While copyright law's interaction with new technologies can be hard to predict, I strongly suspect that the level of "blocky-ness" doesn't matter. If an image w

While copyright law's interaction with new technologies can be hard to predict, I strongly suspect that the level of "blocky-ness" doesn't matter. If an image was created from another image created by a different artist, the new image is as derivative work[1]. In general[2], as long as the new work is a transformative[3] difference from the original, a new copyright is created, although royalties might need to be paid to the author of the original work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work [2] see a real lawyer for actual legal advice [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_%28law%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_%28law%29