#IP Freelance

[darksideofthemamon]

Exhausted from suddenly debating about the ethics and legalities of generative AI (specifically on arts) with someone what a wonderful reminder that the future is bleak what a wonderful reminder that corporations will screw you over if they can and most people generally don't value creatives or creativity (in general, regardless of field) think happy thoughts Mamon just play LOTRO or something

[themcomicsofficial]

Hello, I'm here presenting my own IP, THEM!!

I hope you enjoy!

[emeryleewho]

I keep seeing posts talking about the WGA/Sag-Aftra strike, which yes, good, but in all this "support writers" sentiment I'm seeing no one talk about book writers, which I think is something people should know more about right now.

We are at an all-time high for book bans, namely targeting queer & PoC-authored books. This means that a lot of schools and libraries are no longer stocking diverse YA books, and if you're not in publishing, you may not realize this but school & libraries are by far one of the biggest markets for diverse YA books.

This means that in 2023, YA book sales are down. This is also in part because Barnes & Noble (the largest physical book retailer in the U.S.) is no longer really stocking YA hardcovers. This means that marginalized authors and debut authors are struggling to sell books.

But it's a LOT worse than that. In the past couple of years, marginalized authors are *really* struggling to get new book deals. Most books are acquired by a publisher about 2 years before they release to the public, so this isn't all that noticeable yet, but a LOT of marginalized authors I've spoken to (myself included) have been unable to sell a new YA book since 2020. So while I had a book out last year, even if I sell one right now, you won't see it until 2025-2026. That's three to four years without a new release or the income I get from publishing those books.

On top of that, Big 5 publishers have started closing imprints (namely their diverse imprints) and have started telling their marginalized YA authors to just go. I've had multiple authors tell me their publisher basically said, "eh, we don't care to put in the work for you anymore. You can just go somewhere else". Of the authors who *are* getting offered new contracts, we're being offered pay far below the cost of living and we're being handed contracts that split our payments 4 or 5 ways and require we sign over our work to be used to train AI so they can replace us a few years down the road.

Authors are freelancers who own our IPs, which means we can't unionize the way Hollywood writers can, and despite authors showing up in droves to support HarperCollins employees when they went on strike for fair wages, we're being hung out to dry when it comes to our own rights.

If you enjoy diverse books, especially diverse YA, please understand that many of the authors you loved over the past 3-5 years are being forced out of the industry. We're being exploited, and we have no way to defend ourselves. Our books sales are drying up thanks to anti-queer legislation, our rights are being eaten up by AI, and our publishers are degrading us while profiting of us and refusing to share those profits with us.

Within the publishing industry, we've all been watching this decline happen over the last decade, but outside of it, I know most people have no idea what's going on so please spread the word. And if you care about diverse books especially in YA, please support marginalized authors in any way you can. The industry needs to be reminded that it needs us before we're all eliminated from it.

[erika-xero]

Beware, the long post incoming. Pro tips for artists who work on commissions!

DISCLAIMER: I do not have, like, a HUGE online following and can’t be called a popular or viral artist, but I do have some experience and I’ve been working as a freelance artist for more that five years, so I could share a few tips on how to work with clients with my fellow artists. Scroll down for the short summary!

First of all, you always need to have your Terms of Service written down in a document that is accessible for your potential clients. And by terms of service I don’t mean a set of rules like “I don’t draw mecha, anthro and N/S/F/W”. There is much more into it, than you may think when you first start drawing commissions.

You’ll need to understand how copyright law/author’s rights in your country works (for example, US copyright or Russian author’s rights, be sure to check your local resources). There are a bunch of sites where you can actually read some legal documents (. I know it might be boring, but TRUST me, you WILL need this knowledge if you choose this career path.

Russia, for example, is plagued with shops selling anime merchandise. The merchandise is usually printed somewhere in the basement of the shop and the shop owners literally rip off other people’s intellectual property. If the artist ask them to remove their IP from the shop the owners usually try to fool them with lies about how the IP works. They will tell you, that you have to register copyright on every single drawing and if you don’t do it anyone can reproduce and sell your artwork. In reality, copyright law in most countries simply doesn’t work this way. Once you create an original work and fix it, take a photograph, write a song or blog entry, paint an artwork, you already are the author and the owner. Yes, there are certain procedures of copyright registration, which is only a step to enhance the protection, but you become an author the very moment you create a piece of art, and no one have a right to take your creation from you. Knowing your rights is essential.

Some of your commissioners may try to scam you too, but most of them might simply not be aware of how copyright law works. I literally had people asking me questions whether or not the character I am commissioned to draw becomes MY intellectual property. I literally had to convince the person (who was legit scared, since the commissioned piece was going to be a first image of his character ever created) otherwise. If you have an idea of the character written down or fixed in any other form such as a collage, a sketch, or a concept art -- the character is yours. Artist may have rights to the image they create, but not the character itself. Your potential commissioner must acknowledge that their characters, settings and etc. is still theirs, while your artwork is yours, if your contract doesn’t state otherwise. You can sell the property rights on your artwork to your commissioner if you want, but it is unnecessary for non-commercial commissions. And I strongly advice you to distinguish the non-commercial commissions from commercial ones and set the different pricing for them. Even if you sell ownership of your artwork to your commissioner, you can not sell the authorship. You will always remain an author of your artwork, thus you still have all the author’s rights stated in the legal documents.

