Why Animators Shouldn't Worry About Copyright

Copyright Law - Stop Worrying

If you’re studying animation at Animation Apprentice you may have heard other students talk about copyright—how important it is to protect your ideas and ensure no one steals your work.  

And while it's important to understand the copyright law (to learn the basics of copright law, watch this video), it's equally important that students shouldn’t worry about copyright too much.  

Here’s why it's important not to panic:

Copyright Law for Artists & Animators

One common area of confusion for artists, including animators, is copyright law. What does copyright mean? How does it come about? What do terms like "public domain" mean? Many of these terms are commonly misunderstood, and copyright law forms part of a complex system of global laws which vary from one country to another. Fortunately, the basics of copyright law are easy to understand. Watch the short video about for a basic introduction to copyright law, and how it works for animators.

New York's Metropolitan Museum Releases its Archive For Free!

Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art has posted hundreds of thousands of images online for free non-commercial use under the Creative Commons License.

That means you can use the images in your work, as long as you're not profiting from them, and as long as you credit the Met.

What's so great about that? Well, if you've been to the Met, you will have seen one of the world's greatest collections of art, ranking up there with the British Museum, Paris's Louvre and Florence's Uffizi as a treasure trove of beautiful things.

And now, all these fabulous images are free for us to use.

Amazing! Fantastic! Incredible! - The Biography of Stan Lee Is Out!

Amazing! Fantastic! Incredible! - The biography of Stan Lee is out! Titled "A Marvelous Memoir" (Geddit?), this new book chronicles the extraordinary career of comics legend Stan Lee.

In fact, Lee was on Radio 4 this morning, talking about his career, and telling great stories (clearly much told, but with no loss of enthusiasm) about turning points in his life like the birth of Spiderman.

Spidey and the other Marvel characters have since gone on to found what is apparently the most successful film franchise in history, bigger even than Harry Potter or James Bond.

So what about the royalties? Mr Lee must be rolling in gold, right? After all, he created the characters. Well, apparently not. Stan Lee was, as he put it: "a writer for hire". It was the company he worked for that got rich on the royalties, not him. And this is an important lesson for all our students:

Don't sign away the rights to your creations, unless you absolutely have to.