After much delay, prodding and research, The Brasse store is now up. Clicky on the link at right and make me a wealthy Dwarf. This gold farming I’ve been doing for 14 cents an hour just isn’t cutting it in today’s economy.

http://www.zazzle.com/thebrasse* (including the asterisk is important to increasing my huge, investment banker-rivalling revenues!)

I chose Zazzle because it lets the customer customize every detail of the piece they are purchasing. For instance, pick a pre-designed mug and you can change its style, color, the placement and size of the illustration, background color… feel free to mess around with it!

The site’s only been up for twenty-four hours, and already I’ve had one of my designs flagged for removal. I kid you not.

Yeppers, one of the comics violates the Zazzle terms of service. While working on this very comic, I received a letter from the anonymous dude in charge of checking uploaded content for naughty bits and bad things ™:

Dear TheBrasse,

Thank you for your interest in Zazzle.com, and thank you for publishing products on Zazzle.
Unfortunately, it appears that your product, 090105p, contains content that is not suitable for printing at Zazzle.com.

We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly.

The details of the product being removed are listed below:

• Product Title: 090105p
• Product Type: Print
• Product ID: 228388745786042114

• Result: Not Approved
• Policy Violations:

o Design contains an image that is copyrighted

We apologize for the inconvenience, a detailed description of the policies are located here.

If you have any questions or concerns about the review of your product, please email content_review@zazzle.com
Best Regards,

Content Review Team
Zazzle.com, Inc.

OWAH!

As it turns out, I used screenshots of Arthas from WoW’s Wrath of the Lich King in the background of the 090105 comic. Now, while that is ok under the “fair use” terms of copyright law, for instance, in the comics I do for this site (it falls under “parody”), the moment someone stands to make money from using the image of the Lich King, people get really, really nervous.

I don't blame Zazzle one bit - they are very smart to pay someone to look after this sort of thing, and I am the last person to complain about people enforcing copyright issues.

I know Blizzard probably needs the money to pay for people who can actually program a patch without breaking a major zone, but I don’t want them coming after me for my $3 profit, so that comic will indeed disappear. I’ll have to stick with hand-drawing all figures in future and hope that this passes the eagle eye of the Zazzle Patrol.

Here are their Acceptable Content Guidelines, a.k.a. Reasons Why Most of My Stuff Could Be Flagged For Removal (comments in bracketed italics are mine):

· No text or images that infringe on any intellectual property rights including, but not limited to copyrights, trademarks and rights of privacy/publicity (especially if it’s Blizzard, because they have undead lawyers of doom)
· No text or images of obscenity, pornography or nudity that is not artistic in nature (particularly if Brasse is ever seen nude in a comic)
· No text or images that encourages or glorifies drug use/abuse (thank god they didn’t include BEER)
· No excessive violence (Age O’ Conan comics, I'm looking at you!)
· No content that is libelous or defamatory (Ahahahahahah, who CAN I make fun of then?)
· No content that can reasonably be viewed as harassing, threatening, or otherwise harmful (does this include my frequent harassment and threats against Elfinks?)
· No hate speech (I am a h8tr. However, I like to think that I practice sound judgement about what I choose to hate. Like griefers and eggplant)
· No content that can reasonably be viewed as discriminatory based upon race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, or disability (I am screwed. Is there any race in any game, save Dwarves, that I have not made fun of? How can I make fun of n00bs, gimps or PUGs now??)
· No content that violates or encourages anyone else to violate any law (does this include jaywalking?)

Any products that are deemed unacceptable by the rules above, or deemed offensive or in bad taste at the sole judgment of Zazzle.com will have the products cancelled and removed from the Marketplace with or without notice. (Yep. Screwed.)

I hope that the Zazzle Patrol Dude at least enjoys reading the comics before pushing that big red BANZ0R button!

On the forums, someone suggested I print books of maps as well. While this would be fun and appeals to my love of books,

a) Although the games I have mapped (EQII and LOTRO) encourage fansites and have been extremely supportive and considerate of my efforts, the minute I try selling such products, I risk ruining the relationship. They own the IP. Period. I respect that. When I drew maps for the Prima Guides, they licensed the material from SOE, DAOC and Guild Wars. That is an entirely different process and beyond my financial means. =)

b) My map collections are incomplete at best.
For any who want to frame a map, go ahead and download the image and print it on high quality paper at home. Almost all of them will fit on a single 8”x10” sheet of paper with a white edge around all borders. There ya go. FREE.


I plan to create a number of exclusive designs suitable to specific products. Suggestions are welcome and will probably be ignored, hehehe.

Finally, it will take me some time to upload all the comics in my inventory to Zazzle. In the interim, if you have a comic that you particularly want to have made into a print, mug, t-shirt or whatever, drop me a line in the forums!

No. Zazzle does not carry thongs.
Grow up.

Brakk! Stop giggling!

;-)#
Brasse