CoX: Original Characters or Fanart?
By
Aerones,
Posted on: 2008-05-10 14:36 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
The thing to do is ask those artists what THEY think "City of X" characters are. Their opinion is really what decides if they're willing to do the art, isn't it?
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The thing to do is ask those artists what THEY think "City of X" characters are. Their opinion is really what decides if they're willing to do the art, isn't it?
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Well that makes sense, but it still doesn't answer my question.
Characters:
General Flag - Hero - Tank
Spy Smasher - Hero - Scrap
King Chrono - Villain - Brute
Witch Hazel - Villain - Dom
Server: Victory
Supergroup: Legion of Valor
SG website: [url="http://legionofvalor.guildportal.com"]legionofvalor.guildportal.com[/url]
Deviant page: [url="http://kingchrono.deviantart.com/"]http://kingchrono.deviantart.com/[/url]
I don't think anyone has ever gotten a clear answer on that. I think the EULA says that any characters created are the property of the developer/publisher (at least as far as the costume creator goes), and it was long assumed by the art community that this was the reason that CoX wasn't all that supportive of the fan art community. However, I've never gotten the impression that NCSoft would heavily enforce that particular clause with legal action or anything. Of course, I could be wrong.
Goodbye, I guess.
@Lord_Nightblade in Champions/Star Trek Online
nightblade7295@gmail.com if you want to stay in touch
Be kind of weird when so many of us did "fan art" of Cuppa Joe for her goodbye, and then have the company turn around and sue us? Sounds like entrapment to me... and to answer your question I would consider them to be both. Legally they are fan art, but we all know who created them... especially those of us who've written elaborate backgrounds and or fiction that goes way over the word count in our personal journals.
LJ
A lot of artists that do superhero style commissions are more comfortable doing established comic book or animated heroes - usually from the DC or Marvel stable. An established character has its own costume(s), colors, and features that can be drawn relatively easy - think Superman or the Hulk.
An original character (and fanart essentially falls under this) is more time consuming for an artist to work with as the person ordering the commission has their a character with their own unique costume, features design etc.
This can be offputting if screenshots or examples of other reference art aren't available to work from. Artists are also wary of having to constantly adjust or rework sketches to meet the approval of an original commission - which adds more time to the work they're doing.
I personally always prefer doing people's original character over established ones owned by Marvel, DC, etc. Dunno... more artistically satisfying for me, I suppose.
While 99.9% of my requests have come from MMOs, I did get one from my sale that I worked purely from the creator's backstory. I was nervous at first by not having screenshots, but it ended up soooo much fun. I really liked working off the literary creativity of another person. The best part was that they really liked it and I captured the spirit of their character ^.^
This actually brings up an old question of mine, especially with the way Marvel is about lawsuits and protecting their trademarks:
If an artist gets paid by someone who is not Marvel to draw a Marvel character, say Spiderman, isn't that breaking the trademark/copyright law because that character is trademarked by Marvel but they are not getting paid for the selling of the image? It seems to me that, rightfully, the artist who gets paid should pay a fee to Marvel for the sale, since they made money off of their product. Then again, that would mean that Marvel would have a whole lot of tattoo artists to sue should the whim strike them.
I'm just curious as to the actual rule of law on this. I may have to write to the US Trademark or Copyright office of this one.
"If I fail, they write me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart." --- George A. Romero
"If I had any dignity, that would have been humiliating" --- Adam Savage
Virtue Server: Kheprera, Malefic Elf, Lady Omen, Night Rune, La Muerte Roja, Scarab Lafayette, Serena Ravensong, Kyrse, and Arachnavoodoo among others.
With something like that, I'd bet that the decision to prosecute for trademark or copyright infringement is based on the owner's discretion. Marvel or DC could decide to go after every violator and enforce their IP with a vengence, or they could ignore all the piddly little violations and go after the big guys trying to get away with unlicensed merchandizing and such. They probably have a hard enough time nailing all the big violators, so my guess is that they'll leave the small time guys, like tattoo artists, alone (unless they decide to open a chain of tattoo parlors).
Goodbye, I guess.
@Lord_Nightblade in Champions/Star Trek Online
nightblade7295@gmail.com if you want to stay in touch
The way I see it is that if you go to a Convention you can have any number of artists draw any number of well-known characters owned by Marvel, DC, Image or any number of licensed properties (Buffy, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Star Wars, etc).
I think what it boils down to is publishing rights. The companies own the rights to publish their characters as they see fit. The Artists do not. So the real breaker here is if the Artist in question is going to seek compensation beyond the commission. Say like if they copy the image to make prints to sell. Doing things digitally can make things a bit fuzzy, legally speaking, since you send a copy to the person paying the commission, so there are immediately two identical images upon completion of the transaction, but, again, I think it really boils down to "publishing" the image. So long as you, the artist, are only giving that one final copy out to the buyer you should be fine... If you later take that image and put it up as a purchasable print on DeviantArt or other such sites, then you're in for some legal troubles.
That's how I see it, anyway.
And back to the OP, CoX characters are Fanart. They are created using a limited number of costume items (although the limit is exceptional compared to other MMOs) and power combinations established within the game world created by Cryptic (and now owned by NCSoft). Even if you could make a legal argument for creation of the character, they still own all the parts used to create that character.
I prefer doing art for which I am being paid. That's how I roll, playa.
Also, I consider CoX characters to be original characters. They're not established IP.
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I prefer doing art for which I am being paid. That's how I roll, playa.
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Nothing if not honest, neh? ^.^
That's also how I roll, playa! 
When I am looking for commissions, so often I will see artists who say they won't do original characters or that they won't do fanart. So what are City of X characters considered? OC? FA? or perhaps both? I'm puzzled.
Characters:
General Flag - Hero - Tank
Spy Smasher - Hero - Scrap
King Chrono - Villain - Brute
Witch Hazel - Villain - Dom
Server: Victory
Supergroup: Legion of Valor
SG website: [url="http://legionofvalor.guildportal.com"]legionofvalor.guildportal.com[/url]
Deviant page: [url="http://kingchrono.deviantart.com/"]http://kingchrono.deviantart.com/[/url]