Props, Costumes, Copyright, and Risk - Making a Living in the Cosplay Scene

while I imagine it is fairly obvious I'm not a lawyer nothing in this video should be considered legal advice and if you do have questions of the legal nature especially about how you run your business please consult a licensed law professional more and more makers in our cosplay scene are trying to take their craft full-time and I'm frequently asked how to earn a living by making props and costumes based on copyrighted characters without getting into trouble so let's talk about the issues with making money via your own particular style in the cosplay community while leveraging the intellectual property of other companies for starters most cosplayers and prop makers have nothing to worry about if you have a normal day job and you don't earn a significant portion of your income from your proper costume craft then you're a hobbyist making props and costumes for yourself or your friends it's completely benign and a large corporation is unlikely to step in to tell you to stop dressing up as their characters unless of course you're selling a bunch of copies of that work even if they do tell you to cut it out getting slapped with a cease and desist letter because you've sold a handful of space guns on Etsy should have no real impact on you that is of course if you quickly comply and don't make a fuss about it and I would like to point out that this is the case for the vast majority of the cosplay scene nothing to worry about make stuff and have fun the trouble is that some of us are in the process of earning more and more of our necessary income from selling props or prints and files in fact a few of us punished props included have taken that last leap of sanity and gone full time we're relying on our prop and costume work for every last penny we earned many newcomers are just on the edge of attempting to go full-time and they're worried about the legality of selling things that they don't have a license for this is of course a valid concern see makers of all types selling unlicensed products all the time in our community the Internet is awash with prop makers and cosplayers selling unpainted resin castings 3d prints photo prints and even fully finished costume pieces from everyone's favorite video games TV shows and movies so if everyone's doing it it must be ok right technically it's not alright unless every aspect of a creators work is a completely original design that maker is at the very least tiptoeing over someone else's intellectual property or sometimes downright stopping all over it we hear about makers getting cease and desist letters in their inbox on a daily basis then again others seem to fly low enough under the radar that they never get mailed so what's the deal what should the aspiring professional do let's be clear this isn't about whether or not one particular way of making money with props and costumes is more or less moral than another way it's about how much risk you are willing to take with your business plan you need to understand just how risky many of these plans can be to you and your business as someone who is trying to build a business that will be successful for years and decades to come I need to design a business plan that will withstand the test of time and that means operating with as little risk as possible note that I didn't say no risk every business plan has some assumed risk but some of those plans are much riskier than others especially when you're dealing with the intellectual property of a large multi million or billion dollar company let's look at some examples many of these are things I've tried over the past 5 years when building my company's business model let's say I make a Superman costume I take a photo of that costume then I sell signed prints of that photo on my website and in person at conventions now as far as I know I've never heard of a large company telling cosplayers that they can't do that not exactly sure how a case like that would pan out in court but based on the track record seems like a fairly low-risk plan it's also a high profit margin product that's easy to scale so in my mind that's a pretty good business model now what if I built my own copy of say a pistol from Mass Effect then a bunch of people on the internet said hey I want one so I made a mold of it and I cast up a bunch of copies and offered unpainted resin kits for sale on my website again as far as I know Bioware and EA haven't come down hard on small-time prop makers for selling low volumes of space gun kits not yet anyway however other litigious game companies have we regularly hear about certain companies combing through Etsy and having their listings pulled off for items from their games so this is a tiny bit more risky than selling photo prints plus it's a lower profit margin and has a higher production cost in both materials and production time so while this isn't super risky it can be a little bit worrisome especially if you rely on the majority or all of your business income from selling castings and even more especially if those castings are all from the same video game a single cease and desist letter could hamstring your entire business model also remember that quantity matters if you sell a dozen or so castings of a certain prop it's less likely you'll get the attention of a large company if you start offering them by the hundreds you'll more than likely force their hand on another note if you're selling unlicensed replica props and you realize that another company is selling licensed copies of the same prop it's probably a good idea to take yours off the market at the very least this would make things less awkward between you and that other vendor seeing is how they're paying for the right to sell that item and you are not also they have