ProTip: Branding & ©
So you’re planning on selling at Anime North huh? Congrats for getting this far! It’s been a crazy journey and we’re glad you made it. Now before you pack up your prints and jet out to the convention center, there’s a serious issue we gotta talk about.
B.R.A.N.D.I.N.G
But what is it?
Branding is the process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers' mind to attract and retain loyal customers.
Which is a fancy way of saying creators make unique things so people remember them. They put love, sweat, and tears into those things and it’d be pretty messed up if someone came along and started using those things. Not only that, but used them and started getting $$$ for them while cutting the creator out of those profits.
This is how fanart falls into a pretty grey area. There’s a lot of other posts talking about this out there, so if you’re an artist you should really look it up and see what legal rights you have as a creator and what legal issues could arise from doing fanart for profit.
But to keep things simple and relevant to your ANCMarket experience:
Fanart + no profit = no issues.
But this is not the case when an artist IS getting profit from work they don’t own the copyright to.
To protect yourself, the convention, copyright laws and intellectual properties, we’ve created specific rules in our guidelines to make sure everyone stays safe and no one walks away with a lawsuit after a fantastic weekend of art, anime, and pocky (and lack of sleep, lots of caffeine, timstimstims and junk food galore). Make sure you take a look to better understand what’s expected of you and your art while attending Anime North.
One bullet we’ve been asked to clarify from our Prohibited Merchandise section is:
Any work or merchandise with copyrighted or official titles, materials, and/or trademarked logos, character names, and/or designs, regardless of whether or not the work is original; [is not allowed]
What does this mean?
The use of official titles (series names, character names, and locations) and trademarked logos (Cutie Marks, Sailor Scout symbols, Full Metal Alchemist or Cardcaptor Sakura designs etc) cannot be present in your artwork. All these things are part of creators branding and using these names/titles/symbols, legally puts you (the artist) in jeopardy if any of these property owners want to file a suit.
By signing your contract with the ANCMarket you’re agreeing you will not be including any of these things in the artwork you’re selling.
To recap:
Do not use character NAMES, LOCATIONS, TITLES, or LOGOS in your artwork (this is part of branding).
Do not put “Naruto” on your print; do not put the Japanese title for Free! on your print. Do not put any series, character name, or trademarked symbol on your work or CM staff will ask you to remove it and it’ll count as a strike against your table. This is a very serious rule we want to make sure all artists attending understand.
So just
