(My keyboard has been acting up and deleted my entire first attempt at this post. KMS)
Something I've learned from my time in the online art community is that a lot of us got our starts by wanting to draw fictional characters. But not just any fictional characters, the ones that we think of as friends. (Admit it, sad but true.) And whether these characters are from an anime, cartoon, book, or comic (like mine) it's hard not to let drawing them take over our entire sketchbooks. There are some problems with fan art though, the biggest one being that we don't own the characters.
There is still a huge problem with fan art selling, or else companies like RedBubble wouldn't have policies against it. Because a certain company owns the copy right to your favorite character trying to make money off of their creative juices can get you and whoever you're working with into big trouble. The safest thing is to not sell any at all. While this may seem unnecessary it comes from a logical place, things get stolen. Even creative property will get knocked off if there's money involved, and this is to protect the people who actually put work into a character. There are, of course, exceptions to the no selling rule. Most Comic and Anime conventions allow for at least a certain percentage of fan art. This is because all of the people who pay to go to the conventions are there because they like those characters. The catch of course is that a bigger percentage of what you're selling must be original but at least you can sell a bit of fan art.
Another huge no is trying to pass off a character or story as your own. There have been people who have copied exactly from something they've like and used it for profit. Connected to the last point by the theft idea this is much more devious. While regular fan artists are innocently trying to sell what they're comfortable drawing these scam artists are only trying to use someone else's success. (Which is why we need copyright.) Slightly conflicting with what I just said, the best example I could think of comes from an innocent place. A few years back I read something about a DC fan continuing the Justice League Animated Series themselves. (I couldn't find any articles about it today though, sadly.) This attempt was quickly shot down by Warner Brothers. While I can't remember if the artist charged for this or if it was a free service this shows any project involving copyrighted characters can get into big trouble.
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