Oh me too, Jake. This has definitely been posted here before, and attempted before (and utterly failed). MAYBE it's a different user this time (maybe), but I thought about that myself when I saw this posted. Even the statement about doing so with friends and having a sponsor smacks of the last time.

I'm getting serious deja vu here.

Do you even realize what the costs of legal use are, with regard to movie properties? Somehow I doubt a handful of high school or college-aged kids, even with a "small sponsor" (your words) are going to manage that.

And then there is an existing issue, which paints your goals in some doubt and suspicion: your avatar is stolen material, which you were not authorized to use. The avatar is a character reference sheet created by a fan artist of this site. Another member already advised you of your unauthorized appropriation of that material, and how you should have removed it until making direct contact with the fan author to seek her permission. By all appearances, you have still not yet done this.

The way I see it, that casts you in a negative light. You need to fix that other situation immediately...art theft (even presumably absent-minded and "innocent" theft by using materials that one thinks are cool) is seen in a very negative way in this community. Justifiably so. And art thieves are generally viewed as very bad people.

Cost isn't an issue like I said we pretty much all have full time jobs. We also have one small sponsor. When I said movie I meant a video game. It was one in the morning when I wrote this.

Legally, this falls under "intellectual property" and copyright laws in the United States, much of which also holds outside of the U.S. You would most certainly need to get their permission to use the characters, as those original ones seen in the movie are the sole property of Universal Studios. And probably the current version of Steven Spielberg's company (which, at the time, was Amblimation). Similarly, even the movie version of Balto is a copyrighted entity, under their ownership.

It would be foolish, and illegal, to create and distribute a production, featuring those characters, without first securing their permission (which would probably also cost a heck of a lot of money).