Originally Posted by mermaidofthelabyrinth
HOLD IT!
While I understand that Blue Tangs/"Dory" fish are real creatures and you can't necessarily copyright a design, I have to side with Pearlie-- That design is, almost line-for-line, a direct ripoff of Finfolk's tail.
Let's discuss this, for a minute.
(DISCLAIMER: MermaidOfTheLabyrinth, please don't take this as an attack on anything you've said here, as I totally get where you're coming from and what you're saying! This is just something I've been mulling over as I read this thread and figured this would be a good spot to lay it all out.
Plus, I'm kind of hungover and Phoenix Wright references are rocking my night right now.)
SLEEP-DEPRIVED AND HILARIOUSLY HUNGOVER ARTISTIC ANALYSIS TIME:
Here's Our Subject: Paracanthurus Hepatus, AKA the Blue Tang, AKA "Dory From Finding Nemo"
Pretty straight forward. Blue body, yellow caudal fin, black body markings and "outlining" throughout. Black body marking has a blue spot towards the front and the pectoral fins are mostly blue towards the body going to yellow and black at the tips.
Pretty straightforward, easy enough to map out on a mermaid tail as it's not exactly a complicated design-- That said, there is still a lot of room for interpretation and different makers are likely to have variations in their designs when they're making tails based off of a specific species; we see that all the time.
So What Happened Here?
First, let's address the "Original"* tail-- Finfolk Productions' Blue Tang:
(*please note that the quotes around "Original" are only used in the context of this tail being produced before SwimTails)
[Bear with me on the Microsoft Paint circles, there's a point to it I promise.]
Now, we could go on at length here about the similarities between the tail's design and the real fish, but that's pretty straightforward-- Similar shades of blue and yellow, black markings and outlines along the sides of the caudal and dorsal fins, yadda-yadda. It's very obviously a Blue Tang and Finfolk did an excellent job translating that to a mermaid tail, as we can all agree. And if you don't agree, then y'all can sit there in your wrongness and be wrong and live your sad wrong life for the rest of wrongternity, but I digress.
But here's the important part: Where do the artistic liberties come in?
Let me preface this by explaining that what I mean by artistic liberties is, where did Abby and Bryn alter the overall design to stray away from the natural patternings and design of the Blue Tang to make it more their own, while still staying true to their inspiration? As closely as tailmakers will try to represent marine critters in real life, everyone will always take artistic liberties; some will veer more off of the design, others will try to stay as obsessively close as possible; but when looking at a photograph of a fish to design a tail off of it, every maker will interpret certain aspects differently.
Also, please note that although I believe it was Finfolk's commissioner who designed this tail initially, I'll be referring to Finfolk as the designer for the sake of the argument.
So here's what's immediately obvious, referring back to the colored circles in the picture above:
Red: The Blue Spot.
To start this one off, let's bring that beautiful Blue Tang motherflipper back in here for a sec.
The blue spot that I'm referring to is the oval-shaped one in the center of the body's black patch; what did the designer(s) of the Finfolk tail take liberties on?
I'd like to call attention to the direction of the blue spot; notice on the Finfolk tail that the spot is running horizontally, across the body of the tail. Meanwhile, if the Blue Tang fish were laid parallel to the Finfolk tail, we'd see that the dot runs vertically, along the length of the body. This isn't really a common artistic interpretation, mermaid tail or not, that we see with Blue Tangs, so we can assume that this quirk is unique to Finfolk.
Orange: The Back.
Let's refer back to the Blue Tang photo again; notice that the only blue on the back/topside of this fish is on the face, crest of the head, and the dorsal fin. The black runs straight along the back on either side of the dorsal.
Meanwhile, on Finfolk's: The blue is not only on the dorsal fin, but actually makes up the majority of the back of the tail; the black lines we see are in more of a wavy, flowy design that isn't present on the Blue Tang (this doesn't just apply to the back of the tail; the same can be said for the underside as well)-- and in fact, the black marking on the "calf" area of the tail doesn't even connect to anything on the side, it tapers off to a point. Also not present on the Blue Tang. So we can pretty safely conclude that this is another liberty taken by Finfolk.
Yellow: The Pectoral Fins.
