Apparent Fan Art Theft in Big Hero 6: The Series
So in today’s episode of Big Hero 6 the series, Honey Lemon paints a really nice picture of herself and the gang.
The catch? This piece is a work of fanart and apparently, its creator wasn’t even contacted before the work was used.
While one could argue from a legal standpoint with the shaky ground that fanart is on that this was a homage to the fandom rather than blatant theft, and I WANT to believe that the staff didn’t realize the issues with what they were doing and just thought it’d be a nice shout-out, using someone’s artwork in a for-profit production without permission or pay, regardless of it being fanart or not, is extremely disrespectful and potentially illegal. Naturally though, the average fan artist doesn’t have the money to put into a good lawyer to defend themselves and explore the possibility of getting paid for there work.
There are plenty of fans who would be honored to have their work featured on the show and the show has more than enough budget to pay a freelance artist for a single still. There is absolutely NO reason this situation shouldn’t have been handled properly before the episode finished production.
This is not a call to send hate of any kind to the Big Hero 6 Series staff. This IS, however, a call to contact Disney and these staff and put some pressure on them to explain themselves and hopefully enter the proper negotiations with the artist that they should have gone through in the first place.
This is also a call to signal boost this among the Disney fandom, beyond the Disney fandom, and potentially to media outlets to increase pressure for Disney to do the right thing.
quinnbee-s
