Picrew and OC Makers: What the Rules Actually Say (and How to Make the Character Yours)

You opened a Picrew to kill ten minutes. Forty minutes later most of them had gone on the earrings, and there is a character on your screen you like more than half the ones in your sketchbook. You save it, and then wonder whether you can make it your icon, draw it, or sell a sticker of it.

Picrew answers all three in its terms and a handful of support pages: usually, not by default, and almost certainly not. The detail is below, followed by how to make the character yours. It is a reading of the rules, not legal advice.

The short version

The image you make in a Picrew belongs to the artist who made the maker. Every maker lets you download it and share it on social media, and the usual permissions cover using it as an icon or header. Anywhere you can receive tips counts as commercial use, even if nobody has tipped you yet. Tracing or redrawing the design is outside the default rules. Each maker’s description can loosen or tighten all of that, so the description is the part to read. If you want a character you can draw, post as your art and sell, use the maker as a brainstorm and design the character yourself.

Who owns a Picrew image

Picrew is a site where artists (Picrew calls them creators) upload drawn parts. You pick and combine them. The result feels like yours because you chose everything in it.

The Picrew Terms of Use disagree. Under Article 11, users “transfer all copyrights” of the images, “including images modified by the user”, to the creator who supplied the parts, for free. Article 12 says it again: the copyright belongs to the creator. The terms are governed by Japanese law, were last revised on 11 July 2023, and say the Japanese text wins wherever the English translation differs.

So choosing the options does not make the picture yours. Recolouring it afterwards does not either.

The four boxes, and the description that overrides them

Every maker page shows a scope of use. Picrew’s usage rules page lists the four permissions a creator can grant:

Personal. Social media icons, header images, personal sites and blogs, printing for your own use.
Non-commercial. Personal use plus things like apps or services other people use, or printed material for handing out. Even here, “you may not use the image as the main image.”
Commercial. Websites and printed material with a commercial purpose. Still not as the main image.
Processing. “changing color, adding lines, etc.”

Every maker we checked for this post allowed at least Personal use.

Two rules sit on top of whatever the creator ticks. Playing, downloading and sharing to social media are allowed on every maker. And the Commercial box has a ceiling: Picrew’s prohibited list includes selling or distributing goods that “place most of the value on the image”, naming postcards, can badges, phone wallpapers and design templates. Ticking Commercial does not, on its own, let you sell a Picrew sticker sheet.

Processing covers more than people expect. Picrew’s FAQ on videos and streaming lists overlaid text, cropping and changing colours as processing. So even trimming one down to the face counts.

Article 10 lets each creator write their own rules in the maker’s description, and where those contradict the ticked boxes, the description takes precedence. Creators can change their rules later, though not against images made before the change, so screenshot the description on the day you make the image.

A page that takes tips counts as commercial

Picrew defines commercial use as “any direct or indirect activities for financial gain”, whether you are a person or a company. Its examples:

selling designs made with Picrew images
corporate websites and corporate social accounts
profit-oriented services and events
sites or apps carrying your affiliate links (not ones a free blog host adds itself, which earn you nothing)
sites or apps where you can receive tips

The English page words that last one as “donations from live broadcasting”. The Japanese original is wider: any site or app where you can receive tips, with live streaming as the example. Both versions say it counts “regardless of the actual amount of money received”, whether the money comes as cash, points or goods, and whether it is called a donation or a gift.

So a Picrew as your avatar on a stream with tipping switched on is commercial use, even in a month when nobody tips. Picrew does not name Ko-fi or Patreon, but a page built to collect support is hard to argue out of “direct or indirect activities for financial gain”. Unless the maker says otherwise, you want one that allows commercial use.

Some makers do say otherwise. Fuwafuwa Tara Maker 4 has its Commercial box unticked, yet its description lists use in places with a tipping function among the things you may do. A Korean maker goes the other way and rules out video platforms such as YouTube and Twitch altogether.

Drawing over, tracing and redrawing

This is the one that catches OC artists out. Picrew’s FAQ on new illustrations says the permission scopes are “in principle, intended for images generated by image makers”, such as using the image as an icon or printing it. Then: “Please do not use any other image data or designs.” The exception is a creator who clearly allows more in the description. Where it is unclear: “please refrain from using the images.”

