Let’s say I took a bunch of different characters from various media; a head, 2 arms, 2 legs and a torso, glued them together and then traced over to create a more homogenized image… Is that a new thing? A remix? Or ripping other’s work off?
I’ve just had this idea for a while (wanna try making my fursona from photos of a dog for the head and my own body for the body) and got curious if this proposed technique was done using others’ material would be a violation or if it would be more like a remix.
That is only true if the pieces were originally protected by copyright, the pieces extracted were substantial enough to retain that copyright, and their use in creating a “trace” model was enough to convey that protection to the final work.
I don’t know why you keep insisting that fair use has to come into it, or that a fair-use argument is not worthwhile outside of a court. (Sure, a judge would apply the binding precedent to determine if a fair use defense applies–but that’s true of every other part of the tort as well.)
Most claims of amy sort, copyright or not, are settled long before a judge gets involved.