negrek:

emeraldmew:

Soooo…. I make fakemon. Sometimes I make fakemon based on a cool idea or pun or some mythological creature I found by clicking around on the internet. And I realize this might be a problem. Keep reading

When you incorporate elements from another culture into your own work, there’s always a risk that you’re going to inadvertently use it in a way that comes off as offensive. That doesn’t mean it’s inherently wrong to be inspired by elements of other cultures or to use them in your own work.

What makes people upset is usually less the fact that someone’s using an element of their cultural heritage to inspire a Pokémon design (or whatever) and more the feeling that by doing so they’re perpetuating some harmful stereotype about that culture or using it in a way that makes it obvious that you didn’t bother to learn the first thing about what that element actually means. It might take more than a two-minute glance at a Wikipedia article to get a sense of whether the concept you’re working with is particularly politically charged, but a little research should be able to help you out. When in doubt, you can always try asking someone with more knowledge of the subject if your idea is appropriate. This is far from a sure-fire way to avoid causing offense–people vary widely in what they consider offensive, surprise!–but it should at least prevent you from making any huge blunders.

Overall sticking to ideas that come solely from your own culture is a safe way to go (although if you make any kind of art at all you have probably managed to offend someone, somewhere), but it’s kind of a depressing one, yeah? Obviously there’s a lot of fascinating stuff to learn from other cultures; there are loads of great monster myths out there that would make for excellent Pokémon designs, which of course is why you see some of them showing up in the main franchise! There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by other cultures and allowing them to influence your designs; it’s kind of awesome, honestly.

You will undoubtedly screw up now and again on this kind of thing, but as long as you try your best and listen respectfully to people who might say they do have a problem with something you’ve created, you’ll be fine. It’s a part of putting something you’ve made out for others to appreciate. Overall I think your work will be poorer if you don’t seek out influences outside what you’re familiar with. A lot of awesome stuff has come out of mixing and matching elements of different backgrounds or bringing them into a new light, and anything that gets you interested in getting out of your comfort zone and learning a bit more about the world and the people in it is a good thing imo.