Yemi Hikari
FFnet Cover Art: Right to Post - original article
I'm now going to cover rule number four for the cover page art work over on ffnet.
You must have the required permission and rights to use the image that you upload.
Let's say you are writing a fanfic for Pirates of the Caribbean. You think that the coin from the movie would illustrate your fanfic very well and you find this picture of the coin on screenmusings. ( Since you found the picture on the net, that means you can use it... right? Just because you find something on the net doesn't mean it is in public domain though... so no. How about if you screen capped the picture yourself from the DVD you happen to own? The thing is, just because you own a copy of the work doesn't mean you have the rights to said work. You need permission from Disney before you can use any screen cap or partial screen cap for your cover art.
Now, some of you may be thinking... but screenmusings is using screen caps from movies without the permission of the people who do own the rights of the movie. Unlike our use for fanfic cover art, their use actually falls under fair use as they serve the purpose of a database and archive. Also, if you have a Harry Potter fan site you can use the art work to create your layouts because fan sites fall under the category of fair use as they report the sites. The site notes that you can use the scene caps to create fan art, but here is where things get a bit iffy.
When you create fanart from an already existing piece of work, you have to change so much of the original work for it to be considered in fair use. For example... llojleen's picture Harry Potter constitutes fair use despite the fact it looks exactly like the original because the medium is not a photograph but done with pencil and eraser. ( daekazu's Harry Potter vol. V OOTP constitutes fair use because they did the characters in their own style and even added in something at the bottom. (
However, when it comes to art work consisting of photo manipulation, you can't simply crop, recolor or erase background stuff for it to be considered fair use. You have to take the old image and actually turn it into something new. Like niko2137 does with their Harry Potter - Star Wards. ( Or it uses a lot of stock images but still makes something new as with anaweston's Manipulation: V. (
And even saying this, not everything is going to fall into fair use. The people who created the Harry Potter movies can come out and say "we didn't give you permission to manipulate our art work". That's where stock images come in. A stock image is an image that is under a copyright that allows for the free use in other art works out there. niko2137's art work falls under fair use too because it falls under parody/satire use. The safest bet though is to simply use stock images.
I mentioned a couple of paragraphs prior to this that simply recoloring an image doesn't amount to fair use. What if you have an awesome character who looks like Sonic the Hedgehog but has different colors and maybe a spike in a different position? There is a picture of Sonic in a really cool position, so is it all right to recolor the image so that it looks like your character? Actually... no. Recolors are not in fair use because you don't have permission from people to use the picture for recolor purposes. You can draw your character and use a similar pose, but you can't trace the image.
I point you all to the case of Nick Simmons where the man plagiarized heavily from the Bleach manga and other manga/comics. ( He also plagiarized artists on DA and he did this work a published work. Some of the work is traced from actual pictures while others are eyeballed off actual pictures. His comic book called Incarnate happens to have been pulled from publishing because of the plagiarism issues. ( Of course... lets say credit is actually given. Borrowing poses is one thing if you give credit on your art, but tracing and simply recoloring an image is a no go.
Some people may argue... "but I spent so much time on the recolor I did!" And I say to this... "really?" Here is cover art I created by cropping one of my existing art pieces. ( and ( original piece took half an hour to an hour to complete. Cropping and editing the cover art didn't take much time. And here is my fire dragon recolor I did. (
This took me less then a minute to do. Adding basic shading wouldn't have taken up much time at all. A lot of the work, like figuring out the composition and where the lines go is already done for me. The picture looks nice, but most of the work was already done before I created the recolor.
This isn't to say though you can't use recolors of your own work. This also isn't to say you can't use recolors of other people's work if they give you permission to recolor their work. You can't though recolor another work and use it unless you have permission. This includes recolors of existing works.
And now we come to the last point that needs to be made about permission issues. Lets say you see a piece of fan art or a photo you would really like to use for one of your fanfics. You still have to get permission from the original creator to use the piece as a fanfic color.
Asking in a comment on one of their pictures doesn't mean you've obtained permission either. A person can always say you aren't allowed to use their picture at all, or they may have some very strict stipulations for how the picture will be allowed to use. They can always recant their permission to if you do something to tick them off. (Like recoloring their artwork...)
Topic Locked Jun 18, 2012 #8