[JayR]

All good points and all pretty on the money. People shouldn't hesitate to hire an artist because they're afraid of litigation unless they happen to be slippery characters and anyone in business knows the type I speak of. As said before, if you pay for your artwork, you own it and the rights to it. If you plan to take that image and make a product you plan to mass-produce or sell t-shirts by the thousand at Wal-Mart, you should work that out with your artist in advance but we are in the business of designing people's dream cars so we should expect you to reproduce the image as your vehicle.

And more to the point of this thread; If you hire your designer to figure out what color you want your hood stripes or whether to run Torq-Thrusts or Rallye wheels, you aren't really under any obligation to give him credit in bold type and he probably isn't hanging his hat on that job but when it's something like the Nemesis Mustang Ben designed or the 'Cuda I did a few years ago on the cover of Hot Rod or Camaro I just had on the cover of Chevy Rumble, that owner and builder should give us credit because those cars wouldn't be what they are without our involvement and we have a ton of time invested to make sure those cars look like that even beyond what is invoiced because when a car gets to that level, our hearts are in it and we want to make sure everything we designed looks just right.

Those cars are also good examples of what happens when a client, designer and builder put their heads together and think outside the box to make a statement. It's good to have some strong sense of what you want as a final product but you shouldn't stifle a designer or dictate to him because we do a lot more than put color on paper. We have a lot of design experience and wisdom to share if you let us and can maximize your investment as well as help you properly plan it and probably save you some time and money by showing something on paper before you pay a fabricator or painter to do it only to realize it doesn't look as good as you hoped and pay him to redo it.