My First Sale Doctrine Testimony

Lisa Shaftel, Graphic Artists Guild's advocacy chair, and me
at the courthouse in New York

On June 2, 2014, I appeared in front of members of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives in a hearing with the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet on behalf of The Graphic Artists Guild, The Copyright Alliance and all visual artists concerning changes to the First Sale Doctrine.

Changes to the doctrine will negatively affect those like me who create, as well as publishers, music and movie distributors and many others. And the ripples from the changes will make their way to consumers and the market at first in positive ways (Yay- cheaper stuff!) and then longer term stifling of creativity and variety of products.

Read my previous post on this topic to get an overview on some of the negative effects.

I was joined by those representing the publishing world, libraries, public knowledge, software companies and a company whose business model hinges on changing the doctrine:

Witnesses

• Mr. Stephen M. Smith President and Chief Executive Officer John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (Smith spoke about the importance of market segmentation in the publishing world. That is, the ability to vary the price of Wiley's books based on the location of the market. In the U.S., for instance, we can (generally) afford to pay a higher price, however in less affluent regions the same books are priced lower so they are more attainable. See this article about Kirtsaeng v Wiley.)

• Mr. John Ossenmacher Chief Executive Officer ReDigi (A main player in the secondary use market)

• Mr. Ed Shems edfredned illustration & graphic design

• Mr. Jonathan Band Owner’s Rights Initiative

• Mr. Matthew B. Glotzer Media Consultant

• Mr. Greg Cram Associate Director of Copyright and Information Policy The New York Public Library

• Mr. Sherwin Siy Vice President, Legal Affairs Public Knowledge

• Professor John Villasenor Professor of Electrical Engineering and Public Policy UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

• Mr. Emery Simon Counselor BSA – The Software Alliance

Read witness testimony or watch the video HERE

Read Chris Meadow's follow-up article on Teleread HERE

Read the Graphic Artists Guild's article HERE

Tomorrow, June 25, 2014, I'll be participating in a roundtable at Harvard organized by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) concerning the proposed changes to the first sale doctrine. 

More about tomorrow's roundtable HERE

New Animation for V.I. Labs

This was our second video for V.I. Labs and this time it's geared for compliance officers of software companies. The software that V.I. Labs has created lets you track who is using your software and on how many machines, to work out whether a company is in compliance with their licensing agreement. It's really fascinating how this works!

I collaborated with Zach at Cut To Create on the writing of this animation and then I created the storyboard. Once the animatic was approved, I then set to work drawing and layering all of the illustration assets for the animator.

Some still images:

Twinventors Book Cover

This is a recent book cover illustration for a chapter book about a brother and sister who like to make things.

I just printed this on postcards- shoot me a message if you'd like me to send you one...

Edfredned goes to Washington. Er... New York

I've been invited to testify in front of members of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives in a hearing with the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet on behalf of The Graphic Artists Guild, The Copyright Alliance and all visual artists concerning changes to the First Sale Doctrine.

The hearing is taking place in New York this coming Monday, June 2, 2014.

Simply put, the First Sale Doctrine holds that if you purchase copyrighted material, you have the right to resell that item. For instance, once you're done reading your Tom Clancy novel, you can sell it on Craigslist or give it to a friend to read.

The changes to the doctrine will allow the same for digital books and software which are currently 'licensed' to you rather than 'sold'. Instead, we would be able to resell or pass along an ebook or software provided we delete our copy off our hard drive. However, one would also now possess the right to use the illustrations, photos, graphs from the ebook as one wishes. To make that happen, the doctrine stipulates that all agreements we creative professionals make with our clients big and small are full rights licensing agreements. No more limited rights. 

