Imperial Era Art Project (Workin' on Orcin')

[UnwiseOwl]

Hey Axalaraflame,
I am not a lawyer, but if you personally, or the people on your forum didn't create the images and are willing to submit them to Wesnoth under the GPL, or you didn't find them somewhere that is marked as being in the public domain (and can prove this to me), I cannot in good conscience accept those artworks. Whether it's declared or not, the creator of the artworks holds copyright and must release them to the GPL, or I can't include them.
If you are the creators, have a look at the GPL and make sure that you're ok with it, most importantly that you're ok with your work being reused or even charged for by some other GPL project, then by all means I'd be happy to take them if they fit in the era.
That said, there are plenty of discussions on the nature of the GPL around the forums, some of them written by people that really know what they're talkign about, so please check them instead of asking those questions in this thread, which is about the IE (and at the moment about the sprites in my above post) specifically.
Thanks, UO.

[AxalaraFlame]

Interesting. There are lots of causual artworks in our forums, totally free for us to fetch and use. Our artwork process would get largely acclerated by licensing those artworks which in actuality belong to nobody. It is totally legal and acceptable, and the authors are generally rather acceptive and welcomed for people to use their artworks. Do you really think that we shall not give a try on that?

[Crendgrim]

No, you are wrong. You cannot use them unless explicitly stated otherwise by the author. Especially if the author did not license a work under the GPL, you cannot just use it as GPL.
Most of the stuff here on the forums will be posted as GPL, but you still should ask the authors.

And you are just plainly wrong in saying that they "belong to nobody".

Then again, I am not a lawyer, but that is my understanding of intellectual property and the GPL.

[GunChleoc]

I'm not a lawyer either, but I know this much: copyright always remains with the author, no matter what. It is his/her intellecual property that can't be taken away, ever. The author can then decide to license it to somebody else, be that for money, on the creative commons or under the GPL or any other licence the author wants.

In the age of Facebook, people think if it's posted on the internet, it's free. This is an illusion. It's not. The author always holds the copyright, even if the picture has been stolen by someone else and you can't even find out anymore who the author is.

[Amorphous]

Hi, Unwise Owl. Since you posted I've been working on an update to the pugnator line, and if you'd like, I'd interested in making/updating some more sprites for IE. I can't promise too much because I'm rather busy and my work rate is very slow, but I think I could get a few sprites done.

That said, I think I'd prefer doing complete overhauls to the sprites rather than just small edits. The current ones (and I mean no offense to the original artist(s)) are rather messy and hard to work with.

So, I've only finished a revamp to the lvl 1 pugnator so far. There are a couple of things I'm not sure about. After checking the unit description page, I saw that the entire line has a whip attack, but there aren't any whips shown on the current sprites. Is this for a specific reason, or were they just never drawn on? As you can see, the revamp does have a whip, but I can remove it if necessary. I also noticed that a lot of the IE sprites' shadows don't conform with what's currently in mainline; is this intentional?

Overall, though, my main concern is whether or not this is too drastic a change from the current sprite? I'd appreciate your feedback.

Oh, and, of course, C * C's on the sprite are welcome.

[Temuchin Khan]

So, I've only finished a revamp to the lvl 1 pugnator so far. There are a couple of things I'm not sure about. After checking the unit description page, I saw that the entire line has a whip attack, but there aren't any whips shown on the current sprites. Is this for a specific reason, or were they just never drawn on? As you can see, the revamp does have a whip, but I can remove it if necessary....

Overall, though, my main concern is whether or not this is too drastic a change from the current sprite? I'd appreciate your feedback....

Actually, speaking as the original creator of the Orcei Gladiatores (Turin did the sprites, but it was my idea, and I did the cfg's), I like the new Pugnator. Good job! And yes, keep the whip. If something is mentioned in the description but not shown in the sprite, it was probably just due to an oversight.

[Amorphous]

Actually, speaking as the original creator of the Orcei Gladiatores (Turin did the sprites, but it was my idea, and I did the cfg's), I like the new Pugnator. Good job!

Well, that's reassuring to hear. Thanks.

And yes, keep the whip. If something is mentioned in the description but not shown in the sprite, it was probably just due to an oversight.

Okay, thanks for clearing that up.

Here's revamp on the bestiarius. Little messy, and I don't know how well the cloth texture worked out. Thoughts?

[UnwiseOwl]

Personally, I think it looks great. Pretty complicated, though, so you may have an issue making the Feral Bestiarius even more impressive, but that's the only problem that I forsee. I'm no artist, but to me, the cloth looks good.

[AxalaraFlame]

Talking about art problems, I am supposed to recall something that I forgot to post...

...regardless.

Here it is. You could see two bugs from this scene. One is boatman attack animation, one is that campfire issue (is it solved already? )

[UnwiseOwl]

I don't think those are sprite issues, AxalaraFlame, I think they're coding issues.
I'll take a look for you, but this is not the appropriate place.

[AxalaraFlame]

Ok, then I will move it to the main thread. Can you please delete your last post? Thus I will become the last poster and able to delete it.

[UnwiseOwl]

I am amused that you have posted in order to ask the last poster to remove their post, given the self-defeating nature of such an act.
Don't worry about it, AxalaraFlame, just in future I'd appreciate it if you could keep this thread free for art submissions and feedback. Any missing artwork should be reported in the main thread.

[Temuchin Khan]

Here's revamp on the bestiarius. Little messy, and I don't know how well the cloth texture worked out. Thoughts?

I like the new Bestiarius, too.

[AxalaraFlame]

I am amused that you have posted in order to ask the last poster to remove their post, given the self-defeating nature of such an act.

"In order to" is not very precise. If I were the last poster I could have erased it; but I am not. And if I don't call moderators to erase that for me like the last time (where I posted 15 bug reports to you and the attachments swarm over three posts), it get me banned. And always asking people to do a same thing is impolite... So technically...it might be the best if you erase it at first, and I delete it.

But nevermind, since there comes Chan and my explaning post so the deleting process should be followed in such an order as "I delete this one first, he go second, you go third, and I delete it after all"...it becomes chaotic. Just let it be.
Hmm, wtf am I talking about??

[UnwiseOwl]

Those are looking great, Amorphous.
As to shadows or sprites, if anything doesn't conform to mainline it's most likely a matter of being outdated rather than being an intentional choice on our behalf. Not having a talented sprit artist working on the project means that the sprites have stayed unchanged for the last three years or so, and many of them were on the old side even then. Any suggestions that you have will be taken on board (and I look forward to committing those new sprites in my next version too, if that's ok with you? They're a great improvement).