Professional Artist Fan Art Spotting: Calendar & Art Book

[WingsOfMasquerade]

Recently I have spotted some professional/published artists doing some MLP fan art and thought it was interesting.

First off a more sneaky-sneaky is the "Unicorns by Rose Kahn" calendar over at Amazon. (I was shopping)
If you look at the cover it's obviously Starlite from rainbow bright. But then when you look at the back/months area there's clearly Twilight, Fluttershy, AJ and etc. with Celestia and Luna at the bottom. I guess this one's getting away with it because they are so 'stylized'.

Then, there's Camilla D'Errico who does 'kawaii' Japan style cutie mermaid and big-eye stuff fantasy art.
There are a few books by her that turn up for education or coloring book type in Michaels arts store. But when you flip through them...you can find stuff where it's CLEARLY G1, G4 and even G3 characters appearing. (You do have to look in the book though you can't just google image search it up probably because they don't want those potentially copyrighted things to be seen willynilly internet style)

So what's the deal?
I thought fan art wasn't allowed to be compiled, published and sold in big box stores? Companies put up with it at conventions and things because that's just local people doing stuff. Does that mean we can do it now? I would always have loved to work on a g1 coloring book for adults where the coloring would be very detailed and beautiful.

If you've seen any of these, what do you think?

[LadyMoondancer]

There's a grey market where people sell fanworks.  Like, there are a billion people selling their Pokemon stickers on Etsy.  If a big company does decide to go after you, it doesn't really matter whether what you were doing was legal or not;  they have $$$ for lawyers, so unless you're very wealthy and up for a court battle, they've won.  But, a lot of companies these days don't go after fanworks unless there's something specific about them that would be bad for the brand.

Every year I buy a Transformers calendar from a fanworks group, here's a page from last year's:

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Could MLP fans do something similar?  I would think so, as long as no one does something dumb like asking Hasbro for permission.

Or just do a coloring book or calendar of G2 ponies, then Hasbro will be like "What are those? I've never seen them before."

[honor_h]

I don't suppose you can't sue someone for doing a calendar of multi-coloured horse art even if the colours are the same as MLP ones. Can you trademark colour combinations? Symbols might be easier to trademark for Hasbro. 

As for art that is very like Hasbro pony artwork I don't know. If it's hidden Hasbro are unlikely to find out about it I guess.

[lowpolyzoe]

Fanwork merchandising generally exists when the copyright holders are being generous or just don't notice, e.g. people selling stickers or small things at cons. I remember that G4 FiM fighting game made by bronies got a cease and desist because I think it was big enough and popular enough but also conflicted with the brand Hasbro wanted to portray. There's not been any law change that would allow you to sell a G1 colouring book (unfortunately) but Amazon stocks so so so many things from different distributors iirc  I'm not surprised they would be stocking things maybe skirting around the edge of copyright law

I think there's weird loopholes like I'm on the Patreon for a video game wiki and they give yearly rewards for pledges, including calendars with game screenshots etc, and I believe they can safely do that because then they're regarded as gifts rather than selling them as a product. Something to consider maybe?

[Carrehz]

I couldn't find the colouring book, but wow yeah that calendar is pretty close. But it looks like it's just the colours, not any symbols associated with those ponies or anything? (Except Starlite.. but he does have a pretty generic design to begin with) I don't think you can copyright colour schemes. That combined with the more realistic art style is probably how that one slipped through - plus it looks like maybe more of a self-published or smalltime publish-through-Amazon sort of deal, rather than anything that would've been checked through too quickly? I know there's been a lot of stolen art sold on products through Amazon, there's so much stuff on there that a lot of stuff slips through the crack. No idea about the book you mentioned, though.

I'm not sure how that sort of stuff slips through, I imagine Hasbro wouldn't be thrilled about it if they found out x) But smaller fan productions, no one really seems to care about those any more, as long as you're not an idiot about it. Stay away from "reproducing" anything that Hasbro themselves are doing, avoid putting the MLP name or any logos, etc on it (go for more generic terms i.e. "Transforming robot", "Colourful little ponies", etc are less likely to get you in trouble than outright saying "Transformers", "My Little Pony"), and don't advertise it anywhere that Hasbro are likely to see it and view it as a threat. IIRC the Fighting is Magic game people took it to E3 or something and that's the main reason it got shut down.

If you wanted to do a small run of like, self-published colouring books and sell them online/at cons/etc, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get in trouble for it, as long as you avoided putting any copyrighted logos, etc on it. I've noticed a lot of fanzine sellers donate all or at least most of the proceeds to charity too, I dunno if that helps the copyright holders turn a blind eye to it or not (since that way no one's really profiting from it) but I thought I'd mention it anyway :p

[Purpleglasses]

I’ve seen Camilla D'Errico at cons before! She walks the line between fine art (I believe she gets written up in Hi Fructose from time to time) and fan art. Despite having reached that level of success as an artist she still sells her prints at cone where she got her start, which is pretty cool! The thing is that pop culture references are often a feature of a certain style called low brow art. Because the art often has a statement to make, I think it’s rarely seen as copyright violation. At least that’s my understanding! Some people make entire careers painting cartoon characters in compromising situations.

With the unicorn calendar, those color schemes are very clearly inspired by FIM! But I doubt they could prosecute the artist if she didn’t use their images they use on packaging and claim them as her original work.

That said, I’m not an expert on copyright law by any means!

[kestral_kitsune]

you should check out the statues she has they're pretty

[ColdRuru]

I do small run fanart products (you can see my work in the sale section) and yep, it's somethin that is under the "tolerate" marks.
You just don't have to spoil companies, but how would you with such small runs? Also it's not the same to do a drawing by yourself and to steal an official artwork.
But I wouldn't advertise them on site like Amazon. I do sell hand by hand and that's enough for fans to be happy, for you to earn a bit with your work as an artist and for the company behind the characters to ignore.
Also I always mention my sources.