The Legality of Selling Fan Art

[NickRowler]

how selling fanart is someone else making money off of something that someone else took effort and time to invest in to get it where it is now.

I think it depends on who is the originally creator. For something like Undertale, your statement makes sense. After the popularity of the game, people discouraged fan-merch (like Shirts and Plushes) and told people to instead wait for official merch. Toby Fox and his dev group are a small indie company, so fanart stuff would effect them by a lot.

However, when it comes to something like Disney's Cinderella, where most of the people who created or worked on it are no longer alive and most profits from the IP is going to someone who had zero involvement on the original movie. Someone making $30 off of Cinderella fanart is not going to even dent how much the IP makes for whoever is head of Disney.

[rajillustration]

It's one of those things where if you are going to make it the crux of your career--just get a license. I knew a guy who was a stained glass maker, so he got a license to make stained glass Disney. It made him a bunch of money, and he even made some of the stained glass in Cinderella's Castle down in Disneyland. So you absolutely can sell fanart, it just needs to be through the legal way.

And if you want to sell fanart on a T-shirt site or something like that, you just...ask them directly what their policies are. There are lots of artists that appear to be selling without a license but.......super aren't. Like the copyright holders themselves have to defend their copyright as part of keeping their copyright, which is why we get these takedowns in waves. So just like...be careful with it, and if you get a Cease and Desist (and I'm pretty sure most of us have) it's super not a big deal. Just take it down, you're fine. Keep making original art and mind that fanart is just...mostly a marketing tool, unless you got that licensing money rolling in.

[Prometheus]

That's a good point. One that I hadn't even considered. I guess that brings me to my other thought: does it matter if it dents the IP or not? Dent it or not, it would still be illegal, and even if the people that had no involvement in the project itself have died, there are still people spending time and efforts in marketing and continuing making merch that sells for Cinderella, I'm sure within the parks and other places. I guess it really comes down to what's right, no matter what's going on with the IP.

[ble]

Specifically Sakimi-Chan was hired to do fanart of Velvet from Tales of Berseria as a PR stunt for the game before it released. She did a 1hr+ livestream of her working on the art while being interviewed even as part of the PR campaign. That specifically, was a special case and I'm very certain she was paid.

Oh, that's cool, but i think if you're comissioned by the official company, then it's no longer fan art, but commisioned work? Like for example Artgerm does some illustration covers for DC comics, but that's not "art made by fan as a hobby", and more the company paid that artist for the art.

"Fan art or fanart is artwork created by fans of a work of fiction and derived from a series character or other aspect of that work. As fan labor, fan art refers to artworks that are neither created nor (normally) commissioned or endorsed by the creators of the work from which the fan art derives."

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_art

Well in that link, they also cover a little about copyright laws about fan art.

[HGohwell]

The laws of course also vary from country to country.

Over here, several cons I've gone to accept fan art but have warnings that there are lots of sponsors and official companies and you must be prepared to remove fanart from sale if asked (which I think is honestly just polite and why wouldn't you stop selling fanart if the asked you not to?). They have also had in their terms and conditions that fanart is allowed as long as you are in no way attempting to pass it off as official. It must be very clearly unofficial so as not to fall under bootleg and you can't claim to be official at all. Also, single or short run prints or items are considered a different category to mass produced to many of these, one more commercial and one something more like fair use, transformative and not any risk of cutting into the official piece's market, or personal use.

[Legendofgenii]

Yes copyright and Trademarks are a nightmare.

Fanart is ok, but if money is involved then that’s different. And putting “inspired by” won’t save you either.

I’ve been dinged in the past for using the words “London Underground” in a product title once, as it’s trademarked by Transport for London.

It’s a minefield out there.

[thecrystalrook]

This is exactly the same scenario as Etsy and Redbubble. The copyright holders were not the issue here. They are highly unlikely to come after the artists or even the convention - Because of bad PR and money (it's a complete waste of legal fees and paying lawyers to go after small time artists and conventions, who won't yield a profit in a lawsuit). But Crunchyroll? You betcha they'll come after them for sponsoring them.

Also, it sounds more like they didn't want fan art to be competing with THEIR products that would have been selling in the dealer's room. Legally speaking, Crunchyroll can't pull a copyright claim because they're not the copyright holder.

[Puck]

I think his explainations are pretty much on point.
For me personally the concept is very easy to understand and that´s something I also understood
as a kid and I was drawing Asterix & Obelix fanart as a kid myself and understanding the concept
of copyright didn´t hold me back from drawing them

[Puck]

I also agree on what the guy said about the star wars movies