It’s been rainy and grey here for about a week.
And now it has exploded into summertime!
It’s sunny and hot…very hot.
And I don’t have any real airco in my workspace.
We had planned to jump right into
an action scene for the next few comics but
decided to slow down a little bit.
Don’t worry though,
the real action will start Thursday!
The weather is just too nice to be baking
inside the studio for very long!
An ice-cold beer outside is a much better idea.
Teb





His hair! It looks somehow familiar… Does he have same grass-like creatures on his head as Stromni once had?
Well it is something wrong with me -methinks- when I connect “magic the gathering” only with “The Gathering” song from Delain…
Someone is going to have a problem…or an headhache
Sounds like the orcs have been enjoying some brew, too!
Oh, and SUBTITLES PLEASE
Stupid little squatzie (dwarfy thing). HAHAHAHAHA . Die Cursed squatzie die!
Ooh! They have magic sticks!
If you plan to publish then be careful with calling ‘em Squats and doing much more to associate it with GW. You’ve got relatively different aliens but I’m not sure how far the IP copyright goes on these things (particularly with the Squat’s insignia).
TSOALR suffered the problem with printing and they may well have been capable of using the parody loophole.
Otherwise, if you don’t care about print then Its my understanding that they don’t care about webcomics (regard them much the same as forums) and only ask that they not be offensive… although I think they do require you to post up a whole heap of disclaimer comments (see the bottom of TSOALR’s website).
P.S. are you blanking the swearing like on page 44 or just showing it like page 6?
I’m a big fan of green skins, and I am loving this take on the savage orcs of this land.
I think parody has it covered. If GW want to throw a pissy they can try, but I think few lawmakers in this land would take the case seriously. Besides, your guys look nothing like their products, they have their own looks. Plus no dwarves in WH40000k anyway.
Yep, no dwarves, only Squats who are mentioned in 6th edition now, marking their comeback. Besides, it doesn’t matter if its out of print with IP. There’s also a matter of how much parody can cover it. BB is generally a new story with serious undertones despite the generous use of humour.
Sure GW are quite the type to turn a bit of a blind eye to fan efforts and small work like BeardyBastards, but if it becomes too noticeable they’d be forced to act and protect their IP or risk loosing it and having any old big company print media or even create miniatures without permission (a rather silly part of the law where not actively protecting IP from one person is seen to be as good as giving it up to everyone).
TSOALR was much more of a parody and couldn’t go to print but granted, they didn’t attempt to differentiate themselves from GW products.
The trick that BB is going for seems to be attempting to stay different enough that they don’t encroach on GW’s IP. Certainly they have their own look but its getting a little close between the insignia, bolters, bike/trike, etc. Get too close and it’s not different enough to avoid troubles if this takes off significantly and gets too noticed.
In short:
As long as you don’t directly use IP guarded names
and/or literally copy product images you should be
quite safe…
TSOALR is a good example where they
made a comic about the war gaming hobby
with names and images directly copied from products
and models.
This is regretfully anything but safe.
N!Nj@d dammit! ;P
TSOALR started as a fan hobby for the creator. He always had the appropriate disclaimers as required by GW but it was later, when comic had taken off and he discovered that it’d take prints to make any serious money that he tried to work more closely with them to get permission to print but was unfortunately denied.
He’s almost certainly parody enough that he could got go and do it. Possibly with only a few alterations here and there that insignia appeared and/or full TM names were used.