Free (as in freedom) fantasy/sci-fi species
(Apologies if the structuring of this post is awkward. I needed to find a way to stuff all the context that led to my idea)
Hello all,
Yesterday, I was posing a question at Wikimedia Common's village pump and came up with a somewhat intereting idea in the middle of typing. You see, my question was regarding the sci-fi furry species known as protogens. protogens are known as a "semi-open species", meaning that while they are (generally) monetarily free for the public to use, there are some limits to derivative works, typically regarding the aesthetics of the deriviative character or regarding commercial use. I noticed that (because of this), the speices doesn't meet The Definition of Free Cultural Works, which would (likely) make the freely-licensed derivative works on WMC invalid. It had me thinking, I've personally never seen an explicitly freely-licensed original species in the furry community**, and even many "open species" have guidelines/regulated which would exempt it out of The Definition of Free Cultural Works. How unfortunate.
Which leads me to the reason I make this post today: what if there was a collection of freely-licensed original species, furry or otherwise? Obviously, the concept of creating a original species that's freely-licensed isn't exactly new (I seem to recall someone here on OGA attempting to create a whole fantasy world that's entirely CC0), but having a neatly organized collection of creatures that anyone can use is pretty cool, in my opinion. I've already started something for my part, though I'm not sure if it will ever be released considering how sucky my worldbuilding skills are. I think a collection here would trend more non-anthro as I don't think the majority of OGA users are furries/furry adjacent, but I think the idea benefits everyone.
SIDENOTES:
** Again, this is from what I've seen. I only very lightly dabble in furry things.
That probably depends on how usable it is. If games and game mods can use them ase a race/faction/mob/pet/whatever, I'd imagine that they could get picked up.
It always depends on how usuable they are, how many sketches and lore exist. And of course how many assets and different kinds of assets exist:
EDIT: The more humanoid they are, the "better". If they aren't it's the opposite. For a lot of pixel art you can do a lot if you just have to swap out the head (with hair and ears etc).As soon as the body changes you need new bases with animation, new clothing and accesories.Doing paws like gloves/shoes is likely possible.Wings and tails can be a layer over clothing, which needs less new stuff, but you still need to create that for every animation. For the tiny stuff this is an example https://opengameart.org/content/tinygb-characters Humanoid dragon, pig, dog and penguin just have different heads. The pigman has clothing, but the others have their bodies colored in a uniform color to "look more like animals". LPC got a few extensions for ears, tails, wings and different heads. Generally I haven't seen many characters that got ported to multiple sets. The users Spring Spring and Kelvin Shadewing have a bunch of characters who they tagged furry, furries or anthropomorphic
RE your edit note: Yeah, that's fair. I think in my OG post I was thinking within the scope of most RPGs, where the usecase of 'new creature/species' (beyond standard humans, elfs, dwarves, gnomes etc etc) would probably be beasties/monsters to fight rather than player characters or NPCs (which would obviously need more sprites/animations.). Goes to show how RPG-brained I am despite not being the hugest fan of them, haha.
100% on usability. I can't do much on the assets part of it as i'm much more of a concept art sort of guy (translation: do not trust me to do cleanup work or finishing touches. I try of course, hence my being-here-on-OGA in the first place, but I am certainly not the greatest at it).
Thanks for introducing me to Spring Spring and Kelvin Shadewing! I see Shadewing in particular does a lot of work based on FOSS mascots (a current interest of mine) and I'm really digging it.
At least in 2D NPCs are actually easier than mobs.
The simplest NPC has a down facing standing position and maybe a dialog portrait.
Mobs need animations for walking, fighting and dying and maybe sounds.
I don't do 3D, but there as well I expect less animations required for a stationary character.
Further examples for sets who swap heads and skin colors: https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-modular-bodies-and-heads https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-folk
For concept art it's probably best to see the full body and at least have front and back view, as well as detailed view of the head. The more details there already are the easier it should be to part since there are less gaps to fill. But it should also be details that aren't that important because too much small detail can be hard to translate to small resolutions.
Although AI has become a tool capable of filling those gaps... (in hilarious ways sometimes)
Mm, not the biggest fan of it, as I like having control intent in works; If theres an error or percieved imperfection in the work, it's because I/another author (in case of works that aren't mine, of course) made it (intentional or unintentional, hence why I said percieved imperfections) , not some machine that doesn't know any better. It also just looks...greasy a lot of the time. Don't know how to describe it. Don't dig it.
I keep forgetting to do proper front/backs in my concept arts, I'll definately make a note to remember to.
https://opengameart.org/content/character-design-nekomimi did a pretty awesome job in that regard. But most concepts are just from one direction and many even very vague/blurry drawn.
I play a Tower Defense game that uses AI generated art and struggle to find the towers sometimes. The towers and their icons don't look similar. Itch says I played that for 150h and still can't find some of them sometimes. I guess they are fine with it because it's a port of a WC3 map and in WC3 the icons were always disconnected because they had to pick from standard icons. Though bigger downside is that the assets aren't really available because of that despite the rest of the game being open source. (I think they also bought some assets and can't redistribute them.)