Also Sprach Miyamoto
The Kubrikian Donkey Kongism pictured above actually began its life before it made its appearance as a Threadless tshirt submission. The purpose for which it was originally created didn't pan out (a long story featuring some odd people) so I hoisted the design up the tshirt design competition flagpole to see if anybody would salute it. Despite a rather high final score, it was never printed, likely due to a nagging fear of a legal response of barrel-throwing primate proportions. In the meantime, it attracted a great deal of worldwide geeky attention. On a regular basis throughout the 15 months since then, I've received email either asking whether the shirt has been printed someplace (anyplace!) or if x amount of dollars would entice me to sell the rights to it.
Because the dollar enticements all seemed kinda paltry, I decided I'd distribute the 21st century monkeys on my own. And because I wanted to stay on the legal straight and narrow, I made contact with Nintendo to get the skinny on the DK sprites regarding fair usage, parody, and the like. To be more precise, I attempted to make contact with Nintendo. And to be entirely precise, the only party making any attempt whatsoever at contact has been me. The silence from Nintendo has been deafening, and I'm taking that silence to mean "You're better off not waking the three-headed canine guardian of Hades" or some other metaphor of legal disaster like that.
So, to bring this tale to a close, it looks as if Also Sprach Miyamoto will be going into cold storage. Good night, apes.
It's extremely difficult to get a straight answer out of Nintendo on just about anything. An absolute shame, as that design is awesome!
Posted by: extrarice | November 13, 2007 at 11:31 AM
Make enough noise on Nintendo-related blogs and you might get a response from the Regginator.
Maybe try getting IGN in on it...
Posted by: Jason | November 19, 2007 at 08:32 PM
Amazing design! I'm sure the official line would be no, but people print all sorts of videogame-related t-shirts much more overtly infringing and get away with it...
Posted by: Tim Drage | November 24, 2007 at 11:56 AM
Dude, have you seen this shirt on Threadless?
http://www.threadless.com/product/543/This_is_not_a_Pipe
Isn't this exactly the same level of potential copyright issues? Doesn't seem to be a problem...I'd go for it!
Posted by: Tina | November 27, 2007 at 01:22 PM