Since the above photo of the Blue Tang doesn't clearly show the pectoral fins, let's grab another photo because Google Images has everything:
Attachment 28780
What do we notice? Ignoring the translucent section of the fin along the outer edge, there's a yellow spot towards the upper point of the tip, a black stripe along the top edge of the fin, and then the rest is blue leading to the attachment point at the Tang's body.
What does Finfolk's look like?
Personal opinion? Almost totally different.
Not only does the yellow spot take up the full outer edge of the fin as opposed to the tip, it takes up more than half of the entire fin. The black stripe isn't anywhere handy to where it actually is on the Blue Tang; it's not tracing the top edge of the fin, it's tracing the yellow spot and separating it from the blue. Clearly, another liberty on behalf on Finfolk.
Yellow Part 2: Aquatic Boogaloo.
Yes, there's more to the caudal fins than the markings. Look at the Blue Tang photo again. Notice where the caudal fins are? They are in front of the black lines outlining the blue spot.
Know where they are on Finfolk's tail? Behind those lines. This is important for later.
Green: Colors, Colors Everywhere, and Not a Drop to... Wait. What?
Referring back to the fullbody photograph above of the Blue Tang, look at how much of the black area separates the inner point of the caudal fin from the blue spot on the body; that's a lot of black, right? Excluding the length of the caudal fin, the amount of black between the yellow and the blue spot makes up approximately 1/4 of the fish's body length. So to answer that previous question: Yes, that's a lot of black.
So it's interesting that there's so little of it separating it on the Finfolk tail; only a tenth of the body (again, excluding the fluke's) length as opposed to 1/4. That's a pretty noticeable liberty to take.
Blue: The Fluke's Edge.
Look at the Blue Tang. Now back to Finfolk. Now back to the Blue Tang... Notice that the caudal fin has a black outline tracing the broad edge of the fin.
... Now back to Finfolk! That black outline isn't there.
In fact, that black outline is replaced by a color that isn't found on the Blue Tang at all, probably their biggest (and yet, somehow, most subtle) artistic liberty from the real deal-- It fades to white instead.
So that pretty much covers everything on Finfolk's tail.
What about SwimTail's Design?
Now that we've gone over Finfolk's tails and the artistic liberties that they took to separate it from the Blue Tang design, let's bring back that comparison image that Lorelei posted earlier:
Firstly, I won't be addressing the Orange Circle from the above diagram as there's no back-view of Swimtails' design. This is going purely off of the screencapture shown directly above.
Let's cut to the chase--
How Similar Is It To Finfolk's Tail?
1) Let's come back to the "Blue Spot" area at the top of the tail; just like Finfolk's, the spot comes out across the body instead of running along the length of the body.
2) Just like Finfolk's, the yellow on the pectoral fins takes up the majority of the fin and again, just like Finfolk's, the black line doesn't follow the top edge of the fin but separates the yellow from the blue.
3) The black separating the yellow fluke from the blue body is surprisingly small compared to on the actual Blue Tang; and not only that, the black lines going up the body are in that exact same wavy manner not found on the Blue Tang, right down to the semi-diamond shape near the fluke-end of the tail.
4) Just like Finfolk's, the fluke's edge is lacking that black outline-- and not only that, it fades to white exactly like Finfolk's design.
5) The pectoral fins are placed in exactly the same area as Finfolk's; underneath the blue spot, as opposed to in front of it.
One or two of these things looking similar, I could understand-- everyone has different quirks when translating nature to art in any form, but by that same token-- especially when you're working with the same general shape (in this instead, the limiting shape of a mermaid body/tail) certain things can only be taken so far and can potentially be a coincidence. But to have five of these artistic liberties almost 100% alike? No, that's not a coincidence. That's the red flag of a copycat.
In fact, of all of the liberties taken with this tail, Swimtails only has one thing about its design that's different from Finfolk's (besides the fluke shape, anyway, which is another matter I'm not going to get into): The sides of the calf-portion of the tail are solid black, as opposed to blue. So they've got that going for them, I suppose.
I think given my analysis above, it's safe to conclude that playing Devil's Advocate for Swimtails isn't necessary*-- It's impossible for them to have almost identically replicated Finfolk's tail, without having done so deliberately.
And with that, I rest my case.
*Not that there's anything wrong with playing Devil's Advocate! I find doing that is a pretty healthy tactic in discussions like these, where all parties can use it to determine the situation from different angles and help come to a more reasonable conclusion and avoid dogpiling a potentially innocent person.
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