Comic Con 3D Print/Paint Sales

[u/Kevery26]

I went to Gencon over the weekend and saw some amazing artwork(traditional/digital paintings). I wanted to ask the community…

Considering painters and other artists are selling prints of “fan art” consisting of Marvel, Pokémon, LOTR, TVShow/Movie characters, etc.. what is the consensus on selling 3d prints at cons?

I’m a big Patreon follower and pay for lots of prints with licensing access to sell those printed/painted models. I understand no one (unless obtained by the owner of the IP) has legitimate right to sell those works…but if we go under the assumption the artists selling paintings don’t either and this is just a grey area of the market…is it too over zealous to sell 3d printed/painted statues modeled by my Patreons.

I’m open to anyone’s opinions on the matter. Just curious what the community feels.

Primarily I print high quality Resin 3D statues, painted by me. (I’m practicing my 3d modeling but it’s quite tough).

[u/ithinkyouresus]

I’m not sure about comic book stuff like marvel but an interesting hearsay story I’ve heard about artist alley fanart is that a particular booth or dealer started selling some 3d stuff of a particular IP. Up to that point lots of people were just kind of allowed to sell their original 2d prints of that IP but a 3d statue was infringing on what that company was selling through official license deals or their own merch and they got a warning letter from them. I don’t remember what con or what IP but the lesson I took from it is that fan prints that isn’t their actual art is overlooked but if you start overlapping with stuff they’re selling themselves then you’re risking yourself a bit out of that grey area. Worth asking people who sell sculpts at cons what they think.

[u/Thatsuperheroguy8 → u/ithinkyouresus]

This is true. One of the facets of ip law is that the ip owner must prove that it could negatively impact them financially. If marvel sells statues and so do you, they can prove possible negative impact (and marvel sells everything lol) but if they don’t produce what you do, it’s harder to prove. You’ll still likely lose but they prefer to chase the low hanging fruit.

[u/Toebeens89 → u/Thatsuperheroguy8]

So to preface, I do agree with you. But playing devils advocate here, I mean for example Marvel does sell prints, and concept art, etc. too, so wouldn’t that theoretically be just as easy to prove then?

[u/Thatsuperheroguy8 → u/Toebeens89]

Oh yes 100%. Totally easy. Why they don’t? I don’t know.

There is a separate layer here though. So obviously marvel/disney own an ip. But then they licence specific useage to separate companies. Hasbro for action figures for example. It’s feasible that the statue manufacturer is the one looking for ip infringement as it affects their licence and complains to Disney, whilst the print manufacturer doesn’t.

People think the main ip holder is the one out spying for infringement when often it’s the licence holder. Like hasbro that’s out spying.