Another thing that is absolutely necessary to be stated in your terms of service is information whether (and when) it is possible to get a refund from you. You absolutely have to write it down: no. refunds. for finished. artworks.

You have already invested time and effort to finish an artwork. The job is done and the money is yours. I’ve heard stories of commissioners demanding refund a few months later after the commission was finished and approved by the commissioners, because, quote “I do not want it anymore”. Commissioning an artist doesn’t work this way, artwork is not an item purchased on shein or aliexpress that can be sent back to the seller. It is not a mass production. It is a unique piece of art. Example: My friend once drew a non-commercial commission for a client who tried to use it commercially later on. She contacted him and reminded of the Terms of Service he agreed with, offering him to pay a fee for commercializing the piece instead of taking him to the court or starting a drama. He declined and suddenly demanded a full refund for that commission via Paypal services. My friend contacted the supports and showed them the entire correspondence with that client. She also stated that the invoice he paid included a link to the Terms and Service he had to agree with if he pays that invoid. The money were returned to her.

However, partial refund can be possible at the certain stage of work. For example, the sketch is done, but something goes horribly wrong. Either the client appeared to be a toxic person, or an artist does not have a required skill to finish the job. I suggest you keep the money for the sketch, but refund the rest of the sum. It might be 50/50 like I suggested to my clients before (when I still could work with Paypal), but it really depends on your choise. I suggest not doing a full refund though for many reasons: not only you make yourself vulnerable, but you also might normalize a practice harmful to other artists this way.

The main reason why full refund when the sketch/line-art are done must not be an option is that some clients may commission other artists with lower prices to finish the job. This brings us to the next important point: you absolutely need to forbid your clients from altering, coloring or overpainting your creation or commission other artists to do so. This also protects your artwork from being cropped, changed with Instagram filters or even being edited into a N/S/F/W image. Speaking of which. If you create adult content, you absolutely need to state that to request such a commission, your commissioner must at least be 18/21 years old (depending on your country). And as for the SFW commissions you also have to state that if someone underage commissions an artwork from you it is automatically supposed that they have a parental concern.

There is also a popular way to scam artist via some payment systems, called I-did-not-receive-a-package. Most of the payment systems automatically suppose that you sell goods which have to be physically delivered via postal services. This is why it is important to state (both in the Terms of Service and the payment invoice itself) that what commissioner is about to receive is a digital good.

And the last, but not the least: don’t forget about alterations and changes the commissioner might want to make on the way. Some people do not understand how difficult it may be to make a major change in the artwork when it is almost finished. Always let your commissioners know that all the major changes are only acceptable at early stages: sketch, line-art, basic coloring. Later on, it is only possible to make the minor ones. I prefer to give my commissioner’s this info in private emails along with the WIPs I send, but you can totally state it in your Terms of Service. I do not limit the changes to five or three per commission, but I really do appreciate it when I get all the necessary feedback in time.

To sum this post up, the info essential for your Terms of Service doc is:

- The information on whether or not your commissions are commercial or non-commercial. If they are non-commercial, is there a way to commercialize them? At what cost?

- The information on author’s and commissioner’s rights;

- The information on whether (and when) refunds are possible;

- The prohibition of coloring, cropping, overpainting and other alterations;

- The information on whether or not you provide the commissioner with some physical goods or with digital goods only;

- Don’t forget about your commissioner’s age! If you work with client who is a minor, a parental consern is required. And no n/s/f/w for underage people!

- You may also want to include that you can refuse to work on the commission without explanation in case you encounter a toxic client or feel like it might be some sort of scam.

- I also strongly suggest you work with prepay, either full or 50% of total sum, it usually scares off the scammers. I take my prepay after me and my client agree on a rough doodle of an overall composition.

- I also include the black list of the themes: everyting offensive imaginable (sexism, homophobia, transfobia, racism, for N/S/F/W artists it also might be some certain fetishes and etc). Keep your reputation clean!

- Ban N/F/T and blacklist the commissioners who turn your artworks into them anywayss, don’t be shy <3

These are the things that are absolutely necessary but are so rarely seen in artists’ Terms of Service that it makes me sad. Some of these tips really helped me to avoid scams and misunderstandings. I really hope it helps you all!

[txttletale]

saying this on anon so i dont doxx myself but my mom, who is normally a very milquetoast white usamerican liberal, is very against ip/copyright law simply because she used to work as a paralegal specializing in ip law and knows how awful it is. i remember her talking about how her company represented mccormick specifically and how a major thing with trademarks is that if you dont defend them against every single person infringing on them then theres a possibility that you will lose the trademark altogether. so like, they found that a random, poor dude in latin america was selling his own spices but using mccormick bottles/labels for it, so they had to send a letter to this random dude who posed 0 threat whatsoever to mccormicks global trade saying he had to stop using mccormick bottles for his product. according to her, nobody she worked with even wanted to do that, but the ip law mandates it. anyway whenever i see random freelance artists or whatever talking about strengthening ip law thats what i think of

bleak innit

[thankskenpenders]

As I'm sure many of you are already aware, Did You Know Gaming (who have been doing some really great investigative work lately) recently put out a video on canceled Sonic games. The whole thing's worth a watch, but I have to bring it up here specifically because they talk about the plans for Sonic Chronicles 2 with a LOT of new info directly from the lead designer.

