Is Tom Kyzivat in the house?
 

hey, My name is Jake Davidson, and I live Maryland near Washington, DC. I'm in a ska band called Point Blank. Your artwork, Tom Kyzivat, is amazing. We were wondering if we could use some of your pictures on the cover of our new cd. We can't offer you any money, we don't have any left after making the cd, but we will put your name at the bottom as artist.

If you don't have anything to do, it would be awesome if you could draw all the TMNT playing instruments (drums, guitar, bass, and trombone). But since we aren't paying you, I can totally understand if you don't want to.

peace

Lol, NO

yeah, **** the new picture thing, that was retarted. can i just use one of your pictures?

to be entirely honest, Capone....

i don't know that i've ever once gotten a chance to talk to Mr. Kyzivat here on the forum... Cooksux soooo isn't him. you may want to see if Krang has his email address.

b/c yeah... i don't think i've ever heard from him here... though if he's rolling around under a clever psuedo-nym... um... then i could be wrong.

good luck to you and your band!

lol I'm not Tom, but I think that this is the most ludacris request for free commission work ever.

I may be totally off here, but don't you need permission from Mirage or something to have the turtles on your CD Cover that you're selling for profit? I don't know if that's the case for fanart TMNT on CD Covers though.

Come to think of it... yes, that is quite true, Stone. I was at a TMNT fan booth at a comic con this weekend, and we weren't allowed to sell any fanart that had Mirage registered trademarks in it. Unless we had special permission too. But they didn't give us that special permission. (although, I wondered how some of the 'struggling freelance artists' got away with selling drawings of characters that weren't theirs.)

I've often wondered that myself. A few years back at a con I bought a poster sized picture of Mereru from Escaflowne from one of those freelance artists.. It's a good pic (Better than the official stuff actually) But I just wonder how he gets away with doing it

yeah, this is all true. but the picture i want to use is the graveyard picture thing. and although it is a turtle...I'm not a crazy fanatic....but I don't remember any of the TMNT ever having wolverine type claws.

And cooksux, wtf are you talking about? its not un-commisioned art, he already drew the ****ing picture, i just want to use it.

Actually, a there was. A character, which wasn't a TMNT, but more of an NT, whose name was Slash.

Oh come on, let's not make the guy feel bad, he's just trying to find cover art for his CD... And, I'm really in to Ska, you guys have a website with samples or anything?

Y'know, I never really much cared for this man's work. I would probably like it a lot more if it weren't TMNT, but since it is.. I dunno, it's just so...wrong..And in my opinion, just too wrong to be cool. He makes everyone look grotesque and over loads them with weapons, and his Rocksteady is just beyond me. Just my two cents.

From what I understand.. You're completely allowed to draw a 'fanart' piece of a character and sell that piece. But the copyright for it has to be clearly marked. Example being if you drew a pic of Raph, You'd have to put down that he's owned by Mirage Studios. You couldn't claim copyright to the character at all.

Otherwise, I don't see how all of the Amateur artists on ebay get away with selling so much of their fanart.

ahhhhhhhhhh so that makes some sense...

/me goes to check Mereru poster

Yeah he put the copyright on it. I was suprised to see people could do this, but now it makes some sense!

Tom didn't pay his internet bill this month, so his site is down, I emailed him, his site will be back up next month hopefully, and hopefully with more art.

As to the freelance artists selling work of registered trademarks, it's also as simple as symantics.

IE you have to charge sales tax on merchandise, but you don't on a service, therefore the smarter business people will sell artwork, whatever you want, but you are paying them for the service of making the item, not actually paying for the item.

You'll notice at conventions some artists have signs and the prices are by 30minute intervals for TIME spent on drawing, IE a service which can't be copyrighted or a registered trademark. What they draw is up to you. Legally it's 100% lawful, ethically, it's on the 50% borderline scale :P This not only allows them the freedom to take "ANY" commision, but it also saves them having to track sales tax and charging for it.

screw it, I just needed a picture for our cover, too many logistics in this, I'll just draw a happy face.

thanks everyone

peace