A group of my friends and I and starting a Youtube/Twitch Gaming channel in which we will record/stream our adventures in the gaming world. This will be first and foremost a channel centered around Halo and Halo related things. We’ve grown up on Halo and the Xbox and we love them both. We’ve even taken to naming our close knit team of gamers after something from the Halo Universe.
My question here is that I am finally sitting down to produce and finalize channel art for these things. Icons, banners, logos and the like. I would very much like to include an image of a Spartan helmet as the back drop of both the banner and logo for our group. I am doing my best to research and read up on copyright, fair use, trademark, and creative commons laws but it’s hard to understand the specific nature of my intent as it relates to this content.
I in no way intend to now or ever monetize any of this work. It is quite simply a creative outlet to allow my self and my friends to express our appreciation for these games. Am I ok to use Halo imagery in this way or is this more complicated than that?
My other question would be if, instead of using a pre-existing image, I created from scratch artwork that mirrored pre-existing images would that be ok?
Any clarity anyone with any experience can offer me on this would be very helpful. I want to be as true to the games I love as I can be but also I’d like to stay within the law and the rights of the content creators.