The section on how the story of Sonic Chronicles 2 would have went starts at 9:45. It's very interesting! He outlines the whole plot, including the fact that they were going to end with ANOTHER obvious plot hook for a sequel in the hopes that they or some other studio could keep the Sonic Chronicles series going indefinitely. Sonic Team even claimed they were interested in using Chronicles characters like Shade in other games. It's crazy to imagine a timeline where this might have become a pillar of the franchise.

I refuse to mourn the loss of the sequel, though, because y'all saw me stream the original. It was miserable. And with the original game selling and reviewing decently well, they would have had little reason to go back to the drawing board and overhaul that game's bizarrely hateful design.

Of course, DYKG also had to talk about the reason why the game was canceled. I was dreading this because of how often people tend to get the basic facts of the Penders cases wrong or downplay the obvious Archie Knuckles inspiration in Chronicles. But no, they did their homework! And they got the details right in part because, well... they asked Penders for comment directly. And he sent them back a MASSIVE wall of text about the whole ordeal, including some fascinating details that I don't believe I've heard before!

You can go to 15:19 in the video and scrub through to read the many, MANY screencaps of their emails from Ken, but here are the most interesting and/or hilarious tidbits to me:

#1: Perjury!

As we already knew, Ken claimed that the incomplete, photocopied contract Archie presented in court was a forgery, and that he had never signed a work for hire contract.

The judge obviously knew that one side had to be lying here, and thus was more than willing to present the case to a jury to let them decide the truth... and send whoever was deemed the liar to jail for perjury. (The judge apparently looked Ken directly in the eye when he said this, which... well, make of that what you will.)

Archie's lawyers knew that they didn't have a completely airtight case and obviously did not want to go to jail. So they decided to settle instead of going to trial in front of a jury.

(I will reiterate that Archie's arguments not working out is overall a GOOD thing, because we really do not want to set a legal precedent where corporations can "lose" a contract for a creator, make up a story about what was on the contract, and then have that hold up in court. They gotta get that shit in writing. And they didn't. They fucked up!)

#2: Sega was threatening to revoke the Sonic license!

As we knew, Sega wanted nothing to do with the comic copyright lawsuit. To them, it was Archie's job as licensee to deal with their freelancers. (Y'all watch Succession? You know how Logan loves lackeys who will eat shit for him without him having to even hear about the problem? Yeah.) And, in fact, according to Ken, Sega gave Archie an ultimatum: if they wanted their license to make Sonic comics renewed, they were gonna have to deal with Ken on their own, and cover all the costs.

Yeah, uh, this kinda makes me think that Sega being pissed about the ongoing Scott Fulop copyright case in 2016 may have been a bigger factor in Archie Sonic's cancellation than I previously thought. There was a lot going on at the time that could have contributed, but, y'know.

Anyway, Archie sued Ken for "damaging their business" largely because Sega was threatening to take away the Sonic IP. But because Archie couldn't ask Sega for help and they couldn't produce an original contract, they had to settle.

There's another detail I find funny here, though. Ken WANTED Sega to get involved in the comic copyright case, thinking that Sega would strongarm Archie into paying him the millions of dollars he wanted for "using his work without permission" so that they could be done with it. I mean, sure. I guess Sega wouldn't have cared about Archie's finances, but still. I'm not so sure that would've worked out for him.

#3: Shade!

Yes, Penders still claims he legally owns Shade, and under advice from his lawyer still intends to put out an NFT of her to put his claim to the test. Yes, it's incredible that he still hasn't put out the damn NFT. It only needs to be one image, which he already drew! The market has collapsed!

Anyway, building an argument off the legal concept of estoppel, he says that if Sega continues to not do anything about his claims that he owns Shade then, in the eyes of the court, they'll be forfeiting their claims to Shade altogether. But they aren't going to do anything because they never wanted any part in the copyright battles in the first place, and to them Chronicles is a long dead asset not worth fighting over. Why bother trying to use Shade again and giving Ken a reason to take them back to court when they can just move on? It's not like this franchise is short on characters. And so Ken can say that Shade and Julie-Su are literally the same character, and if he owns Julie-Su then therefore he also owns Shade.

Our copyright system is, indeed, a nightmare. Chronicles should have been halfway to the public domain by now.

#4: Sega's oversight on the Archie comics!

Ken says that in his first year on the series Sega only requested some dialogue changes here and there through the editor. They never requested huge script changes, and also never spoke to Ken directly. After that first year, they stopped asking for dialogue changes altogether, and Ken "had a free hand to do pretty much whatever he wanted." Yeah, no surprise there.

