Finding free pictures (fantasy, sci-fi, art) for personal or commercial use via Creative Commons?

Answer 1

Authors, musicians, and graphic designers take note! The sea change in artist attribution means that content creators are interacting with each other more than ever before. Wikimedia Commons may have held the title as the premium (free) content provider for the content creating masses up until now, but Creative Commons stands in as an ethical and effective portal for finding your free images and clipart online.

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization or non-governmental organization headquartered in California. Essentially acting as an interested middleman, handing out prefabricated legal license surrounding (primarily American) copyright law, Creative Commons has allowed hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals to freely license -- legally -- their own works into a “cloud” of free content for use by all around the world.

If it sounds a bit progressive and communistic, that’s because it is. However, not all works licensed under a Creative Commons license are entirely free from restriction. Often, authors ask that end users of their work at least attribute them in some way, if not involving financial remuneration.

With their stated goals surround the reasonable and free expansion of copyright and intellectual property, Creative Commons is an invaluable resource for artists from all walks of life.

How do I use Creative Commons to find free art, clipart, or other public domain images?

After visiting the Creative Commons site, users will be confronted with a standard search bar atop the page. This is a simple, raw search and will satisfy merely the curious.

The “explore” functionality linked to the main page is a much meatier experience. Users are able to directly choose which portal they would like to search (Flickr and Fotopia being the crowd favourites) and then refine the search further from there. This means that the all-important “available for commercial use” tag can be chosen, so that nobody gets into too much trouble at presstime!

Browse the libraries to your heart’s content. Each license will be plainly stated (Creative Commons offers 6 standard varieties of license for those who wish to nab the template from their site) and most are quite friendly towards co-creators.

What can I use this art, animation, or photos for?

The more common creative usages for these photos are as covers or illustrations in books or ebooks, as well as cover art for albums or EP releases by musicians. Film-makers often look for static images to use in their documentaries or sometimes even small comedies. Stock Photography is becoming commonplace not only amongst media types but amongst media consumers as well -- their familiarity with stock photography is the butt of many a blogger’s joke.

Will Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons change copyright law and how we view intellectual property in the future?

Not just a prudent and engaging question but also a pressing matter, the answer is undoubtedly yes.

The free access to creative works has done a great deal of damage to traditional advertising and stock photography agencies, causing these entire industries to either adapt or collapse. A glut of product and content being produced has driven the wages of those who work in the traditional industries through the floor.

However, this has also meant a rise of the independent worker, the freelancer, and the contractor in all of these creative content industries. Writers, photographers, musicians, graphic designers, animators, and visual artists of all description are, more than ever, selling themselves and their skills to patrons online.

Creative Commons and Wiki’d images grace the front and backs of tens of thousands of new novels on Amazon CreateSpace; images and animations purchased for a dollar from Stock Xchange or Shutterstock adorn every major motion picture from Transformers to Star Trek.

The future is free content, or as near to free as it gets.