Put plainly, the default rules let you use the picture. They do not let you make new art from the design, whether a trace, a redraw in your own style or a comic starring the character. Processing covers changing colours and adding lines to the image itself, and the edited image’s copyright still sits with the creator.

How much room you get depends entirely on the maker. Four from Picrew’s front page on 6 October 2026:

Akime Maker 4 offers itself for character design and allows turning a character made in it into your own OC. It rules out claiming you made it and selling goods.
Fuwafuwa Tara Maker 4 allows building a character from the maker, and tracing or copying it as long as you say so.
Maddel Picrew says “Design characters with it” and allows slight edits if you state what you changed, although its Processing box is unticked. It rules out AI filters, claiming it as your own and selling prints or stickers.
The My Baby maker bans tracing, bans hiding the creator’s ID in the image, and adds: “Individual permission is not available.”

Same site, opposite answers to “can I trace it?” No article, this one included, beats the description in front of you.

All four also rule out AI training or AI processing in some form, and Picrew’s terms prohibit using its images as AI prompts “contrary to the explicit intentions of the Creators”.

Fandom OC makers carry two sets of rules

Fandom OC makers, the Sonic, Hazbin Hotel, My Little Pony and Warriors ones among them, carry their maker artist’s rules like any other. They also sit on a world and a look that belong to somebody else, which the maker artist cannot give you permission to use. A warrior cat OC is a fan character, so the rules for posting fan art apply on top.

The two layers blur easily. Warrior Cats Maker 2 says “Use this for anything you wish, upload it anywhere, use it for roleplays, ANYTHING!”, as long as you credit it, while its boxes allow Personal and Non-commercial use only. Read generously, that is the maker artist’s blessing for their own drawings. It is not a licence for the Warriors setting, and selling art of the cat still lands in fan art territory.

Picrew adopts

Selling a design made with Picrew images is the first commercial example on Picrew’s list. Article 9 of the terms goes further: users cannot “sell, distribute, or otherwise redistribute” images made or modified on Picrew, “regardless of whether they receive payment”, unless the creator allows it. A free Picrew adopt is still redistribution.

Picrew also bans misleading people into thinking you made an image from scratch. So a Picrew adopt needs a maker whose description explicitly allows selling or passing on designs, and a buyer who knows the design came from a maker. Even then, the copyright stays with the maker’s artist, so you cannot hand over the design the way an adopt normally changes hands. The site you sell on may have rules of its own. The cleaner route is designing adopts yourself, which our adoptables guide covers from pricing to written terms.

Posting a Picrew on an art site

Picrew’s FAQ on illustration sites is blunt. Maker images may not be posted as your main work on social media for illustrators, because other users may assume you hold the copyright. The Japanese version adds that this applies even when you list the maker’s name, the creator’s name and the URL.

So credit is good manners, and plenty of makers ask for it. It does not unlock a use the rules do not allow.

Writers get one carve-out. If your main work is a novel, and anyone can see the Picrew image is not the main piece, it can sit with the story as an illustration, provided the maker permits it.

Charat works differently

Charat is run by one company that sets one set of rules for the whole site. Its guideline allows commercial use “except in some cases”. Listed as fine, with no credit needed: social media icons, doujin goods such as can badges and keyrings, and in-video material on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. Ruled out: selling the image data itself, impersonating the author, goods sold through major commercial distribution, and use on crowdsourcing services. Its FAQ narrows the goods: giving them to people you know, or selling around ten copies without aiming to turn a profit, is fine, and anything bigger needs a licensing agreement. The FAQ also allows editing, allows using your avatar as reference when commissioning an illustrator, and asks you not to call the image your own work.

As on Picrew, the image is not yours. Charat’s terms, published in Japanese, have users transfer the copyright in created images to the operator, and set a charge of ¥55,000 per image for use beyond what it allows.

How to make the character yours

None of this stops a maker being a good brainstorm. It just has to stay one.

Play, then write a list. Spend an evening in three or four makers, saving what you make for yourself, which every maker allows. Then look at what you kept choosing and write it down in words: short hair, oversized coat, one earring, mostly green. That list is an idea, and copyright protects expression rather than ideas. The US Copyright Office, for one, describes protection extending “only to the original expression” in a work and “not to the underlying idea”.

