Hey guys! So i've been working away, making new sprites for most of the critters we didn't have graphics for yet
(for those of you that are interested, but aren't following yet, you can find my topic
HERE)
The thing is, this morning i was looking over some old posts and came across this one.
As you know, this isn't MY graphics pack per se. Many of the icons are grabbed and/or altered from other people- always with their permission, of course. One of the sources was a set of icons made by Tocky aka Atoji: http://atoji.deviantart.com/
http://atoji.deviantart.com/art/dwarf-fortress-tiles-71452862?q=gallery%3Aatoji%2F137012&qo=49
When I was building my pack, I wasn't actually very good with pixelart or colour theory and I didn't have much time for conceptual work on these, wanting instead to get as much graphics into the game as possible, as quickly as possible. So I grabbed Tocky's EXTREMELY charming icons with his permission, but didn't ask for his permission to shade them to match the rest of the graphics in the pack and made more icons in the same style for the remaining dwarves. Problem is, this streamlining made the icons lose their original old-school charm. What's worse, Tocky's work was made famous in this butchered form, which, unsurprisingly, he's not very happy with.
Granted, if these were MY work, I'd leave them as they are, but since they're not, I'd rather stop getting so much credit for icons 99% based on the work of another, very talented artist. I gotta say Tocky's dwarves are easily my favourite set of icons for DF, but now that I'm confident in my pixelart skills and scalable icons are coming thanks to TwbT, I've decided to try my hand at my own dwarves set.
How do you feel about these? Would you play with them or would you rather keep using Tocky's dwarves? Please don't hesitate to state an honest opinion, I personally believe they are not as charming or interesting as Tocky's.
Now I had seen this post before, but today i was struck with the notion that ... I really like Maydays variation!
This Awesome Mayday Original! Before i knew it, i was sitting on half a dozen of my own little dwarves, each spiritually inspired by Mike's work.
Top=Tocky's Loved, And Time Honored Classic
Bottom= My Morning Doodle Im posting today for this reason.
This has inspired me to complete the set and after a bit of work, create my own graphics pack. However since my work is so heavily inspired by Mayday's and Tocky's work, (and in Mayday's case, very alike out of hand) i'm not sure whether i should. I'm no thief (or at least not on purpose) and i don't want to deliberately or mistakenly rob from either of them.
So, i'm asking the community. What do you guys think? (If Mike, or Tocky are reading this ... your opinion matters most in this and i'm especially interested in what you guys have to say.)