an incentive to tattletale on you to their licensing partners plus you're a competitor and they had a pretty strong competitive advantage over you seeing is how the law is on their side in my opinion it's best to just pull your product from your store and try and make friends let's say I only build one offs that means I'll have a client commissioned me to build his favorite gun from say destiny I build the gun he pays me and then we go our merry ways I can't think of any way for Bungie or Activision to swing in and tell me to stop by the time any transaction has been made the entire deal is over and I don't plan on selling any more than just the one piece from a copyright perspective this is a fairly low risk plan it is however incredibly difficult to make any money with this plan each piece is a prototype which could take weeks of production to get just right one-off pieces tend to cost way more than castings because you can't offset the production cost with the scalability of molding and casting copies plus finding clients who are willing to pay a premium for a one-off piece can be challenging so this plan is a tiny bit risky now what if you make costumes for your clients again if you're just making one offs you'll likely to be in the clear likely in fact making a replica of a piece of clothing is fairly low-risk copyright wise where you might run into trouble is if that clothing has any trademarked logos on it trademark and copyright are two different things links to more information down in the description just know that selling someone else's trademark logo can be a real problem and therefore is super risky now what if you only build original work you may have honed your crafting skills making stuff from dragon age but you've successfully transitioned into making props and costumes that are from your own imagination on the legal side this is incredibly low risk in fact you can send out seeing these to anyone who has the gall to copy your work getting your fans and customers invested in your style and designs can be a major uphill battle but if you accomplish that the sky's the limit this is a fantastic business plan or part of a larger business plan or on that later now what if you could convince these large copyright holding companies to pay you to make things from their video game that's the dream isn't it legally they're giving you permission to make their stuff and even paying you so you're golden the challenge of course is convincing them to hire you being an upstanding member of the community with a good professional reputation will pay off in spades if you have a track record of getting seeing these four making things from their video game and you're kind of snotty about it on the Internet a company will be incredibly hesitant to work with you similarly you could approach a company about obtaining a license to sell copies of things from their properties this isn't anything new and it's starting to happen more and more in the cosplay scene again being super professional and getting a hold of the right people is going to be key here know that this could cost you money up front plus a fee for every sale every company has a different policy on licensing their work some of them might be outside of your financial reach and therefore not an option that being said if you can pull it off this is a much lower risk plan than just selling unlicensed work and crossing your fingers what if instead of selling the items directly you sell tutorials and books to teach others how to make their own props and costumes this is primarily what punished props does we have our foam Smith books for sale and we monetize our free YouTube videos in a variety of ways I think it is possible that a company might step in and tell us to stop leveraging their intellectual property to promote our videos and our books but I do think it's highly unlikely those companies do have a vested interest in getting their fans to dress up as characters from their properties and we help those fans to do so and I haven't yet heard of any company telling a tutorial channel to cut it out so I would consider this plan fairly low risk still though I'd like to personally start experimenting with tutorials that use some of my own designs this is even lower risk and since I'm really selling the how-to the object I'm building is less critical than the techniques I'm teaching kind of a side note but I will say I do regret putting known characters on the cover of each of my books I think this probably falls into a similar category is selling prints of known characters and I've never heard of anyone getting slapped for it but I would feel a lot better if completely owned everything about the content in my books on a similar note I also sell digital blueprint files on my website of known props and costumes pieces from some of my favorite video games this is similar to makers selling 3d files so that others can 3d print those props for themselves and I have heard about game companies asking 3d modelers to remove files from the internet even free ones so it's not outside the realm of possibility that your library of copyrighted space gun files might need to be taken down now I don't really make a ton of money from those blueprint files so I'm not too worried if I get hit with a cease-and-desist but I might just go ahead and make those files free for everyone going forward in fact you'll probably notice that every blueprint from a known property that I've made in the last couple of years has been added to my website for free I would rather not grow to rely on that income only to have it pulled out from under me how about if you dress up in a costume as a copyrighted character and you're paid to do appearances well that might be a bit risky if you're working for yourself or a talent agency of some kind