Toyota Stole My Shit! | Misled Youth

Back when I first decided I wanted to be an artist I set out to make a comic book about goblins forged out of microwaved squatter vomit pitted against obese mcdonalds patrons. Me and sarah made a bunch of copies and distributed them around saint mark's place.

The other day I was with sarah and a guy was wheatpasting all these posters up with the exact same characters on them - X for eyes, gigantic smiles, potbellies, pointy ears and horns, and general goblin-features. I can't see how it could be a coincidence - it's almost exactly the same. I had a bunch of sketches for a second comic that I think I threw out the window at casa del sol that looked even more similar to these goblins - the x was thicker and the teeth were sharper than my original designs.

Anyway, I went to the website and it's for those new toyota cars - scion or whatever. They have this whole marketing gimmick with these characters killing "sheeple", it's all non-conformist anti-gentrification shit... it's written in almost the same exact stupid way as my comic. I would be ok with it, I've got pretty strong views about intellectual property being dumb, but it's a fucking car company that's trying to use punk rock ideals to sell cars in some completely fucking random, irrelevent, ass-backwards way.

here's what they made:

their design

www.littledeviant.com

here's what I made:

my design

theirs is drawn better, true, but this was my first artistic endeavor, I was seventeen, and my later sketches were more elaborate and way more similar. The plot of my comic was really, really stupid and I've been embarressed of it for years, but the toyota shit is just as dumb... more dumb actually because they're using it to sell cars. In my comic, for instance, all the fat people who eat at mcdonalds are ground into bread in the end by a giant "bread machine" and sent out to feed starving children. In the toyota shit, the sheeple are ground up to make fuel for their cars. They just twisted my shit around to suit their purpose.

I either I have an evil twin somewhere or I have grounds for a lawsuit. I'm gonna look into it though. fucking crazy...

Sun, 07/08/2007 - 1:29am

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

mo' monsters

actually, I found some sketches I had for a revised edition I was planning. it doesn't look much more like the toyota shit, but it's a little bit better drawn and funnier (you can't really read it but it says "no gods, mo' monsters" on one of the goblins tattoos - sarah tattooed that on her leg accidentally trying to write "no gods, no masters"). It wouldn't help in my case, but I figured I'd post it anyway.

You can tell I was in my second phase of art-study - I went from ugly cartoons to ugly cartoons with lots of lines and shading that doesn't really have a primary light source, nor does it really produce a gradient effect, it's just halftone. It's interesting looking back on my old drawings - I used to be a lot more creative, despite having no clue what I was doing.

another goblin sketch

Mon, 07/09/2007 - 11:35am

CeCeDe

Posts: 49
Joined: 2007-04-18

If you can prove you did it

If you can prove you did it before toyota, then you can sue the hell out of them.