#copyright free characters

[lostfriend0087]

Project witchmas

Project witchmas will be the latest character line project in the works. The characters in this project are based on the Christmas theme about traditional fantasy.

Neve:

She is a witch who's clothes are themed based on Santa

Aubin:

He is basically a Christmas elf given a more heroic feel

Bodhi:

He is an ice fairy, the inspiration for hem was from the legend of zelda,he will be a guide for Neve.

Silas:

He is a wood elf, the inspiration for hem was the Grinch.

[mickeymouseispublicdomain]

Download from the Internet Archive here.

Download from Itch.io here.

You are encouraged to print or otherwise share these with as many people as possible!

[ID: A single-page pamphlet titled, "Mickey Mouse is now in the Public Domain!", with "public domain" underlined and bolded for emphasis. The body of the flyer reads:

"The copy-rights for the animations “Steamboat Willie”, “The Gallopin Gaucho”, “Plane Crazy”, and several promotional posters for them have expired!

But what does this mean for you?

Let’s start with the shorter list:

What you cannot do:

Trick people into thinking the art you are selling of Mickey Mouse is official Disney merch, or sanctioned by Disney

Sell art of Mickey that includes *specific designs* still protected by Disney’s copyright

What you can do:

Share, edit, remix, remaster, and sell the original animations that are now in the Public Domain.

Sell digital, traditional, and written art that you have made of Mickey, Minnie, and Pete, with no permission required!

Add new colors and patterns to Mickey, Minnie, and Pete’s classic outfits, or design them brand new outfits altogether!

Create new stories with Mickey, Minnie, and Pete, as animations, movies, books, or comics, and sell them!

Some common misconceptions…

Some people think that you have to stick to the original designs to the letter, IE: keeping them black and white, not having gloves on Mickey, and not letting them talk – but this is just a misunderstanding of what the Public Domain is! You can design and use them in any way you want, as long as you aren’t using a *specific design* still protected by Disney’s copy-rights. They can have color outfits, gloves, and talk! They belong to all of us now! Have fun!"

Framing the flyer at the top right, middle left, and bottom right are three pictures of Mickey Mouse with red shorts, a tan face, brown shoes, and gold buttons, with a pink tongue when his mouth is open. In the first, at the title, he has his arms thrown into the air with joy. In the second, at the "what you can do" section, he is looking excitedly at something in front of him. In the last, at the "common misconceptions" section, he's wearing a black hat with a red stripe, posed with a smile as he looks at something in front of him. Each is posed to be facing the text, as though they are reacting to it with excitement. End ID.]

[frameconfessions]

What if the devs or just someone who works for Digital Extremes finds this blog and sends in a confession?

[sages-of-hell]

watched metropolis (1927) last night and i’m genuinely disappointed nobody ever cared to tell me that it has freder fredersen in it who is possibly the first case of babygirl in film history

[lisasnarts]

Favourite characters: Kaladin Stormblessed

[daily-public-domain]

Day 239: Drawings by Ironimus

link

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–These images are part of the public domain, meaning you can do anything you want with them! (you could even sell them as a shirt, poster or whatever, no need to credit them!)–

[boggyboats]

Genuinely atrocious how much I’m in love with Yoshioka Mamoru- despite the fact that he literally has no canon personality, shows up one season (for like one episode), and only is ever seen since because the folks at bones are down bad with that man and has dimple possess him in official art

[didderd]

(deleted th poll bc i felt weird abt. kinda being told to do it by an anon lmao. but i got 25 votes on ye, which's good enough for me. so i'll at least attempt to do th thing)

(feel free to suggest prompts in th replys or tags for th fell sans drawings :3)

[rainyynightz]

Dreamland - a music box/lullaby I created 🎧

https://youtu.be/f6XRjUohIrY?si=bw6sc1G4K0TOhmfr

Hope you like it 🤎 [check it out on my YouTube channel]

Thanks for watching 🕯️🌧️

[free to use with credits 🎧]

[businesscatfelix]

i wish paywalling individual images was less frowned upon in the western online art community bc i would love to make some sexy artworks of graha showing hole and charge like $5 to download them at high res but there’s a few problems with that as a business model

[smolgirlbigdreams]

Can I ask y'all something? Was it hard when you were first sharing your OCs online? I've had these OCs for like ten years and most of them and their stories have never seen the light of day because I'm so scared to post about them. I guess I'm paranoid that someone is gonna steal from me. 😅 Have you guys ever dealt with that or just me? Any tips for coping/starting out posting original content?

[lostfriend0087]

New characters, Sun hero line is here!!!

