Q: I made a composite from three separate photos of a copyrighted character? Can I make $$ from the design?
I'm a graphic designer and I use Photoshop in my work. Recently, I came up with a design and I'd like to use this composite design on a t-shirt and sell it as it's getting popular. The design I created is original but the character I used is a fictional character from film and TV played by two different actresses. To create my design I sourced three different images and Photoshopped them together, do I still need to get permission from the copyright holder or am I good in this regard? Any info would be helpful!
Thank you.
A: In order to avoid legal issues you would need a license from the copyright holder of the three photos, and then also a license from the trademark holder for the character. This assumes the character is trademarked and the photos you used are copyrighted.
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