Originality and copyright

[Fazar]

It's all complicated stuff, but usually the rule of thumb is "If you aren't making money off it, you're good".

That said... that rule doesn't always apply as it can just come down to "Will the one who owns the rights take legal action to enforce their copyright".  I've heard of stuff at anime cons and commissions where it's sometimes allowed, sometimes not.

Lots of things happen under the table as well and when asked you can be all "I didn't pay for it" ect.  I'm not a big fan of the whole stealing of ideas, or IPs, or even reusing them for my own benefit.  I don't endorse it, but there's a lot of it out there.

You can always just have a sit down to try and redesign the character better, or work with an artist to reinvent the character if you want.  Maybe different patterns, colours, markings, clothing, ect.  Not saying you should, but you always can.

[Roffo]

I do see a lot of artists selling art of copyrighted characters. This doesn't seem to bother the big-guys who do own the copyrights to those characters. I do know that a lot of fursuit makers will only make and sell suits that aren't copyrighted. You can 'try' to talk to some suit makers about making your character into a suit, I would say its unlikely that they will make it, but you never know. Some suit makers don't care, really, but a lot of them do. Its just that if they get caught selling a 2000$ suit to someone, say, Micky Mouse, then the suit maker would be in a lot of trouble legally.