2000AD Posters

[The Legendary Shark]

Earlier in the year, my local printer (for whom I occasionally provide artwork) gained access to a proper poster printing machine. I created a few images for him which he used to promote his business and he asked me if I'd any ideas for using this machine.

Well, yes. I do have an idea, but it's pretty niche and I have no idea how to proceed so I thought I'd pick the communal brains of the forum.

My idea was to create vector images based on classic 2000AD covers and panels (I'll post the ones I've done so far at the end of this thread) and to keep the style of the original artist. Once vectorised, these images could be blown up to any size without becoming blocky or blurred. Initially, this idea was purely for my own personal use but then I thought, hey, maybe other Squaxx may want copies also. That's when I kind of lost my way.

I emailed Rebellion some months ago to ask the following questions but, unfortunately, did not receive any reply. So, I thought I'd ask you lot.

1: Is there a market for this stuff? Would you buy one and how much would you be prepared to pay?

2: If I were to sell these privately, at cost, what permissions would I need?

3: If I were to sell these for a small profit on Ebay, for example, what permissions would I need? Would Rebellion require a percentage of the net profits or what?

4: What wording, in regards to copyright, would need to be on the posters?

Once I have the answers to these questions, I'll know if/how to proceed. If all goes well, I'd love to vectorise more classic images for posterisation and I'm sure that at least some Squaxx have favourite images/covers/panels they'd love to see on their walls in glorious poster form.

Any help or advice anyone could give would be much appreciated. This is my initial exploration of the feasibility of this project, and if anyone from Rebellion is reading this, then I'd be most interested in hearing from you.

Anyway, here are the images I've vectorised so far:







("King of the Streets" is not quite finished yet.)

[Dark Jimbo]

Fuckin' ace!

Want want want. Brilliant idea, those'd look lurvely on my bedroom wall.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

'Gaze into the fist of Dredd' is surely a winner but they all look pretty good.

[Banners]

They look great! How big can your guy go? We can do up to 2A0 (1682x1189mm) in 6 colour digital.

M@

[The Legendary Shark]

I have no idea of the exact proportions he can achieve, that's on my list of questions for Phase II, along with costing for various sizes.

[Kev Levell]

Bloody lovely stuff, you should have saved that till the 24th on the Advent Calendar though!

[Banners]

Apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs, but be sure to originate the artwork in CMYK - some of the greens and cyans you're using won't print as brightly as they appear on screen.

M@

[uncle fester]

That's some nice stuff there, Shark!

[Bolt-01]

I can only speak from my experience, but I reckon that if you are doing these for personal use, you don't really have to worry about copyright too much. Rebellion are happy for us to do what we like in Dogbreath & Zarjaz. Rebellion get a copy for the office, and as long as if we use a 'proper' piece of art (Collection cover, or a panel like in the SD case files) we add a (c) Rebellion note.

I'm not sure where you stand if you want to make money from these, though. To be honest I don't think they would like that.

[The Legendary Shark]

Thanks, Bolt. I wasn't thinking of making a fortune out of this, just a couple of bob to cover my time and whatnot - out of which I'd be more than willing to send Rebellion a cut. (Anything that gets a few shekels into Twoothy has to be a good thing, IMHO.)

I guess I'll have to speak with someone from Rebellion before anything else happens. Anyone have any contact details they can PM me?

[Van Dom]

I want that Toby one man!!!
Brilliant stuff.

[pauljholden]

Yeah, sharky - I think you're on very dodgy ground here. I suspect it'll be a firm, but polite, no. I'd contact rebellion before going any further.

(Essentially this isn't that different from someone selling DVDs of already published material - and we know how everyone feels about that...!)

-pj

[Gavin_Leahy_Block]

They look amazing Shark, really great work.

[Emperor]

I'm afraid my gut tells me PJ is pretty much on the money - it would be... shall we say bad form to start selling them.

However, they are great and there is clearly a market for them, so it seems a shame not to put them to good and legitimate use. I know an email hasn't been answered but they must get a lot they just can't reply to (and there is the danger of the spam filter too). I'd suggest a letter to the usual address, perhaps addressed to "Head of Marketing" or some such, in fact why not roll up one of them thar posters, stick it in a tube along with a quick print out of the others and send it in - that kind of thing will guarantee their attention

[Banners]

Rather than asking for permission, why not offer a cut?

M@