Hi, say I found a few pictures on the internet from old newpapers about Titanic. Would I be able to use those pictures in my game to add to the story line? Without being sued Thanks!

The pictures are black and white...find yourself a good artist who can do you a black and white sketch-and-pen of a rendition of the picture(as realistic as possible, of course), and if they can do it to a realistic enough degree, I''m sure it will pass quite well. This assumes that having it be totally-super-realistic won''t be of utmost concern, because it will, of course, look drawn, but a good sketch artist can do a -darn- realistic scene if so prompted.

I dont think there is much of a copyright issue for imitiation of art and photo, is there?

Alright, thanks guys. Yes, I will probably get an artist to imitate the old pictures.

quote: Original post by Obscure
Don''t want to burst your bubble but copyright law prevents the publishing, republishing, altering and COPYING of a copyrighted creation. It doesn''t matter if you use a photo-copier or pen and ink to make that copy if your artists makes a copy of the image then it is still a breach of copyright.

Re drawing a picture is a time honored way of doing a copyright dodge. Unless you''re tracing over it, it''s a *new* creation that just happens to be very similar.

What you are describing is trademark level protection, _not_ copyright. The Titanic is certainly not trademarked.

Unless you have a source to back up your claim?

yep, AP is right. since the artist would be doing a reinterprtation of the original work (under fair use this is acceptable, much like a garage band playing cover songs). however, this is a gray area and can cause you problems down the road should the orignal copyright owners of the picture happen to feel its worth their time (and money) to litigate.

personally i would suggest doing all new art anyway, since this is a game about the titanic, you could change events (such as the end goal is to prevent the collision). also by doing new art, your game art will fit better. for example if your models/sprites are somewhat cartoonish in appearence, it would help that the pictures in the articles are as well. you could also create images that better reflect what you want to go on during the games evolving plot line instead of being restricted to what actually is known to have happened (again change history, maybe even have the main character a time traveller and make multiple games/levels in various historical locales/times).

just some suggestions, as i am no lawyer i cant 100% confirm redrawing the images would not be considered copyright infringment. though i know that changing the style of the image (ie cartoonish instead of realistic) would more likly be acceptable then a straight copy as best as possible.