hinomars19 wrote:SKYWARPED_128 wrote:Took the words right out of my mouth.
I just read the article at Makezine, and at 20% royalty from the full retail price of each item sold, it's pretty fair. The only catch is that whether you make the cut to be a seller at Super Fan Art is at Hasbro's discretion instead of being a free market like Shapeways.
20% may sound fair in legal terms, but it's a shame the actual artistic creator of a product gets less for their work. It's not even half. It's Hasbro's I.P, and yeah maybe even their 'design' if someone works from an existing character, but the toy, engineering and final look is that of the person who makes it. But this is just me digressing. That's how all things work, like I said earlier, sadly that's business.
Well, Shapeways rightfully takes the lion's share because they're the ones doing the manufacturing, packaging and shipping. Hasbro? Well, it's their IP, and there are certain benefits for working with them--no risk of C&D's, usage of trademarked names, better exposure. No matter how you cut it, it's still better than having them toss C&D's every which way.
Frankly, I'm still a little confused about the details of this whole Super Fan Art thing. It's being run sort of like a publishing house where you have to submit your
manuscript 3d designs for consideration, and then it starts to look like a contest where the "selected artists" will have their designs featured on the site.
So, it it still a free market but with some added guidelines and criteria by Hasbro, or is it now run like a publishing house where your work only gets
published featured on the site if
the editor Hasbro deems it worthy?
This brings me to a question that's been nagging at me for a while. What about "gray area" items? Weapons for characters that were shown on TV, but weren't included in the actual toy, and Hasbro would never make separately? This is where the possibility of them "stomping on the little man", as you put it, arises.