Close the tab and start from the silhouette. A maker layers parts over a base its creator drew, so the pose, the proportions and the outline were never yours. Thumbnail the shape five or six ways before any detail goes in. Our guide to creating an OC has the silhouette test in full.

Choose the palette yourself. A maker hands you its creator’s swatches. Pick three or four colours from what the character is like, not from the menu.

Draw what no maker offers. Hands. The back view. How the coat falls when they sit on a step. A prop that comes out of their story, like the train ticket they never threw away. Expressions the maker did not include. This is where a design stops being a combination of parts.

Check the gap. Put your drawing next to the maker image. If someone could lay one over the other and match the lines, keep going. The point where “inspired by” turns into “based on” is a judgement call, and Picrew’s own advice when unsure is to refrain, so make the difference obvious.

Attached to the maker version and want to stay close to it? Then choose a maker whose description says you can build your own OC from it, credit it on the character’s ref, and only sell or adopt it out if the description allows that too.

Once the design is yours, a reference sheet makes it drawable by anyone, and then it can go into commissions, adopts and prints.

Where artbase fits

Post the drawn version. On artbase you can give a character a collection of its own, so the ref sheet, the early sketches and the finished pieces sit together, and tag each piece so people who like that kind of character can find it. The people there are friendly. Comments tend to be proper ones, with constructive feedback, and a beginner’s first OC gets the same welcome as anyone’s fiftieth. When you want an excuse to put a new character somewhere unfamiliar, dailydraw sets one prompt a day.

artbase has been open to the public since July 2026, and it is growing quickly. It is free, with no ads on the free plan or on Pro, and Pro is optional, there for anyone who wants extra profile and posting tools. It runs well in any modern browser on a phone or a desktop, with no app to install.

Final thoughts

A Picrew is a lovely toy and a decent sketchbook, and it was always someone else’s drawing. Read the description first, credit the artist and keep a screenshot. When a character outgrows the maker, give it your own outline and colours, and draw the hands yourself. That version is the one you can do anything with.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use a Picrew as my profile picture?

Usually, yes. Social media icons and header images are the first examples under Picrew's Personal permission, and every maker we checked allowed it. Read the maker's description anyway, because some ask for credit or ask you not to hide their ID or watermark. If the account is somewhere you can receive tips, such as a stream with tipping switched on, Picrew counts that as commercial use, so you need a maker that allows it.

Can I sell art of a character I made in Picrew?

Not by default. The image belongs to the artist who made the maker, selling designs made with Picrew images is commercial use, and Picrew's FAQ says its usage permissions cover the generated image rather than new illustrations based on its design. You would need a maker whose description clearly allows both commercial use and new work based on its results. Otherwise, use the maker as a brainstorm and design the character yourself. That version is yours to sell.

Can I use a Picrew on a page that takes donations?

Only with a maker that allows it. Picrew counts use on a site or app where you can receive tips as commercial use, whatever you actually receive and whether it arrives as cash, points or goods. Live streaming is the example it gives. Look for a maker that allows commercial use, or one whose description says tips are fine.

Can I draw over or trace a Picrew?

Drawing over the image, such as adding lines or changing colours, needs the maker to allow Processing, and the edited image still belongs to the maker's artist. Tracing or redrawing the design as a new illustration is outside Picrew's default permissions and is only fine if the maker's description says so. Makers disagree: some allow tracing if you say you traced it, and others ban it outright.

Can I post a Picrew on an art site if I credit the maker?

Not as your artwork. Picrew does not allow maker images to be posted as your main work on social media for illustrators, and the Japanese version of its FAQ says this applies even when you list the maker name, the creator name and the URL. The exception is an illustration for your own novel, where the writing is clearly the main work and the maker permits it. Post a version you drew yourself instead.

Can I sell or give away a Picrew adopt?

Not unless the maker allows it. Picrew's terms say users cannot sell, distribute or otherwise redistribute images made on Picrew, regardless of whether they receive payment, unless the creator allows it. Selling designs is also the first example on its list of commercial uses, a buyer would need to know the design came from a maker, and the copyright stays with the maker's artist either way. Designing the adopt yourself avoids all of it.

Is an OC made in Picrew really my OC?

The name, story and personality you give the character are yours to develop, but the image belongs to the artist who made the maker, and what you can do with the design depends on their rules. To make the character fully yours, keep the idea and redesign it yourself, with your own silhouette, palette and details.