Artist Clone Wars Fanart book project, anyone?

Hey guys! This has been on my mind for awhile.
As a Star Wars The Clone Wars fan, I've been thinking about that there should be a Clone Wars fanbook.
A fanbook (sometimes relates to fancomics and douijin) is an artbook, not official, but a series of amazing fanart collections.

I've been seeing a lot of fanbook and original artbook projects going around on deviantART, Storenvy, and on Tumblr.
This is my very first time planning an artbook project (and idk if it will happen due to low funds), and I don't know anything about self-publishing a book (I know there's the website called Lulu), the cost, or how to get start on one.
But what I do know is that fanbooks mainly have a series of artworks by the artist who's hosting the project, guest artists, exclusive artworks, tutorials and walk-throughs of an artist's artwork for the book, posters, and the whole "first 50 preorderers gets (name of free gift)", etc.

I've also received an advice from a friend that I can also use the website, Kickstarter.com, to get started!

But what do you guys think? Wanna launch a Star Wars The Clone Wars artbook?

 

This piqued my interest and I have a few TCW pics lying around, mainly in the form of sketch cards. It'd certainly give me an excuse to do a few experimental art projects with various media, and would help further my portfolio by getting my art out to another market.

However, I'm not sure this forum's policy on projects of this nature, so I'd rather Corellian_Outrider weigh in on this.

 

To my knowledge there are potential legal issues that may come from a project of this nature given that it is another person/company's intellectual property and the project involves raising and making money from an unofficially product. I have seen it happen with a few other properties where fans set out to make something only to have a cease and desist issued to them, especially during the raising funds process from kickstarter and other fundraising sites.

I do love the concept and also of having a collection of everyones works set to the theme of TCW. For now, as an alternative, we can set up a gallery thread for artists to show off their TCW related works to but in terms of creating an art book of this scope... I will have to discuss it further with my peers.

 

Well, I do see a lot of artbooks that's about fan arts of existing anime and game series. Idk if they kickstart those. I know there's a Sherlock Holmes fanart book going on in Kickstarter, idk if it ended though...I know that there are some people that never kickstart their fanbook projects. But this is just something that came out of my mind a day ago...maybe I don't have to Kickstart it.

 

Some fandoms and anime series can scoot under the radar, and Sherlock Holmes is public domain (though it's being contested hotly at the moment). Isn't Lucasfilm/Disney pretty protective of unofficial SW projects like this?

 

Well... there could be a way to do this and not get into trouble. If you tie it in with a charity or something, and proceeds from the sale of the book go to said charity, Lucasfilm might not have too much of a problem with it. Perhaps taking the idea through the 501st would work, as it could be used as promotional material for them.

As with the 501st, Lucasfilm seems to be okay with fans using their properties for charitable functions.

 

Is 501st a website?

 

I guess so. I know Nintendo is pretty strict on unofficial projects too, but I do saw some Nintendo-related fan/artbooks on Tumblr, one fanbook about Fire Emblem Awakening and one about DS/3DS game art...I don't know how the artist was able to do that...maybe they used a different crowdfunding platform to do it, or maybe they probably saved up to do so...
Forgive me, but I'm kinda new into the whole create a fanbook, but this is something that just came in my mind.

 

The 501st Legion is a nonprofit costuming group. They often appear at various charitable functions. My local garrison, Garrison Carida, does events like Free Comic Book Day, food drives, blood drives, school and library events, and they often participate in Penn State's Thon event.