! CAUTION ! : Careful With Commissions

[The-Great-One]

Chronamut is Selling My Art

@Phobotech made a thread stating that a member no longer here on Newgrounds commissioned a piece of artwork from him. Recently out of the blue, Chronamut messaged him stating that he was selling that piece on his store and would give him a cut of the profit in a cryptocurrency. Phobotech said this seemed odd and was wondering what his options were.

This too seemed suspicious to me, so I messaged Tom. His history of Internet content and dealing with copyrights on the world wide web would help clear things up. To note, he said that this is a murky area. If Phobotech had made a formal agreement with Chronamut then his options are a bit limited. If he didn't though then Chronamut can't sell it and that Phobotech is still the owner.

Tom supplied a link to the Copyright and Commissioned Art.

I wanted to make this more aware so I messaged @BoMToons and @TurkeyOnAStick to see if this should be made note of. TurkeyOnAStick gave the go ahead.

I've noticed that a lot of Newgrounds artists have been offering commissions here on the site and are selling their pieces. It is an exciting time for artists. The veterans, those who came here from the Tumblr exodus, and new artists who were brought here due to FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN'. Even I recently purchased some artwork from @Urichov.

It is important to keep your wits about you and be careful about the agreements you make with people when they purchase a commission from you.

[SourCherryJack]

lol, fucking Chronamut. Haven't thought of that dude in a while.

And yeah, the recent tsunami of NFT's in and the concept of cryptoart is going to fuck a bunch of artists in new and interesting ways. Godspeed everyone.

Anyone who is being commissioned and does not want that work to be duplicated and sold in anyway by the commissioner needs to have that bit explicitly written out in the agreement. I'm not an expert, but the assumption for every commission that I have done is the commissioner can do whatever they want with it once I'm paid and the art is in the mail, or the full-res, non-watermarked version is emailed. Always know the purpose of a commission and price accordingly. I've done art for people who were going to slap it on shirts or as a logo for their business or brand, and as a rule I always add to the price if it's for commercial purposes.

I googled a quick contract template and this one looks pretty good, though it does give the commissioner full rights to do whatever they wish with the art. There are a bunch out there.

If you're serious about doing commissions get everything in writing, get a down payment before starting the work. It can be hard and feel like you're being sleazy or big business douche about things, but you gotta look out for yourself on these things.

[radiodark]

Wow, haven't seen him making trouble for a while.

As Tom's link says, generally you'll own the work unless you've explicitly sold the rights away. @Phobotech absolutely still owns the rights to that piece, as far as I can tell- he didn't mention any sort of agreement to sell the rights to it.

The one possible exception to that case that I can see would be if they confirmed a plan to include selling the rights to reproduce the piece as part of the commission in an informal setting (i.e. a pm, email, ng comment, etc.) that might stand in place of a written contract, but it doesn't sound like that was the case either.

That said, get a contract y'all! It'll show you're a pro, it protects you and your client, prevents misunderstandings, ensures you get paid. Is great.

When you do choose to sell rights away, be explicit about what you're giving away and what you're retaining! Are you allowing the client to use the image for strictly noncommercial use, or are you inviting them to smack it on any object they want to sell? Are you retaining the rights to show the image in your own portfolio and in marketing your business? Do you want them to be able to change the image? Do you still want to be able to sell prints of whatever it is? Etc. Google for example contracts if you need to.

At 3/11/21 07:38 PM, SourCherryJack wrote:Anyone who is being commissioned and does not want that work to be duplicated and sold in anyway by the commissioner needs to have that bit explicitly written out in the agreement. I'm not an expert, but the assumption for every commission that I have done is the commissioner can do whatever they want with it once I'm paid and the art is in the mail, or the full-res, non-watermarked version is emailed. Always know the purpose of a commission and price accordingly. I've done art for people who were going to slap it on shirts or as a logo for their business or brand, and as a rule I always add to the price if it's for commercial purposes.

It is wise to have it spelled out in the agreement, because it presents misunderstandings, but legally I'm pretty sure you retain the rights to reproduce your images unless you've spelled out selling them as part of the commission. (Though in your case, I'm no lawyer but I think it's possible that if you didn't have a contract that a court might? see the words "logo design" or "tshirt design" in your communications and infer a collective understanding on both sides that the commissioned art would be reproduced by the client.)

[Skoops]

This is a weird one to see go down, maybe because of the part of the art world I come from. Every freelance gig I've done, it's been a given that they're buying the distribution rights in addition to the piece itself; like it would be weird to me that someone offered me royalties at all, because as far as I'm concerned, they bought my product and now it's theirs. If you don't think your clients should actually own the work they bought from you, you're definitely going to need that in writing up front, otherwise any legal dispute you raise is going to sound like "yeah I sold him a car but I don't like how he drives it to work."

For payments from non-corporate, individual clients, just get the whole thing up front. If you're scared that that will make less people approach you for commissions, rest assured that you're correct. But also know that you don't want to be dealing with the people that get filtered out this way anyway. There is no other service on the internet that lets you pay after you've received the product, so you don't have to be the exception.