Is drawing a character copyright infringement?

For characters, the character only becomes protected under copyright law once it becomes a unique expression, i.e. drawing your own rendition of something or adding certain attributes. For video games though, the unique expression is the actual visual character created by the artist.

Can I sell a painting of a character?

Legally, you cannot sell paintings of characters that other artists have invented. Due to trademark, copyright, and art plagiarism issues, selling paintings of characters is stealing the work of others and selling it as your own, even if you created the painting yourself and put a unique spin on it.

Can I draw a picture of a cartoon and sell it?

Legally, yes. The copyright holder could certainly sue. However, the selling of certain types of fan art is in the best interest of the comic book industry.

Can I draw Mickey Mouse and sell it?

You cannot sell your drawings of Disney characters because, by doing so, you would be infringing on The Walt Disney Company’s copyrights and trademarks. These characters are their intellectual property. If you want to sell your Disney artwork, you have to secure a license from them.

Are You allowed to profit off of someone’s copyrighted characters?

The laws say you are not allowed to profit off of someone’s copyrighted characters. Myth number two is thinking that as long as you’re not profiting off of creating copyrighted characters or creating derivative works from copyrighted characters then you’re ok.

How does copyright work for artists?

For artists, an understanding of how copyright works is especially important, since it governs the rights in and to his or her art. Artists might have two questions when it comes to copyright: (1) how do I protect my own creative work, and (2) when am I able to use someone else’s work in my own?

Are video game characters protected by copyright?

Also, names alone do not have copyright protection. So just mentioning the name of a character won’t be copyright infringement without more. The creators of some video games use stock characters and scenery that resemble famous movie franchises.

Is it copyright infringement to use stock RoboCop characters?

As I said earlier, copyright law does not protect stock characters. Consequently, any use of a gun-toting cyborg won’t be considered copyright infringement of RoboCop until that cyborg looks and acts like RoboCop.