A few reasons why this is not good for creative professionals as well as our clients: 

• No more opportunities to resell exclusive artwork
• Inability to renegotiate agreements if the use will be greater than originally anticipated (consider: You create an illustration for a poster for a school and charge accordingly. The school decides to use the image for a magazine advertisement and billboards and they do not have to pay you for the additional use)
• Prices will have to go up to cover the additional rights we must pass along. Small clients will not be able to afford the work and large clients don't have the extra budgets
• Anyone who legitimately (under the doctrine) possesses a copy of my artwork could alter the work. It would still look like my work but, for example, with color choices I would never have made. Or the work could be used to promote or convey a message with which I do not agree. Both cases may have a negative impact on my reputation.

The Graphic Artists Guild, the Copyright Alliance and I will be submitting our testimony tomorrow morning and then I'll be appearing on Monday in front of a panel to offer my input (I have five minutes to speak) and to answer any questions the members might have.

New Dogopotamus Edition

A new edition of the first Petimals book, Dogopotamus: The Most Awesomest Pet Ever. Maybe. is coming out soon with a new chapter added. I've been working on the illustrations for the chapter and here's a sneak peek at part of one of them.

Animated Fishies

I've been so remiss lately with my blog because I've been hunkered down in my studio working on many deadlines. I hope you haven't missed me too much!

The fish are part of an animation project I'm working on for a client: V.i. Labs. The storyboards have been approved and now I'm in the midst of creating the assets for the animation.

Similar to real fish, these guys won't be doing all that much - just swimming back and forth.

You can see the previous animation I created for V.i Labs (with Zach at Cut To Create) on Youtube.

More pieces of the animation to come...

Floss

Don't forget to floss!

Rock Monster Children's Book Illustration

Groundhog Day 2014

Happy Groundhog Day! Well kinda: it seems Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, predicting 6 MORE weeks of winter.

It's been a merciless winter for so many in the central states and a bitter one for us in the northeast so we could have all done with an early release. 

Even the groundhog has had enough of the cold (apparently to no avail):

Thanks for joining me once again for Groundhog Day.

You can check out the last few years of Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog by clicking HERE.

Rockin' Monsters

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Mother Nature's Weather Control

I grabbed and modified a still from the movie This is Spinal Tap to illustrate (again- see previous post) just how cold it is right now all across the U.S.

If you've never seen the movie (GASP!) you can check out the scene that this refers to on Youtube.

Frozen Groundhogsicle

There's so much talk on the news (and inevitably Facebook) about just how cold it is in the U.S. this week. -20 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the midwest. Forecasts of 60 inches of snow in another area. Cars won't start, schools are closed and our heating bill is eye-popping.

And I thought to myself: Just how cold IS it?

This:

You can check out a bunch more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog by clicking HERE.

Client Project: Holiday Card

I just finished folding, labeling, custom stamping, stuffing and sealing over 300 holiday cards for a client. It's a folding card printed on beautiful, shimmery pearlized heavy weight paper, making the photos really pop.

The last step was to take the cards to the Post Office and hand-cancel every one of them so they won't get defaced by the machine that cancels the stamps. Additionally, I was able to request that the cards don't get sorted by machine to further guard them from getting mangled before reaching the addressee.

There are a lot of steps involved in creating custom cards but when everything comes together it's very gratifying!

Photos by Steve Robb

Hulk Smash (1 Liner)

I thought I'd finish up a Hulk illustration I had started a short time ago just to keep going with the superhero kick I seem to be on. My previous post, How Superheroes Use Social Media, seemed to have gotten a lot of shares online (thanks so much!), so why not keep going a little?

This one's a mixture of a single continuous line drawing (Start at the ear and end at his hair) and a lot of angry texture. And some hand lettering.

I'll have it up in my Etsy shop soon as an option for a print.

How Superheroes Use Social Media

How Superheroes Use Social Media is a series of illustrations I created as a personal project of mine. It all began with a Batman sketch in my sketchbook and then it started to take on a life of its own.

Some of these are available as prints on Etsy. I hope you enjoy them (and feel free to share)!

Here's the first one I did in the series:

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The Abomination waits while Hulk finishes an Amazon review of his new stretch pants:

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Maybe it's time to bring back the signal watch:

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Batman on Facebook:

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No love (or likes) for Spidey:

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The Punisher uses foursquare:

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You're invited to Robin's birthday party:

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And the inevitable (and usually inappropriate) selfie on Instagram by the Wonder Twins.

