I know but, also this is not the first time a fan made film has been made buddy. So let's be real is this really worth Hasbro stepping in?
Considering the fact they're using copyrighted names, characters, and the entire name of the show, probably without Hasbro's permission, then yeah, I'd say it probably is "worth it" for them to step in.
It's a transformative work. As far as I know that's fair use. Fair Use: What is Transformative? | Nolo.com EDIT: Ultimately, the decision would lie with Hasbro. But I think if you look across the entire Creative boards you'll see plenty of other people making art using copyrighted characters. This project is no different, except that the images move. The creators have openly stated that this is a fan project and is not commercial (it's not being sold). Why would Hasbro pursue a suit? If anything this would be wicked free publicity that they could share on their social media channels- "look at what Transformers fans are up to!"
Exactly as Porkulus said, for Hasbro to want to shut this down would mean they would go after every single piece of fan art every where ever created. It's not something I see them doing, I'm sure they have much bigger fish to fry. This project has been going for nearly 3 years now. It's not for profit. It's for the love of a show we miss. It's no different from any other piece of artwork on the forum. If anything it's free publicity for the franchise as a whole. btw we've also already contacted Hasbro about our film via their "Permission to Use" request forum many months back. It states that while they review every submission they simply can not reply to every request. We got no response meaning they are neutral about it, for now. If they wanted to stop this they would have, they didn't so we will continue to go strong with completing this fan film unless otherwise requested by Hasbro to stop. If Hasbro pursues anything I imagine they'll go after commissioned artwork from folks that didn't seek their approval to use first before non-profit artwork.
Them not responding by no means they're "neutral" it just means they probably didn't read it. if you ask your dad for $200 and he doesn't respond to you, does that mean he's "neutral" about the situation and you can just take the money from his wallet? silence is not an answer buddy.
The problem with this kind of argument is there is no right answer. We are not seeking profit, so it's fan art, and yes, it is transformative. This type of work is a legal grey area and is at the discretion of the company in question. Hasbro seems pretty open about fan work. If they were as ragingly "I'll sue you!" as you are stating, how the actual fuck would they deal with all the MLP:FIM stuff. If they were going to pursue anyone, I would guarantee all those artists doing fan transformative work on Patreon would be at the top of the list. This is far from the first time we've seen this kind of reaction. I witnessed a UK based TF group on facebook flame us openly and angrily. So don't worry, we've heard it before But as TFchronos pointed out, we have sent in a request, and as I recall, we do plan to do so again when we have some animation samples to show. Do you honestly think at this point, with our opening on Youtube reaching 1,163,425 views, they won't KNOW this thing exists? They jump in at a moments notice as soon as fan works don't represent them properly or cross a very definite "Now for profit" line. (e.g. A MLP fighting game they'd been watching carefully got C&D'ed the moment they said there was blood) By your reaction, you'd think we were uneducated newbies with no clues in our heads. If this is to do with the gofundme, that is simply supporting our studio, not the project, because to render this thing we need a render farm. And the donations are all towards that, not selling this. In fact, we've all lost money somewhere because none of us are paid for our countless efforts since the start and we're having to use our own equipment and buy any we don't have/need. But that's why it's a fan project...we all love it. We simply want to let all the others who feel the same about TFP have the same joy in their lives we've had making this.
Toolala is right is as much that no response does not necessarily indicate neutrality. And again if Hasbro wanted to pursue some kind of lawsuit, they could. But, as clear as it is I guess I need to restate it- the only thing that differentiates this project from the rest of the fan art here (or elsewhere) is its scale. Nothing that this project is doing is different from any fan comic that's being made. It's just how big and fancy it is. @doomiscool Great point about the MLP fan works. People have essentially made entire new episodes of that show; no suits there (except Fighting is Magic, but again, that was categorized as "misrepresentation"- I don't think there's a risk of that here.)
Kickstarter brought me here, and Kickstarter is a hive mind of scammers, overly ambitious and naive people trying to make a quick buck. 80 thousand dollars for a fan made thing seems a little... suspicious to say the least. but what ever, I wish you the best of luck and what not, I just find this whole thing bizarre.
Keep in mind that the with the 3rd party scene growing larger and larger over the years Hasbro could've gone out of their way to shut them down too but they didn't. If Hasbro isn't going to do even that then there's no reason to assume they'd go out of their way to shut down fan projects especially if it means free advertisement for them.
but then you also have to keep in mind that said 3rd party Companies are mostly based in China, would be very hard to pin down and seek legal action against considering they don't put their names out there, they don't actually use the name Transformers and their Characters, and on top of that, on the last Botcon Hasbro established that they don't want them in their dealer rooms, meaning they're not entirely "fine" with them. Hasbro would have as much of a case against something like Fansproject's toys as Bandai would have against Generations Jetfire, Whirl and Roadbuster. when and if 3rd parties start using the characters' real names, Faction symbols and just slap Transformers on the box, we'll see ALOT more action from Hasbro because they would actually have quite the case.
Okay, I can clarify this. The original kickstarter goal, though high for most normal people, was incredibly low in terms of an animated film. We researched a lot of direct to DVD animation's budgets, and most have a minimum of $60,000 going into them production wise. A lot were higher than our goal. When we launched the kickstarter, we were using Softimage, and only 1 of our team had a copy, hence, we needed funds to get the other animators the program. Softimage was somewhere in the realms of $3000 per single user license from what I recall, so for more than 1 person to have it, that would be multiplied up. So say we had 5 animators extra? $15,000. What are we editing with? Oh yeah, Adobe Premiere. That isn't free you know. I personally run a creative cloud licence, and I pay £47.64 per month for it. Even if we assume the guy editing it already has a full version, a lot has been updated in it since 2014, so upgrades cost ya. Then there was the hardware. A single module for a render farm costs anywhere from $3000 for a small one...the model we were looking at from what I recall was something like $4500, and we ideally needed more than one. And assume we need at least 3? $13,500. If we required any more artists or talent that we couldn't get (eg lighting technician, composers etc), that would require hiring out someone, and that costs money. That was in the original budget estimate so we could complete it in a faster manner of time. Now, before we get back into an argument, we realised we could cut down at the cost of time. The second failed kickstater, and the gofundme is the vastly cut down amount of what we believe we require. We no longer require the money for Softimage, as we transitioned to Blender which is multi-system and free, and more of our staff are being trained to use it, so we can try complete things without too much hassle. Some of the stuff we needed help with has passed, so now our goal is lower. But we still need render farms, additional software to simulate destruction, and hardware for enhanced performance as we are all working off of our personal laptops/pcs, and possibly artists if we can get them to speed up the process. The gofundme is not a definite, it is just to aid us in the things we need, and us not reaching it doesn't mean we won't complete it. The main sacrifice to be had is if we can't afford a render farm, the film will not be shown fully rendered as we don't have the capacity to do so. I've seen fan films with much higher amounts of money going in, for things that should in theory cost less. We are still non-profit. No one has been paid, and the gofundme money is untouched as we are still saving for that incredibly required render farm. Hope this clears some stuff up for anyone interested
Continue your great work and don't mind all the critiques and concerns. As I read somewhere: If you don't get enemies for doing what you're doing, you're probably doing it wrong
I worked on this project for 2 years. I would have continued but life happened. It's legit. If it were a scam we wouldn't allow it to continue being advertised here.
Love all your guys works, i am very intrigued and I just wanted you to know that among all this craziness you still have many fans that will continue to support in every way they can! "Peace through tyranny" -Megatron