He does, however, say that Archie's original deal with Sega stated that they weren't allowed to create ANY new Sonic characters without informing Sega. They would've needed to make a contract every single time to get Sega's approval and make it absolutely crystal clear that Sega owned the whole cast. And then Archie just... didn't do that! And didn't tell any of the freelance creatives not to come up with new characters! Had Archie followed this rule, the trajectory of the comics would have been completely different, but there also never would've been a copyright battle in the first place.

What a shitshow. Truly.

[kottkrig]

Commission artists, where is the line drawn between original and fan art when it comes to marketing to MMO/RPG fans?

I don't allow clear depictions of canon characters but a customized Night Elf OC is still a Night Elf concept from Blizz's IP

We're tiny freelancers who don't make absolute bank so giant video game companes probably dgaf, but maybe it's different if it's a fandom for a singular band or book author

???

[davekat-sucks]

I stayed away from the fandom for years. Can you summarize for me how Hussie (and some of his "friends") became such hated figures in this fandom? I know very little about what happened with Sarah Z's video and the drama of homestuck reddit vs kate mitchell

Andrew Hussie and WhatPumpkin had tried to sue Sarah Z for libel because of her critique on the shitty sequel that is Homestuck 2. It didn't help that HS2 was put on a long hiatus since December 25, 2020. He sent her a most unprofessional email like he would. But it wasn't until later on that it was revealed that Homestuck 2 was actually a money laundering scheme by Andrew Hussie to pay off his debts towards Viz Media. He lied to his freelance artists, claiming they are working on the project to help bring the series back to its full glory. The most funny part is that Hussie had tried to pitch Homestuck^2 to Viz Media and they rightfully REJECTED this and told him it was the bad idea. But he didn't listen. Andrew Hussie then decided to leave his name out of Homestuck, any future projects relating to it, including the HIveswap game that he Kickstarted and had misued the money, to live off with his money on IP alone. As for the Homestuck Reddit vs Kate Mitchell, besides the whole fact that Kate Mitchell is controversial for making lots of questionable remarks, takes, and had LITERALLY ADVERTISED HER NUDES ON HER PERSONAL ACCOUNT THAT WAS USED TO TALK TO HOMESTUCK FANS, she and Hussie had found out that Makin, the head of Homestuck Community Reddit and Discord, had created Homestuck.net. Which is an archive site for all things Homestuck media related. From art assets, fan games, music resources, and of course, Patreon exclusive posts for Homestuck^2. It was back in the early 2020s, way before the hiatus and Hussie cutting himself off. Andrew Hussie, Kate Mitchell, and others in WhatPumpkin like Aysha, are upset at them. Thinking they are infringing copyright in preserving some of the lost sprite art and other materials related to the series. There was rumors someone, not sure if it was WhatPumpkin or some random defender of Hussie, had accused Homestuck Community Discord, was sharing CHILD PORN, which was untrue. Andrew Hussie had sent emails to the mods and Makin, requesting the latter step down from his position and let Hussie and WhatPumpkin take control of the Discord. He also asked question about the mods sexuality for the sake of 'gender and sex composition'. Of course by the end, it failed and Makin is still around. I don't think it's been made public on either Twitter or Tumblr, as it is just kept within the Discord server itself. But they had release the email transcripts in a PDF file about all this. Of course, Makin isn't too much of a saint either as he accused the artist (HONE) for 'normalizing' the characters and plagiarizing a fan edit, not realizing who it was that made all the Homestuck Requiem promo art and that it was made WAAAAY before Pesterquest was out and approved by Viz Media themselves. He would then find out who it was and backpedaled, likely not having directly apologizing to HONE. The way I see it is two tards fighting each other. Wanna view the PDF file? (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧ I have been meaning to document some of the controversies and drama within the Homestuck series. Be it from Hussie, Whatpumpkin, and any other major incident. From how one Homestuck musician got kicked out for accusing Hussie on mistreatment of his music team to spending $10k on an office in New York to work on Hiveswap, it would be a history of all the things that had happened behind the scenes with evidence to back it up.

[pluckyredhead]

So the Bill Willingham Steph post crossed my dash again and got me wondering... if you're a writer, what IS the best way to respond to fans (singular or group) that publicly call out your writing at a con? Obviously you shouldn't wish violence on them but since it's not like you can un-write the story, do you ignore them? Change the subject? Argue back?

I mean, I can't pretend to know the BEST way to handle a volatile question in a public space, when saying nothing is not an option.

But I also want to challenge the idea that fans were "calling out [Willingham's] writing," because that wasn't what they were doing. Sure, plenty of people said he was a hack online. But at cons, what they were asking was "Why doesn't Steph have a memorial case?"

I always hammer that point home because it's so astonishing to me now. We didn't want them to bring Steph back from the dead. We just wanted them to memorialize her fairly. We were asking for crumbs, and it infuriated Willingham and DC Editorial. To the point that when they did bring Steph back by revealing Leslie Thompson had faked Steph's death, Tim goes "So that's why she didn't have a memorial case!" They would rather have her alive than give a bunch of (mostly) female fans the tiny bit of fairness they had been asking for. It's just mind-boggling to me now how little we were willing to settle for and how angry it still made DC.

