redbubble tee and hoodie designs fanart by poofette
A range of T-shirts featuring fanart by Redbubble artist "Poofette". Penelope Barbalios

Artistic gamers now have a creative outlet to share homages to their favourite games, without worry of breaching copyright laws.

Redbubble, an online creative marketplace and artist community, has teamed up with independent game developers to launch 'Redbubble Fan Art', a series of newly branded pages where game developers can increase revenue by selling their content rights to established fan art communities.

The pilot program was launched on January 20, coinciding with the site's ninth birthday. It allows merchandise featuring fan art from 350,000 artists to be bought from the Redbubble website. The revenue from the sale of items such as stickers, laptop and phone cases, pillows and t-shirts go straight back to the artist who produced the fan art.

Wizard 4 Life.

Posted by Redbubble on Thursday, 11 February 2016

“Fan art” (or fanart) is artwork that is based on a character, costume, collage, item, or story that was created by someone other than the artist, such as a fan.

A major deterrent for artists selling their fan art was that the original characters and designs are typically considered the intellectual property of game developers, which means a sale could be in breach of copyright laws.

The creation of Redbubble's program is a win-win for both game developers and artists, because through purchasing the rights to the game content, the artist is then free to sell their work without breaking copyright laws. The developers also gain revenue from the sales of the content rights to the artists.

The program so far features sellable fan art for Crypt of the Necrodancer (Brace Yourself Games), Broforce (Free Lives Games), Darkest Dungeon (Red Hook Studios), and Galak-Z (17-bit). Other developers can support artists and earn some extra revenue through the Redbubble Fan Art program.