[freakpercent]

please look at this funny ass title on a post we found yesterday

[prokopetz]

Mickey Mouse's entry into the public domain comes with significant caveats. While the Mickey Mouse who appears in Steamboat Willie (and other media published in 1928 or earlier) is free to use, there's established precedent that specific elements of a character which appear exclusively in later works which still fall under copyright may be protected, if sufficiently distinctive.

(This is the basis of, e.g., the infamous "Sherlock Holmes can't respect women" lawsuit: the Doyle estate, which at the time owned only a tiny handful of the latest-written stories, the others having already fallen into the public domain, argued that specific personality traits which Holmes exhibits only in those later stories are sufficiently distinctive as to be the valid subject of an infringement claim.)

With respect to various elements of Mickey's visual design, such as his red shorts and signature gloves, the matter is clear: just don't use those for another few years. However, there's another thing Mickey's public domain iterations don't exhibit: speech.

The present consensus among copyright scholars seems to be that "a character speaking" is not sufficiently distinctive as to qualify for protection, but the vocal characterisation with which Mickey Mouse is famously associated may so qualify. So, if you want to be scrupulously safe, you can have him talk, but not in that exact specific voice.

Which raises a fun question: what voice would you give him? Wrong answers only.

[batboyblog]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2025!

It's January 1st 2025 which means it's my favorite unsung holiday! Public Domain Day! This is the day once a year when, in the US, copyrights expire and things enter the public domain, meaning they belong to everyone! even you, Steve!

American copyright for books, movies, art work, and musical compositions (but not recordings, more on that later) runs for 95 years (way too long!) so today works published in 1929 join us in the public domain.

So whats free? so glad you asked.

Popeye the Sailor Man

Many people assume Popeye originated as a cartoon character but thats not true, he comes from a comic strip. The strip was called Thimble Theatre and Popeye was something of a late addition. Thimble Theatre was first published in 1919, so Popeye's girlfriend Olive Oyl has been in the public domain since before the big 20 year copyright freeze of 1998-2019. Popeye first appeared as a minor character 10 years into the strip's run but was so popular he soon took over and the strip would be renamed Popeye less than 5 years later. Now as always whats public is only what appears in 1929, later developments, remain copyrighted. Such as, while Popeye always had super strength its not till 1932 his superpowers were tied to eating spinach, and Olive Oyl originally had a different boyfriend named Ham Gravy, who she dumped for Popeye when he became the main character. It looks like Popeye is following tradition for famous now public domain characters and getting a quicky horror movie this year.

Tintin!

This is personally very exciting as someone who grew up with the Belgian boy detective. Like Popeye I expect a lot of people don't know that Tintin started off as a weekly comic strip. Indeed Tintin appeared as a part of a weekly youth supplement in the Catholic newspaper The Twentieth Century. Any ways, Tintin was first published in there in January 1929, and soon would start what would become the first Tintin story, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Now only part of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was published in 1929, the story line wrapped up in May 1930, so only those 1929 stories and what appears in them is free and clear and Tintin was published in black and white not color. Tintin's author Hergé had no idea what he was doing and was really learning on the job so In The Land of the Soviets is generally seen as his weakest outing and the only one he never opted to redraw in later years. Even so it's nice to see the character free in the world. No word on if Tintin will star in a horror movie.

Buck Rogers (but not really)

The original futuristic space man was published, again a comic strip, in 1929 which means he should enter the public domain today, but he won't. That's because he already is public domain! Before the Copyright Act of 1976 copyright was 28 years with the option to renew for another 28 years. The copyright on the original comic strips was not renewed so ran out at the end of 28 years, 1958. So Buck Rogers has been free and clear for close to 70 years now, whatever you hear about him today.

What else?

Famously last year Mickey Mouse entered the public domain, but all the entered public domain was one (maybe two) animated short, Steamboat Willie. Well this year a dozen Mickey Mouse animated shorts enter the public domain, including the first time Mickey has his iconic white gloves, and the first time Mickey speaks (the first thing Mickey Mouse ever says, voiced by Walt Disney himself, is "Hot dogs! Hot dogs!" in case you were wondering) This will give creators much more to work with if they want to use Mickey in their works which is exciting.

