Hi, I wrote a story which I think would work well animated, so I'm going to seek an animator. It's not a commercial project, though if the animation ended up making money somehow, then i wouldn't refuse that money. There's very little dialogue in the story. I'll be looking for an animator who wants to do the job just for the fun of it - possibly a student. Then if it did make some money sometime down the line, we'd split the money. My question is this: since I wrote the story, do I have the right to say to someone that they cannot animate it; or that they cannot make money from an animation of it; or if I don't have that right, do I have an automatic right to claim money that they make from it? Thanks.
This'll probably be closed since these forums aren't for seeking animators/artists/ghost writers/co-authors etc. but I do elieve as your intellectual property you do have the write to prevent someone from making money off your work and I dunno if you can stop them from animating it as that might qualify as "fan art" and I'm not sure that can be prevented; but I can tell you that animation is a ****load of work I doubt anybody would be willing to animate the whole thing on their own just for kicks n' giggles. Including storyboarding, modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering it takes a team of 10 student animators a semester of non-stop coffee fueled work to pull together a short film of mediocre quality. To put it another way, every time you blink while watching a Pixar film you miss two weeks worth of work. You'll have to find somebody who really, really cares about your project. Or who thinks it'd look nice in their demo reel but they'd probably be better off making a series of short animations highlighting the focus area :/
You probably want to post this question in publishing, or request to have it moved. You also should research the copyright laws of your area, as well as the legalities of releasing your work to be animated.
of course you do, because as the writer, you own the copyright and anyone who wants to do anything with it must have your permission to do so... ditto above... if they do it without your permission, you'll have to prove it was your story, if you want to sue them... if you can do that, you'd win and they'd have to give you all the money they made, plus pay the court costs... they may or may not have to pay your legal expenses... to sue in a us court, however, you will have to have registered the copyright with the uspto... see official skinny here: www.copyright.gov ? see above... the main thing you need to do is have a collaboration contract in place, before you and an animator do any work on the project... and you'll need to consult a literary attorney, to make sure the contract is properly drafted and protects your property... if you want any further info on this you can email me, but know that i am not an attorney, though i do have a fairly extensive legal knowledge/background and do some paralegal work from time to time... love and hugs, maia
Moved. It's ok to ask about your rights, but you may not seek illustrators, writers, etc on the site. Your creation is protected under copyright law, so you have full say over its use. But you should consult with a lawyer too set up a contract with anyone you collaborate with. Maia, you beat ne to it again! And with more detail.
