Gametee Kickstarter Campaign

F

FourthLion

Adventurer
Hey guys,

Just wanted to share this campaign with people. The illustrator AJ Hateley is a personal favourite of mine (check out all her prints etc on RedBubble or on her website). She's done official art for games like Dishonored and books like Penguin, but these shirts are kind of 'unofficial' designs. They're great though (and so are the prints).

Just thought some of you guys might appreciate them too :)
 
I thought I did. Whoops. It's been (hopefully) temporarily taken down over an intellectual property dispute though. I hope it wins on accoutn of fair usage and all that as the designs are great, and if all those many t shirt sites already out there (redbubble, qwertee, society6, levelup etc etc etc) can all survive on the IP's of other copmpanies I don't see why one more would hurt. If it comes back up I'll post the link :)
 
It's sort of heart-warming to see that at least one company cares about complaints from IP holders whose rights are being violated. I know this is a contrarian stance but hopefully she can work with the people who invented the games or cut their logos etc from her designs, otherwise she's pretty much asking for donations to fund something which doesn't benefit the creatives who made the original source material. No matter how talented an artist she is I think there's a basic duty to make sure the rights holders are consulted, otherwise she'd have no leg to stand on if someone else traced her designs and started a rival Kickstarter...

I imagine the pokeball one was the problem?

R
 
No it was one of the Final Fantasy ones. The Shinra Soldier I think. Square Enix are one of the companies that seem very protective of their IPs, even more so than Nintendo (I guess pokémon is second party to Nintendo anyway).

To be honest as much as I lover this lady as an illustratot, I do wonder how all these millions of sites can get away with all the 'unofficial' designs out there. I do agree that I'd rather support the owner of the original IP as well as the designer of the shirt, but if you waited for the publishers of your favourite games and animes etc to come up with and release shirts and posters etc you'd often be waiting forever (not to mention a lot of this does go on with the IP owner's blessings, e.g. with this Gametees thing the designer also did the official work for Dishonored as well as the work here and the owners of that property are supporting her in this venture).

The design in question is being removed, kinda weird that Square Enix only have objections to one of the designs. Must've been that this one in particular used a trademark name or some artwork directly referencing the game as i know the artist in question is usually careful to only use her own created assets and not copy official artwork (though again on Society6, Etsy and RedBubble etc there are many out there directly copying and pasting official artwork and profiting from it and I wonder how it is allowed to happen).
 
Think it was this one

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Interestingly, just hours after the campaign is live again for IP infringement, they've now announced that they are goign to start doing some officially licensed designs. So maybe Square Enix liked the design but just wanted a cut? Which is fair enough i guess.
 
Cool that they're willing to come to deals like that, everyone wins if she's doing licensed designs for S-E.

Etsy annoys me, it's almost impossible for creators to shut anything down there (as with most sites) and very little of the 'creations' are entirely the work of the people profiting from them :(

R
 
Mutsumi said:
The image link does not work. :(
Click to expand...

Ah it seemed to when I first posted it. Just type 'shinra gametee' into google images and it'll be within the first few things to come up.

I think most illustrators and designers would be more than willing to work on officially licensed products, it's probably just very difficult to get considered in the first place. I don't think that should be used as an excuse to rip off people's IPs, but like I said before if they didn't then many amazing designs wouldn't be able to see the light of day. To be honest someone walking around in a final fantasy shirt or something is pretty much advertising for SE anyway.
 
I'm really liking the look of the Garden and Master Sword t-shirts! Still, I don't really pay £18 for a t-shirt, especially with my finances at the moment.
 
I think the idea of kickstarter is often some of the money is going towards your satisfaction for helping a new business start up. That and you;re gettign the 'first run' what with certificate and all. Appeals to some people more than others I guess :)

The giclee prints are fairly reasonably priced I think :)
 
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