Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

i haven't been ripped off yet!
site seems legit. i just won $250 for basically submitting great characters i otherwise wouldn't have ever really done anything with.
and any way you look at it, it's great advertising. they don't own the characters, just part of those images for a limited time. Ali is totally involved on a daily basis...he's constantly in contact with me, and i can only imagine every other one of the limited edition printed guys too...
i think any art contract is worded to screw the artist or benefit the company somehow or other. i challenge anyone to find a site that doesn't.
as a three time winner at threadless, i still don't like the idea that they can reprint your design infinitely and you get no recompensation or royalties, yet thousands submit there weekly.

long story short, let the site get its legs.

wow, how on earth did u dig that up - hurts there credibility.

“In response the last post – just want to assure all that Mojizu has nothing to do with spyware – I am the founder of the site, and I think I would know." Thanks, Sabet

I don't think Mojizu actually cares about helping "character designers gain the exposure they deserve" as much as they do getting spyware on your computer. The site's registry traces it back to a notorius spyware vendor.

http://who.godaddy.com/whois.aspx?domain=mojizu...

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/rumors-...

I just got a very nice email back from the good folks at Mojizu

"As far as the auto-merchandising, we will be adding a opt-out button that the artists can select if he/she does not want merchandise for a particular Moji. This is in queue along with a bunch of other programming stuff – as we are in beta our programmers are working practically around the clock. It may be a few weeks before the opt out button is there, but in the meantime, we have noted your desire and any Moji you choose to submit will not have merchandise."

So they will be implementing an "opt out" in a future release, as soon as they do I am going to be happily uploading away.

Wow. That's jive, like stealing or at least being really sneaky, IMHO. I never read those things either. Well, don't forget about http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/ for Character Design sites...

Awesome bird. This one is going in the del.icio.us list.

I joined up and read the TOS after I signed up (my bad) they "automatically create merchandise" of your characters to sell on the site. They also have a non exclusive right to sell your stuff for 2 years after you leave the site and can use your character designs in advertising/marketing etc.

The merchandise looks suspiciously like cafe press merchandise which is less than stellar quality. I've emailed them to see if there's any way around the merch stuff. But it seems kind of business modely so probably not. It's too bad because for me an non-exclusive contract to sell my stuff (even at a 50/50 split) is a definite deal killer for something I have no quality control over.

Check the Terms of Service: http://www.mojizu.com/Pages/terms.aspx

hey guys thanks for checking out mojizu.com and thanks for the write up. We are very excited at mojizu to grow and expand to help character designers gain the exposure they deserve. DON'T FORGET TO FIND THE MOJICON DISPENSER ON THE SITE - put characters in your email and im's!!
Peace - Sabet

Very cool! Thanks for sharing. I think I might be spending a lot of time over there!

I feel compelled to join!

That is one hell of a cute birdy. Wanna take him home with me!