Anyway, the decision to kill Steph was editorially mandated, and the decision not to give her a case was also editorially mandated - neither of those were Willingham's decision to make. (The other objection fans had, the sexualized depiction of Black Mask torturing Steph, was also not Willingham's fault - that was artist Jon Proctor.) Now, obviously Willingham couldn't just say "Not my fault, ask DC" because throwing his employer under the bus would not have been good for his career. But DC also shouldn't have hung him out to dry.

I think ideally with any controversial storyline, the publisher should have a discussion with the creators about the best way to handle questions so that everyone is on the same page. But what happens instead is that creators (underpaid freelancers who are almost all in precarious financial circumstances) bear the full brunt of any anger, blame, or harassment, and the publishers (massive corporations*) get to ignore it.

Of course, in Willingham's case, he was not harassed, but asked a polite question ("Why doesn't Steph have a memorial case?") that he probably could have easily said was up to DC without getting in trouble. But instead he chose to publicly fantasize about committing violence against real women, because he was annoyed. So that's DEFINITELY not the answer.

So in conclusion: in general publishers should step up more, in specific Willingham is a fucking douche.

-

*When I say "massive corporations" I'm talking specifically about DC and Marvel, who are owned by Warner Bros and Disney respectively. Image is not a massive corporation. Also, DC Comics and Marvel Comics are in tricky positions because they are actually small, weirdly ramshackle legacy publishers who in a lot of ways still operate like they did when Marvel had two (2) actual employees, Stan Lee and his secretary Flo Steinberg. They operate on tiny margins, everyone who works there is criminally underpaid, their HR is a fucking joke... So like, none of this excuses editors for repeatedly not supporting their creators during times of controversy (THE FUCKING MOCKINGBIRD COVER, Chelsea Cain is a TERF but that shit was ridiculous), but I think it's also important to remember that when we're talking about the people editing these books on a monthly basis, we're not talking about Bog Iger or David Zaslav - we're talking about someone living in NYC or Burbank working 60 hour weeks on a $45K salary so that Disney has enough IP to make Guardians of the Galaxy 9 or whatever. It's complicated.

[xenosagaepisodeone]

As much as copyright law sucks, its unfortunately one of the only legal venues with any sort of real power for artists working in creative industries to protect their livelihoods and colleagues. Unionization alone isn't going to stop companies from scraping people's work, especially not people who are non-union or freelancers, and unions like SAG-AFTRA keep throwing people who aren't making top-dollar under the bus for "ethical" AI startups they partner with anyway, even when said members call them out for siding with corporate over their own due-paying members. When corporations who normally try to shut down creators with DMCA takedowns are now violating the IP of countless creators themselves, why shouldn't we at least hold them accountable to the same laws they already use against us?

because it will not work. I truly cannot stress this enough, whatever meager personal gains that some industry artists are able to acquire in isolated cases against startups and other boutique tech ventures will set the precedent for which the corporations that actually control your country (who have infinite resources to expend on legal ventures) will use to push the law further in their favor. disney already does so much to prevent their IPs from entering the public domain! if you give them an avenue to exploit, they will do it! and it won't matter who was actually right because they have they have so much more money. artists and indie animation studios that could pose any threat to corporate monopolies on art will get C&D'd out of existence for superficial similarities. karla ortiz' lawsuit was so vaguely worded that you could hypothetically pursue someone legally if they had artwork of yours saved in a pinterest inspo board since CLIP models were framed as "trade dress databases". this entire movement is more concerned with potentially obstructed opportunities to rent-seek than it actually is about workers rights- or even simply art that was not created with the intent of being 'content'. and the same industry artists who spearheaded this frenzy will side the the corporations when it comes to it because they've already got theirs.

copyright is never made with the interests of individuals in mind. like, i can't even begin to explain how historically, the little guy is the one getting fucked over by copyright law! how so much of what shapes our culture exists in spite of copyright law as opposed to because of it. what drives me insane is how ai is the thing that artists end up rallying around in unity; not anything to actually improve the quality of life working within the arts, but instead a fad technology. i've seen people describe working in animation as being like a form of debasement and act like nothing can be done while i'm witnessing an entire movement unfold to protect that because a lot of artists seem to think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed small business owners over workers.

[whohasfourthumbsand]

To Gray. CORSAIR Mercenary Company has designated you as a promising candidate for mercenary work.

Attached to this message is a full contract form and waiver to sign up for direct applications to CMC.

By being sought out in this way a bonus will be provided to you in the form of 30 Mana should you sign up.

As a secondary bonus you are afforded mild preference in which Handler you and your squad may be assigned to.

Perks of the company are as follows: Food, bed, shelter, and access to the recreation decks of the Sylvia's Requiem. You will be housed onboard the Sylvia's Requiem.

May you sail along the stellar seas with us in our cooperative.

//Deuces\\

+ I am beyond thrilled to be directly approached like this, and incredibly flattered by the offer--

+ Ra, this is it, huh? The moment where I actually have to sit down and think about my future, and, worse of all; Tell someone about it.

