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.
It's important to note that copyright violation is never stealing or theft. That's a poetic term copyright maximalists use to morally equate two disparate concepts. Stealing and theft involves taking something that is finite and rivalrous and thus depriving the owner of it.