Speaking of Walt Disney, The Skeleton Dance is entering public domain, you likely don't know the title but I suspect you've seen at least part of it at some point

so look for this showing up on TVs in the backgrounds of films and TV shows in the next year or so

Books

The iconic novels of World War I, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front enter public domain. In fact All Quiet on the Western Front entered public domain last year, but only in the original German, the 1929 translation by Arthur Wesley Wheen is whats entered the public domain now. John Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery (always get an Agatha Christie novel on this list for the rest of our lives). Dashiell Hammett published both Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, later made into one of the greatest films of all time, in 1929. Future children's book author E. B. White (who's go on to write Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little) and future New Yorker cartoonist and humorist James Thurber teamed up to write the delightfully titled Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do a book of spoof essays making fun of popular books on Freudian sexual theories at the time. The Roman Hat Mystery the first of the long running Ellery Queen mysteries was published, Queen would keep publishing mysteries into the 1970s (and Ellery Queen was a pen name for two people). Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica and Oliver La Farge's Laughing Boy also came out in 1929 and are in the public domain now. There's much else but those are the highlights sorry if I missed your favorite 1929 novel.

Movies

Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille's first movies with sound, Blackmail and Dynamite respectively, came out in 1929. Marx Brothers' first feature film The Cocoanuts joins the public domain. Other comedy land marks are Harold Lloyd's first sound film, Welcome Danger and Buster Keaton's last silent film, Spite Marriage (which Keaton also directed). John Ford's first sound film, The Black Watch, which also is 21 year old John Wayne's first appearance in a film, as an uncredited extra, he worked in the art department. Hallelujah the first studio film to have an all black cast came out that year. Also worth noting is The Hollywood Revue of 1929 a singing and dancing review, one of the earliest and the movie that popularized the song Singin’ in the Rain, maybe the first time a movie made a song a hit.

Musical compositions

musical compositions, ie the lyrics and musical notations you might see on sheet music are governed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and music written in 1929 is public domain. Music recordings are governed by a whole different law (we'll get there). Songs written in 1929 include Singin’ in the Rain by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Black and Blue by the legendary Fats Waller, What Is This Thing Called Love? by Cole Porter, Tiptoe Through the Tulips by Alfred Dubin, You Were Meant for Me by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, and also Happy Days Are Here Again by Jack Yellen which would become FDR's campaign theme song in 1932.

Art!

a number of pieces by Salvador Dalí including:

Illumined Pleasures

The Accommodations of Desire

The Great Masturbator

are entering the public domain as is René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images.

Art is hard because while movies and books are clearly "published" and put on sale, what counts as "published" for a piece of art? the law is not totally sure.

Musical Recordings

as I promised, we got here. Till 2017 there were no federal laws governing the copyright of music recordings before the 1970s, it was governed by a confusing patchwork of state laws and it was not totally clear what was or was not free and clear even from the very earliest recordings ever. Now the term of a music recording's copyright is set at 100 years (way too long) so music recorded in 1924 is now public domain such as. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen by Marian Anderson, Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me) by Louis Armstrong, California Here I Come by Al Jolson, Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, Shreveport Stomp by Jelly Roll Morton, Mama’s Gone, Good Bye by Ray Miller, and It Had To Be You by Marion Harris. Now many recordings a lot less famous can finally be preserved and digitized to save them for the next 100 years. Many abandoned works are literally rotting away since without the copyright holder's permission digitizing a work isn't legal.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

why taking commissions for fanfics can KILL Archive of Our Own and fanfic culture as a whole

okay, so thing is, fanfics are allowed — as in they’re not banned — because nobody is supposed to be profiting off of copyrighted characters.

this is why popular site like Archive of Our Own is allowed to be up and running, because no one is supposed to be making money from fanfics.

the fact AO3 is allowed to be up and running, unfortunately, can and will most likely change if people start normalizing commissioning fanfics and making profit off of them.

because the second those big companies learn people are profiting off of their copyrighted characters, the target they will attack after you (in terms of legal action) is a platform like Archive of Our Own, which will likely ruin it all for everybody and every fandom.

imagine Archive of Our Own getting shut down because fanfics were banned because people were profiting off of them. (I know AO3 isn’t only about fanfics, but since it’s mostly known for fanfics, it will most likely get targeted and that will most likely mean it’ll get shut down if worst comes to worst.)

honestly. most people write fanfics in their free time for free out of passion and love they have for their favorite characters.

people read fanfics for free because that’s their source of happiness.

I’m not saying there will be no fanfics left in this world if they really are banned, because people will always find a way. but it WILL be so much harder having to sneak around and find a way to post fanfics without them getting removed at best, the authors getting sued at worst. and it WILL be harder for readers to find your works if we have to censor key words and character names in order to avoid getting caught.

it’s so much easier like this, we can freely post fanfics without having to hide and censor key words or worrying about anything.

no, I’m not making this post for the sake of those big companies. this post isn’t about “hey, don’t profit off of their characters”. it’s about “hey, don’t risk ruining fanfics culture as a whole for everybody by profiting off of them and putting a platform like Archive of Our Own in jeopardy.”

if you don’t want to live in a fandom without AO3, keep fanfics free.