+ Well, here's the thing- I think I've more-or-less decided what I want. And it's complicated, and scary, and honestly a really bad financial decision- but I'm going to pay off my IPS-N licenses, take GRAE, and give freelancing a try. Mercenary work sounds grueling, and terrifying, and like a great way to drop my life expectancy from one-hundred to thirty-- but, damnit, I want to do something I can be proud of. I want to be someone I can be proud of. I just can't imagine doing that, being that, under IPS-N contract.

+ That being said, I adore the CORSAIRs, I do, but I think I want to give MSMC a chance. It's stories like theirs that inspired this entire thought process and self-realization, and- I don't know, some of the stuff they talk about just seems more- real to me. Less sanitized, less advertiser-friendly. I'm tired of being fed information by Northstar and the likes that I can tell has been filtered to keep me on board.

+ In conclusion, I guess; For the first time in my life, I'm looking forwards to my future, and the pilot that I get to be. I hope to meet you in the stars, friends. Fair winds and following seas. - "GRAY"

[skaruresonic]

You do realize IDW (presumably) gets looked over by an editor and is created by a team of freelancers, right? Therefore you can't hold it to the same standards as a fic someone created for free in their spare time? And yet, despite of all of that quality control, the book still reads like really bad fanfic?

When I say I made a visual novel, that is not a flex, it's a statement of fact. I sat down one day, downloaded RenPy, taught myself to code in RenPy, wrote an eight-hour story, and drew all the sprites. Without help. The experience provided a lot in the way of intrinsic motivation and gaining new skills. I learned how to organize and what NOT to do when making a visual novel by committing every possible mistake you could make when developing one.

And yet, despite all that effort, I limited my audience to a small circle of mutuals precisely because I didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. My biggest fear was to have someone go "aww look at The Hater's work, they think they know how Sonic works, how cute."

Moreover, I wanted to avoid comparing my work to IDW because I did not want comparison to overtake the focus of the work, to the point where bad-faith actors would feel compelled to put my work on blast out of a sense of vengeance... which shouldn't have been a worry to begin with. (And tbh there's a lot about the way that it's written that I would change.)

Point is, mocking something folks do for free is way more of a dick move than laughing at a bad commercial product intended to capitalize on another's IP and generate profit.

"But fics aren't VNs, but your friends have egos, but but but!" - I don't care. As a former fic writer, I know how ball-bustingly hard it is to write fic. You'd kind of have to have something of an ego just to post something online these days, especially given how fic and other fannish work has been reduced to mere "content."

In some ways, it's harder than creating something original; if something in my villain's psychology strays a little askew, I can yell "redo" and start over as if nothing happened. But if I write Eggman wrong, I'm going to piss off a slew of invested fans with very different ideas than me as to what constitutes a "good" Eggman portrayal.

[centrally-unplanned]

AI Art discourse is so hyper-priviledged from the “freelance artist” perspective that creates a ton of false ideas about how art is consumed and produced. I hear this “art without the intent of an artist behind it is meaningless” argument being so dominant and it is just laughably wrong in so many contexts. Most visual art is for-a-purpose! I do not care about the ‘intent’ of the illustrative diagram of capital stock flows in my econ textbook, or the logo for a kombucha company, or the banner image for a WSJ article. They do a job, setting tone or creating a brand or communicating information. 

So much art actually does, like, no job! Those images on say finance articles, its just like...walls of text are scary? So you need to give your eyes a break? But they are fucking cowards and won’t put pics of hot anime chicks in the middle of their discussion of the carried interest loophole so they pretend by making the image ‘topical’ its adding value. That is all it does! Intent of the artist isn’t relevant in the slightest.

And that doesn’t even begin to touch the reality of making big, commercial art. if you are doing say animation in modern toolsets like Toonz they have automated in-betweening tools; you draw keyframe A, keyframe B, you need frames in between to smooth the motion, and the program draws the inbetweens for you. That is AI art! Its been used for years now. Advances in AI  will make that more powerful, you can get better results, draw less frames, etc as that improves.

In animation so much art is made that isn’t in the final product - concept sketches, early layouts, etc. These don’t exist to be ‘intent of the artist’, they are tools to guide a production process. You could absolutely use AI tools to improve the effiiency of that process, its what we *currently* do, its been the history art & technology for the last 3 decades. This kind of art is what the majority of money and time in the art world is spent on - freelance ‘online’ art is just a piece of that world.

This isn’t a statement to invalidate the whole debate or anything (or shitting on freelance artists, I love them). I tend to be ‘pro’ AI art, as much as that framing makes any sense at all (it doesn’t), but there are a ton of other aspects to this debate that are more complex. For example, we have legally decided you can’t copyright art styles, which, fine, I agree, but that does sit in tension with a company being able to legally claim IP ownership of a tool built out of those art styles. Maybe those tools should be open access, the legal regime isn’t built for this scenario - or like the entire scenario of modernity, it all sucks. 

But regardless, in the complexity of this debate I think some really idealized conception of ‘art’ are being bandied about without a lot of evidence to back them up.

