>The tricky part is that if a person alters an
>image, such as the color, it is  next to 
>impossible for a studio to be able to 
>claim it as their copyrighted image much less
>a  private individual.

Hello,
No, the copyright for something like an anime
is not on the individual picture but on the
whole anime and design of the characters.

Changing just the color or drawing the same
character in another position is not enough.
The design of the characters you draw need
to be differant enough from the one of the anime
so that it's not possible that it's the same
characters...

Cheers,
Yann Stettler

PS: I remember a website that made small desktop
icons based on various TV show/cartoon/anime
and others... They made some based on the
Simpsons and get sued for this. They lost...
The pictures were original work. It was only
lously based on the character (you can do only
so much with the size of an icon) but still
it was ruled that viewer would recognize the
characters and so it was breaking the copyright...