Reddit reviews Business and Legal Forms for Illustrators (Business and Legal Forms Series)

What you say may be true; but I think there could be a way to provide this service people are asking for.


Take for instance this book of legal forms for Illustrators [Business and Legal Forms for Illustrators] (http://www.amazon.com/Business-Legal-Forms-Illustrators-Crawford/dp/1581153643/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450379592&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=american+illustrators+contract)


Interesting enough the author ,Tad Crawford, is willing to disclose who they are and they are in fact an attorney:


>Allworth Press publisher and founder Tad Crawford is an author, attorney, and artists' rights advocate.

Apparently something can be done for illustrators.

One of the most common needs for small developers is a "work for hire" contract I would think?

I understand a BETTER form would be highly tailored and specific ; but you are saying for those who need some baseline protection and are literally in the hole financially that there's no way a form that encapsulates many basic legal protections is literally impossible?

edit: fixed link syntax

Thats a decent contract, but I'm not sure it exactly fits your needs. Also are you located in Austrailia? If not then some of the legal parts, like arbitration is going to be different for you. A great series of books that I use for drawing up my contracts can be found here:
http://www.amazon.com/Business-Legal-Forms-Illustrators-Crawford/dp/1581153643/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324911201&sr=8-1
You can also find similar books for different creative professions. Another nice thing about these books is that they also explain all the legal terms for those of us who don't understand them. Before these books I never had an arbitration clause in my contracts, and now I won't work without one.

As for using a famous persons name in your artwork I don't know for sure, you should contact a lawyer on that. My gut instinct tells me no, and that using their name is endorsing your work with their name, which I'm pretty sure you have to pay/get permission for.

Fictitious characters you definately can not use their likeness in any work other than parody. I'm pretty sure this is standare in most countries outside of China and Russia. With parody, the company with the rights to the character can still sue you, you just have a chance of fighting it. Though if you were to draw a Mickey Mouse sticker, and not licence the character, it is very likely that Disney would take every thing you own and then some. Do a quick search for Disney copyright trademark infringement litigation and I'm sure you'll get tons of info on the subject.