[pizzacastella]

sorry for being radio silent for weeks (suddenly became important at work) then breaking my silence just to reblog beautiful fanart of my beautiful wife (john silver)

quick recap for those who wanna know >:P

hello friends and family :)

sorry for being gone, i finally got to touch grass so i didnt need the delusions to go thru the horrors of everyday :( i am doing well, just been very busy with work and honestly it tuckers me out a lot so i just pass out the moment i get home (not ideal)

re: suddenly becoming important at work

im taking on more responsibilities now (single handedly in charge of merch designs, main designer for a rebranding launch, getting my designs signed up for IP) and probably even more once i get regularized (in two weeks!!)

my personal computer is busted (ant crawled inside the monitor n fucked it up a bunch) been waiting for the past few weeks for the parts to come in, hopefully it will get fixed next weekend. havent been able to draw bc of this and i semi had a breakdown bc i took this as a sign from god that i should get a tablet so i can draw anywhere instead of saving up for big girl pc that could run bg3 in hd (and also run after effects for freelance work ofc haha lol)

bc of that i had less screen time and it made me think abt how i need to consume less and actually take time to create etc etc so ive been trying to get back into more traditional stuff (reading books, writing in a journal, watercolors) and tbh its been v good for me, will prolly continue to do so until i figure out how to balance both (consuming/creating)

last but not the very least, i got a mullet !! v happy about it, my hair has never been fluffier. i've never felt gender-affirmation until i saw myself in this hair :) i feel more like myself now, im v happy i did it :3

anyway that's all for now my lovelies !!! im sorry if this was long and im not even sure if anyone would read thru the whole thing but if u did, thank u !! u a real one n im kissing u on the top of ur head :3

[lexcellence]

What is it about Western comics as a medium that enables them to tell specific stories--or be types of art--that other media can't replicate? It feels like it'd be so easy to translate a comic to a film, but we've also seen how outrageously difficult it really is. What, to you, makes comics so worth it all?

This is gonna be long and hella cynical, and I'm going to specifically focus on the big two (Marvel and DC) here, but I think a big part of it comes down to money, and the fact that comics are largely considered to be disposable media by the companies creating them.

See, there isn't a ton invested into the actual creation of comics. Creators are freelancers, so no need to worry about pesky things like "paying a reasonable wage," or "offering health insurance" — every few months or so you'll see people who shaped and revolutionized the medium setting up gofundme's because they never got a safety net, and they aren't taken care of by the companies they put all that work into. IP rights and royalties largely aren't a thing, and the nature of capeshit is that you're always going to find some fan who is honored to have the opportunity to write for them, even as the creators they grew up reading are torn up and spit back out. Couple that with an inherently built in marketbase of nerds, and, more often than not, not "wasting" money advertising actual comics to anyone who doesn't buy them already, and to a large extent it doesn't really matter what risks a comic takes. Warner and Disney don't really have to give a shit —a "bad" superman comic, by any definition of bad, might piss off a few nerds, but isn't gonna do a damn thing to the cultural perception of Superman™️, the Brand™️, available on everything from t-shirts to truck nutz at your local Walmart. And hell, 99 times out of 100 the nerds will keep buying the book anyway, and who cares if they don't, because the comic shops will.

Movies, on the other hand, are a pretty significant investment! You've got actors, hundreds of people in cast and crew, and *actual marketing.* They've gotta make that money back and then some, while appealing to an audience of people who might own a Batman wallet, but couldn't tell you the difference between Joe Chill and Victor Fries. It's harder to take risks with movies, because suddenly you might actually taint the image of a seventy year old brand, and that terrifies all of the investors. You throw too much Comic Book Bullshit™️ at general audiences who haven't already devoted their personalities to caring about who Batman is fucking that week (Hal Jordan), and it gets messy. This isn't even some "general audiences wouldn't understand*" gatekeepy shit, either - if you pick up literally any random comic issue and you don't like it, worst case scenario you've spent like four bucks and fifteen minutes of your life, and you've got anything from dozens to thousands of other issues to try.

*that being said, I still maintain that Batman & Robin is better than any Batman comic that came out that year, and everyone who says otherwise is a fucking coward.

And so, comics end up in a weird, probably ultimately untenable position of being able to take more risks, and being made largely by people who love comics, and grew up speaking their bullshit language. They're self-obsessed and masturbatory, sure, but the thing about saying that derogatorily is that it ignores the fact that masturbation is fun? The worst comics I've read, and I've read a lot of bad comics, are still almost always labors of love, be that for better or for worse. As exhausted as I get sometimes, it's hard for me to write that off entirely.

And, ultimately, I'm just way too invested in who's fucking Batman (Superman).

[ecrivainsolitaire]

Open Art Guild – Testing the boundaries of collective IP ownership

Experimental release: Dr. T’chem’s Office (authorised for personal and commercial use)

I’ll try to keep this brief (you can read the full thesis statement here) but as we all know, intellectual property law is broken. It’s being exploited from every side and art workers are more vulnerable than ever to automation, copyright theft and myriad other unforeseeable forms of theft from the proletariat. We as a collective need to come together and work towards the creation of a better future.

The Open Art Guild is my proposal for the first of many steps towards a far away but necessary goal: the eradication of intellectual property as it pertains to the arts. It’s based on the open source standard and the creative commons, and the goal is for us to start creating a future where we stop thinking of artworks as private property to hoard, and start sharing the responsibilities and the benefits of their creation with the collective. And as I am proposing the idea, I should give the first step.

