This has to be seen to be believed.

It turns out my much loved character Octocat has a massive underground following in RUSSIA. I just got sent links to a hoard of over 700 pieces of new fan art. His Russian homepage, as well as archives of the work can be found here. I’m not sure how many people are behind this, but from that site it seems to be coming from the home of Russian memes 2ch.ru (visit at your own risk).

The images are mostly based around one of the first pieces of fanart by a Japanese artist, and he has now been put through every permutation possible. This is about as humbling and amazing as it gets. People are actively using him to express themselves. Instead of passively absorbing it they are giving it new context, using him as a mirror for their ideas. Some of it is beautiful, a lot of it is controversial, and most of it… I just don’t have a clue.

I’m not quite sure how to meaningfully put together all this stuff, the fanart page is too big already…(a book??)
You can browse through about 670 images below using Microsoft’s new PhotoZoom technology…(you need you download the Silverlight plugin, it’s worth it)

While I don’t want to inflate this too much, it’s important to give it perspective. There are hundreds of trendy self-described “character designers” out there, and this kind of thing is their wet dream. They believe character design involves sticking arbitrary shapes and characteristics together, then marketing the life out of them to other designers and affluent grown-ups who still play with toys. It seems the only qualifying factor in these characters is whether they look “cool” or not. You can market something all you want, but if the idea doesn’t resonate it will be hopeless.

There is still a steady flow of Octocat art from the capitalist West.. here is some recent stuff including a beautiful Christmas tree decoration, a Spanish comic (translation??) and one from my friend Moto.

If you have no idea what Octocat is, someone wrote a new, quite detailed article about the whole thing here.

- Дэвида Орейли