Here’s a small tip for you, the one who wants to have success with a webcomic, videogame, vid, or something like that, on the net: make something with a cat.
Here’s the list of successful cats over cartoon history: Garfield, Hello Kitty, Simon’s Cat, Nyan Cat… and now… GamerCat. Do you know about it? Look for it. Successful dogs: Snoopy.
So, if you’re planning to make something on the net, as it has been said here before, go make something with a cat.
Here’s a small article trying to help, or to warn, or just to say, or well, I don’t know exactly what I’m trying with this article. The fact is that this article is about the derivative work of the derivative work.
We can study on Wikipedia what a derivative work is and we’ll find that it is a work of art made of another work of art; a common example would be a music clip, using some music, and some video footage. Well, then we can now say that the latest two Youtube sucess videos, the Nyan Cat and the Dramatic Look, are both derivative works, and they creators weren’t able to make money from them because they didn’t hold the rights of the previous works.
In Dramatic Look case, the video footage comes from a Japanese TV magazine, and the music is from another movie. The creator, currently unidentified, didn’t have the rights to make that derivative work and he/she didn’t earn a penny from it.
In Nyan Cat case we know the creator, Youtube user SaraJ00n, the designer of the animated gif and the composer of the music. But she didn’t ask for permission to use it and the three of them haven’t got to an agreement and all those visits to the original video on Youtube haven’t generated a penny. Isn’t it curious, at least?
Now comes the funny part. If I want to make a video, should I create an original piece or a derivative work? Well, answer is no black or white, but in my case I prefer to make original pieces (or pieces which have their rights in the public domain now), instead of making derivative works. Perhaps with a derivative work you will see more visits in the beginning, but you won’t be able to make money from it and in the end it will be a littlebit frustrating. But hey, the World is a free place (or isn’t?), you can choose to do what you want.
We’re about to watch the latest link on the entertainment evolution (musical entertainment). And guess what?, it’s coming from Japan. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is this artist that entertains us with her first single called PonPonPon? It’s a surrealist video that rivals Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz on their surrealistic approach.
It even rivals with the Nyan Cat itself. It is obviously the evolution of the surrealistic trend on entertainment, very important now when we talk about kids entertainment. But, what will the next thing be? Will it be something so surrealistic that today it is not yet understood? Anyway, here’s the link to her Youtube video.
Everybody already knows Nyan Cat. It has been an internet success, a meme. I also think that it is a geniality. And it’s a pity their creators didn’t come to an agreement to share Youtube advertising benefits 
. And there have been too many non-commercial derivative works made out of the original Nyan Cat, in my opinion (The Nyan Cat itself is a derivative work too…).
But we’re here to analyse its success, afterwards it has had success, because if I knew why it was going to become a hit before perhaps I wouldn’t be writing this here now. To sum up, in my humble opinion, the Nyan Cat success is based on two pillars:
How did SaraJ00n these great godparents? I actually don’t know. Perhaps they liked her creation. If you get to have those great godparents like the Nyan Cat, please tell me, I’m interested.