Advice on Pony Fanart Shirts.

[Sukeile]

I do a lot of pony fan art because I really enjoy it.
Now some of my friends have expressed interest in me putting a few of my drawings on one of those shirt print sites that lets you sell them for part of the profit.

I am super tempted ( mostly because it would be really cool to wear a shirt with my own pony art on it! ) and because I think people might actually like more G1 pony stuff.

But then I am also worried about legal stuff…

The page I'm considering is TeePublic, which is pretty much ONLY fan art stuff on shirts made by devoted fans and they seem to be doing this without any legal troubles.

What do you think? Is it a bad idéa? Or should I go for it?

There is already a lot of pony stuff on that site so I would not be the first…but at the same time I do not want to be disrespectful to the thing I love.

What would you do?


[Moving to Arts and Crafts ~ Thanks, Mirn]

[Griffin]

Well, that is a tough question as selling fan art of any copyrighted/trademarked characters is always a grey area. Hasbro seems to be pretty lenient about fan work as long as you won't refer to them as "My Little Pony". The safest course, if you decide to sell, is to make the style original enough so it can't be confused with official MLP art (which I'm sure won't be an issue with your artwork!), and better yet if you can avoid using actual MLP characters or their names. Maybe you could draw headshots so that you can use actual colour schemes but leave out the symbols? That way they could technically be any cute rainbow coloured ponies and not associated with MLP, unless the viewer wants to make that association.

[Sukeile]

That is a good idea! I do think my drawing style is original enough, so I'll just avoid the names and hope for the best, haha!

If I get any complaints it should be easy to take everything down.

Hopefully me and my friends will be able to get our shirts at least 

Thank you Griffin, you are always such a great help!

[ponycake]

I sold pony tshirts like a year ago and it was fine. I just didn't tag it on the site so that it pretty much only could be found by me linking it here. All was well. Even if in the rare event they see what you're doing they'll just tell you to take it down, I imagine you will, and all will be fine.

[hathorcat]

I can only echo what Griffin has said. In reality you should not use anything which is intellectual property that belongs to Hasbro. However that being said, Hasbro are not Disney; thankfully they are very lenient and what you actually create (depending on how loosely it is based on MLP) may not even be something that could challenge should they ever wish to.