that's not associated with the company who owns the copyright to that character in fact there are recent cases of large companies throwing down lawsuits for that very thing for example companies like Disney are incredibly picky about how their characters are portrayed and they will flex their well-funded muscles to keep their image as tidy as possible just know that even though this could be a great way to make some extra cash with your cosplay it's also fairly risky to do so especially if you're counting on that cash as your sole source of income so what if you make props prints and costumes you don't have a license to sell them but you make most of your money through something like patreon that could be a bit more of a gray area as far as risk is concerned it depends on whether or not you're selling the actual physical goods in return for the Patriot money for our campaign the money is used to directly support the content that we make our patrons don't get props in return for their hard earned money they get more videos now occasionally we mail our top-tier patrons a print or some stickers but that's pretty low risk however if you use patreon to collect money and run a raffle to send one lucky patron a prop every month not only is this technically against patreon Terms of Service but it might be illegal depending on where you live so check your local laws concerning sweepstakes and as always consult the license law professional besides I personally think that that kind of raffle is kind of a poor value proposition so what about some kind of combination of all of those previously mentioned plans now we're talking not only do you benefit by diversifying where all of your earnings come from but you spread out your risk if one part of your plan falls apart the other parts should be able to support you while you update your business plan as the aspiring creative professional you need to decide how much and what type of risk you're willing to assume and don't worry you don't need to figure it all out at once try out a variety of ways to make money with your craft and go with whatever combination works well for you just bear in mind it might take you a couple of years to figure that out and also remember that just because a plan is working for you now and nobody has a problem with what you're up to in the present doesn't mean it will always be that way things fluctuate and you need to be willing and able to adapt as the market changes oh and one more thing if you do get a cease-and-desist letter don't worry it's not the end of the world but you do owe it to yourself and kind of a bit to the community to comply with respect complaining about it on Twitter and Facebook just makes you look whiny and it makes companies less interested in working with you or with other makers in our scene oh and here's a couple of other things to avoid don't just rename the prop and relist it on Etsy shirt you might be able to get away with it for a while but these companies aren't stupid they'll catch on and if you upset them enough they could be forced into legal action also don't take that righteous stance and try to convince yourself and everyone else that you're somehow the plucky hero offering the fan base something that these large companies are unwilling to provide if a video game company doesn't want to spend the time and money creating replica prop products for their fan base that is their prerogative finally don't try to justify your actions to support a risky business model if what you're doing is treading all over someone else's intellectual property you are running the risk of having your shaky business model ripped out of your hands that's on you you can choose to either pivot and change your plan or burn your business to the ground it's up to you in this case ignorant is not bliss if you're making money by infringing on someone else's copyright in any capacity it can have real consequences on you and your business you owe it to yourself to understand the reality of the situation so what do we do as a community of makers far too often I see people getting upset with the way some other person is running their business someone else might be getting away with murder while I get slapped with cease and desist letters left and right it's just not fair it's important for me as someone running a business to focus on what I can do better to create a business model that takes the right amount of risk and is designed to be successful in the long run in my opinion pointing fingers and getting mad at the actions of other makers is not a valuable way to spend my extremely limited time so if you see someone else doing something you think is questionable know that they are simply okay with taking that kind of risk that's on them and has nothing to do with you or how you choose to run your business whew boy thanks for listening to me ramble if you have any feedback please share it in the comments below I respect you guys for keeping this conversation about the topic at hand and not descending into personal attacks I also want to thank the prop tarts for looking over my first draft of this video and helping me craft my message I really do hope this video helps aspiring young creative professionals their journey towards building a long-lasting successful career you guys are a fantastic group of makers with valuable insight thanks so much for sharing and I will catch you in the next build

Channel: Punished Props Academy

Views: 121,560

Keywords: bill doran, chinbeard, punished props, academy, cosplay, costume, disney, copyright, trademark, help, business, risk, risky, advice, legal, lawyer, replica, career, lawsuit, patent, prop making, costume making, professional cosplayer

Id: Im4Vg_TTbUE

Length: 17min 47sec (1067 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2017