As I mentioned, a few of the above illustrations are available as giclée prints at my Etsy store.

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If you liked the above, I found some related items online that you might want to check out:

• Chase Mitchell's piece called "If The Avengers talked on Facebook" is pretty funny.
• Joe Topliffe wrote an article called "If Superheroes Used Social Media" where he wonders why superheroes aren't getting with the times in respect to social media.
• Berk Senturk has created a series of beautiful retro-style posters starring favorite superheroes as circus performers.

Illustrator Gathering- October 2013

Ed Shems, Gary LaCoste, Lauren Scheuer, Lisa Graves and Jannie Ho

The Creative Relay website has an article about a recent gathering of illustrators which I was a part of recently. I hung out with some fantastic illustrators: Gary LaCoste, Lauren Scheuer, Lisa Graves and Jannie Ho and we discussed everything from what we're working on in our studios to what types of drawing tools we use.

Check out the article HERE.

And here's the awesome illustration Gary did depicting our gathering:

Gleek!

Here's Gleek to follow up from my last post with the Wonder Twins.

Did he have any actual powers?

The Wonder Twins

You know the drill. "Form of (some sort of animal). Form of (Something useless made out of water)."

The above is an off-shoot of a big personal project I've been working on recently which I'll be rolling out soon. If you like super heroes juxtaposed with modern technology, keep an eye here.

School Hallway

One of the automatic frog illustrations I created a couple of weeks ago went from character illustration to a full scene from the story using textures and overlays.

Cave Monster

Cute little cave monster from my sketchbook.

Automatic Frog

Character illustrations for a chapter book I'm starting on where one of the main characters is an automatic frog who loves v-neck sweaters. The illustrations in the book will likely be in black & white but I couldn't resist doing some promo images.

I've been working on bringing textures into my illustrations and this time I'm keeping them solely to the background.

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Pink Monster

Another monster character illustration. Go ahead- I know you want to give him a hug...

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

Survival Guide eBook Design

Today I'm finishing the design of an ebook for Lindsey at HomemadeMommy.net. It's a great site about eating and cooking real food with loads of recipes that make me want to stop working and eat. I had the chance to try the homemade chocolate that my mother-in-law made from the recipe and it was killer. It really didn't last very long.

The book is called The Real Food Survival Guide for Busy Moms and it covers the basics of how to get started with real food for newbies with quite a lot of recipes.

I started by designing the "Survival Guide" logo for the cover. When you image search "Survival Guides" you end up with (mostly) stark and/or bland images. Typically, book covers end up with distressed or army lettering and either clip art or something symbolic to the topic. Since this book is aimed at moms, I wanted to offer something design-y, graphic and appealing to the sophisticated eye of the intended audience without resorting to pinks and pastels.

Well, the color part was dictated more by the colors of Lindsey's blog and the header there (which I also designed):

My first pass at a cover logo (before we made color decisions and before a slight name change) was not quite what Lindsey wanted and frankly was a little off concept-wise. But I'm proud of the execution. Here's the first version which was never quite finished:

So I went to the drawing board and quickly made the following sketch for myself:

Which led me to:

And Lindsey loved it!

Then came the design and pagination of the ebook which is 75 pages. 

The Real Food Survival Guide for Busy Moms comes out in a few weeks, at which point I'll post some images from inside to show how the front cover design was reflected within.

If you want to order this ebook, go to HomemadeMommy.net.

I need to go find some chocolate now.

Anthropomorphised Characters

What I love about advertising is that it often features anthropomorphised products that appear to be absolutely thrilled despite knowing that they will soon be used up and thrown away, or dropped, poked and prodded for their (usually short) lives.

...but it gives illustrators like me something cute and fun to draw!

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I show off new characters on my blog. Sometimes they’re black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click this “characters” tag. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.