm mad. They're just straight up harassing Jen Hernandez.

[Salamander]

7 hours ago, ZERO_ninja said:

My only minor concern is if SEGA end up annoyed by this. I imagine IDW will be able to handle it alone and it'll totally be a non-thing. But there is a minor part of me that worries SEGA just broadly and unfairly view this as the comics creating legal issue with Sonic again and affects their relationship with IDW as well as desire to have a Sonic comic out there.

But as said, that is probably unlikely and IDW will just be able to handle such a spurious accusation themselves.

I think cases like this are precisely why Sega and Sonic Team have been getting more directly involved in character design for the comics - so that they know everything is above-board and there's no opening for the kind of legal shenanigans which dogged Archie.  They will have direct knowledge and documentation of the fact that there is no substance to this case.  I'm sure they get cranks in Japan, too.

[Stasis]

I swear I've seen a character that looks like BoingKid before but I just can't think where.

[Rabid-Coot]

12 minutes ago, Stasis said:

I swear I've seen a character that looks like BoingKid before but I just can't think where.

Zebadee from the magic roundabout? https://the-magic-roundabout.fandom.com/wiki/Zebedee/Design_Evolution

[Edward850]

42 minutes ago, Stasis said:

I swear I've seen a character that looks like BoingKid before but I just can't think where.

The Commodore 64 classic Thing on a Spring? Sure looks more alike than Belle in any case. :V

[Zonic 2099]

Apparently Niv has now set their twitter to private.

If not for the 100% unnecessary mile of DCMAing unrelated peoples art with a stupidly laughable claim I'd probably feel bad. Here's to hoping this person leaves things be whenever they do unprivate instead of making things worse....

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

Seems like he keeps going on and off private, apparantly tagged the fbi in one of their tweets which is hilarious.

btw, someone managed to find the copyright details regarding boingkid, but idk if I can post the tweet thread here.