Which is why I am announcing the release of my short story series, Dr. T’chem’s Office, into the Open Art Guild license. This is an episodic HFY comedy series about the office hours of a sleazy yet well intentioned xenoanthropologist in charge of human integration into the crew of a spaceship, who happens to find them fascinating. You can read the first few instalments here:

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |

The basics of the license go as follows: I’m giving any artist permission to use the assets of my artwork (in this case, settings, characters, plot lines and other unique concepts) both for personal use and for commercial use, provided they commit to crediting the original artist, giving away 30% of any profit back to the hands of the collective in the breakdown the guidelines specify, and giving the same license to any works they create derivative from this series. Any artist can join the Guild by remixing existing artworks in its database or voluntarily submitting their own works. For the time being this prototype model will have to rely on the honour system, but I have outlined the basic guidelines for a platform dedicated to facilitating the Guild’s business and income redistribution.

The purpose of this experiment is to test whether this system is financially viable, what modifications it needs, and how to enforce it. It’s also a way to study what the community thinks of this model. To summarise the implications, here are the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros:

- All fan art, spin-offs, third-party merchandise and other forms of adaptation become automatically authorised and monetisable, provided both the original artist and the remixer are active members of the Guild.

- All adaptations are automatically non-exclusive and must give away the same rights as the original, diminishing the incentive for massive corporations to try and scam an artist out of their intellectual property.

- It effectively unionises freelance artists of all fields to balance out negotiations with non Guild entities.

- It encourages artists to continue their output in order to reap the benefits of the Guild, by using the redistribution system as an incentive, instead of the current status quo where artists are actively fighting market forces all by themselves in order to make enough time and resources to work on their craft.

- It provides a safety net where everyone is invested in the continuous welfare of everyone else, giving a sense of class solidarity and facilitating donations and shared resources.

- It motivates artists to invest in each other, as the growth of one means the growth of the whole Guild.

- Eventually, if the project succeeds and the proposed platform comes to exist, it would effectively create a universal basic income for all Guild members, as well as a self sustained legal fund to protect their assets from IP theft by non Guild entities.

- It will give you complete control over whether your art can be used for AI dataset training, on an opt-in, post-by-post basis, so you don’t have to wonder who might be stealing it. If the platform is created, all works whose creators have not authorised to be used for this will have data scrambling features to make sure thieves can’t use them.

Cons:

- It will require all Guild members to permanently renounce to 30% of their profit, in order to build up the funds and distribution system.

- It will have to be built entirely on trust of the collective, at least until a platform can be established, which may take weeks or may take decades depending on lots of unpredictable factors.

- Leaving the Guild will require all artworks shared with the collective to become Creative Commons; once you renounce your right to monopoly of your IP, it’s permanent, no way to go back. This is necessary in order to prevent asset flippers and other forms of IP scabs to join the Guild, extract other people’s assets and then scram.

- Due to banking regulations entirely out of our hands, some artists will have participating in the redistribution. If the platform ever becomes a reality, one of its main goals will be to remedy this immediately.

This proposal requires a high cost, but it provides an invaluable reward. If the system works, it will empower all artists to profit from their work and protect it as a collective. If it doesn’t, all that will have happened is that you will have created a lot of Creative Commons art, which financially isn’t ideal, but artistically is extremely commendable. Even in the worst case scenario, corporations will not be able to hold your art hostage with exclusivity deals. To me, the benefits vastly outweigh the costs, but I do want to emphasise: there will be costs. This is an effort to subvert the entire way art has been monetised since the 1700s. It will require a lot of work, a lot of people, and a lot of time, to make it work. But I believe it can work. If you believe it too, you are welcome to join the Open Art Guild.

Please do read the guidelines for the Guild and the guidelines for the platform before you start creating, and give me whatever feedback you have. If it’s good, if it’s lacking, if I’m overstepping legal boundaries, if you can find loopholes, anything. I tried to make it airtight but I’m not a legal expert. This is not my project, it is a project for the proletariat. Everyone should have a say on what they’re signing on for. And regardless of what you think, share it with all artists you can. This will only work if as many people as possible participate.

Doctor T’chem’s Office’s license

This work has been released under the Open Art Guild license, and has been approved for reuse and adaptation under the following conditions:

For personal, educational and archival use, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, to all Guild members and non members.

For commercial use, provided redistribution guidelines of the Guild be followed, to all active Guild members.

For commercial use to non Guild members, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, with the explicit approval of the artist and proper redistribution of profit following the guidelines of the Guild.

For non commercial dataset training of open source generative art technologies, provided the explicit consent of the artist, proper credit and redistribution of profit in its entirety to the Guild.

Shall this work be appropriated by non Guild members without proper authorisation, credit and redistribution of profit, the non Guild entity waives their right to intellectual property over any derivative works, copyrights, trademarks or patents of any sort and cedes it to the Creative Commons, under the 4.0 license, irrevocably and unconditionally, in perpetuity, throughout time and space in the known multiverse. The Guild reserves the right to withhold trade relations with any known infractors for the duration its members deem appropriate, including the reversal of any currently standing contracts and agreements.