No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on October 18, 2011

This past weekend I was at New York Comic Con. I had with me a couple of puppets for sale and a couple of puppets to play with out of my collection. I sold the X-men First Class puppets along with one of the Ben 10 ship-ships I made. And along the way I talk to a lot of people about puppets I have made and puppets that they might want to commission me for.

I was asked a couple of times whether I would make replicas of Muppets for them. I had to tell them nicely but firmly no. I have made a couple of them over the years but they are all in my possession and I build them as a learning exercise not to sell. I will not build Muppets unless I am working for Disney or Henson being whichever owns the copyright to the thing I am building.

Now I have puppets close to looking like Muppets but that is the nature of the beast when you are working with a set of geometric shapes. My Phluzzies are often compared to Fraggles probably because the head shape is close to each other but they are different too. My people puppets do have a similar head shape to some Muppets but again that’s the nature of limited number of things you can do geometrically to get a head to look like a head and size right for the body. But there are differences between them and I did that on purpose.

I know some doll makers that have lost business due to others copying or recreating their designs at cheaper prices. The doll world does police itself pretty well. A pattern was printed in a magazine that was recognized by a number of people as belonging to another doll maker. Within 24 hours of the magazine’s publication, the magazine put an apology up on their website and paid the original maker of the pattern for the use of the pattern.

Now some of the things I make are puppets based on characters in TV and Movies. Charles and Erik are prime examples of that. I also have a complete set of Doctor Who puppets that I have made. These are copyrighted characters by Marvel and the BBC respectively. However both companies have turned a blind eye to the sort of thing I do because I am not mass manufacturing the puppets for profit. Sort of like when an artist draws Batman in someone’s sketch book and gets paid for their drawing ability. If I make another Chuck and Erik, it will be for me not to sell.

I have been asked not to make more of a puppet that is a copyrighted character. I made a Sandman puppet. There are two on the planet that I have made. One is with me and the other is with Neil. He asked me to leave it at two so I did. It’s his character so it’s his call. (OK I know that is technically DC’s character but Neil did create that incarnation of it so I think of it as his.)

Now Ship from Ben 10 is a copyright character and I have made more than one but I got permission from Dwayne McDuffie to make and sell them in a limited number. I was working on one for him when he passed away. He knew how long it took to make even one of them and he thought they were pretty neat.

My dolls are my own creation. I make their clothes and create my own patterns for the clothes so there is no chance of infringement on anyone’s patterns because I freeform them. My dolls do have a Froudian influence but that’s because Wendy Froud taught me most of what I know about doll making so some things are going to look a little like hers because who taught me but the characters are my own.

Now all of this is my personal code of ethics for my work. I am not condemning anyone else for what they do. I don’t expect everyone to work by my rules. I just thought I would put this out there for conversation and also to give people what my lines are in creating and recreating.

I am grateful for the ability to create and recreate things.

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: