Steve Jobs once said, ‘Good artists copy. Great artists steal.’ Or was it Picasso who said that? Never mind. On the Internet, it’s ‘Good artists use Photoshop. Great artists use 4chan.’
A talented Photoshop artist created this nauseating but flawlessly photorealistic likeness of Super Mario. Another, even more talented artist not only claimed the work as his own, but built up a complex, fraudulent back story to it. Unfortunately, between this morning and now, the latter has ‘fessed up and taken ‘his’ work down. (His excuse: if it’s on 4chan, it must be public domain, right? Right?) In the interim he had built up pages and pages of comments, starting off with holy praise and ending with death threats. After the takedown, all that remains on his deviantart profile is an empty gallery and, amongst other items, a cleavage-enhanced rendition of Sally from Sonic the Hedgehog, the darkest cartoon series Saturday mornings have ever known.