Looking for a 2D artist for icons
Hi,
I'm looking for a designer to give a consistent look'n'feel for the TirNanoG Editor's icons.
Rules and technical spec:
1. This is a FOSS hobby project, so no matter how much I want to, I can't pay for the work, but I'll add your name as a contributor and I can offer TirNanoG File Format licenses in return.
2. The icons are going to be embedded in a GPL'd application, so the icons themselves must be GPL licensed (or use a compatible libre license which allows relicensing under GPL).
3. Most of the icons are small, 16 x 16 which could be challenging. The number of colors not limited, and they should have an alpha blended contour (it is okay if you give me larger icons, I can downsize and add the alpha contour, just be sure the icons are recognizable at 16 x 16).
4. I don't want to change the logo, but if you want to make a mega-giga-super-cool-looking logo then I will consider. Criteria: must contain some celtic motif, and should have a fantasyish feel. But this isn't important, it's not the best, but I'm happy with the current logo.
5. The default navigation circle and buttons, I'm happy with those too, I don't plan to change those either (they are from OGA btw.).
6. There are grayscale flat 2D icons, those are from the GIMP. I don't plan to change those either, but I'm open. If you rework these, keep them grayscaled, flat, resembling the original GIMP icons. Not important. (To be clear: many icons have an inactive version, which are grayscale too but also semi-transparent, I'm not talking about those. I mean the info, layers, copy'n'paste, pen, bucket fill etc. icons when I say GIMP icons.)
7. All the rest, most notably the colorful "isometric" or 3Dish icons. Now these are the problematic ones which do not have a consistent look'n'feel. Icons that I'm particularly unhappy with: the main menu (home, a house), UI (an application window with a gear), tiles (supposed to be a green puzzle piece), NPC spawners (a dice, looking good, just doesn't really reflect that it is a spawner), preview (an eye, looks too much like the GIMP's visibility icon), inventory (can anybody recognize that it's supposed to be a backpack?). You are free to change these any way you seem fit as long as the new icons reflect what they symbolize (meaning you can change the figure too, they could be flat or 3Dish, colorful or limited to a specific color shade etc.).
8. The egg shell for the spawner. That's my design skill at its best, needless to say more... It has three parts: background bottom, foreground bottom and foreground top. This is put behind and above an NPC sprite to create a spawner icon for the map. I guessed egg shell should be good for that, but it doesn't have to be a shell, anything else could work as long as it gives a bottom and top frame for the NPC sprite.
If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, then please upload your proposed icons here on OGA. I'm very open for any suggestions, especially for point 7., I just need them to be recognizable and have a consistent look'n'feel, that's all.
Thanks,
bzt
the playstation buttons from oga? they should not be on here they are trademarked by sony
Hi,
They are from this submission. On that OGA page it says that the whole pack is licensed under CC0 (Public Domain), am I wrong trusting the OGA licensing flags?
BTW I seriously doubt that anyone could trademark basic geometrical shapes in the EU. But if the community says that's possible and that the OGA submission's license is incorrect, then I'll replace those, no probs (it's just the default icon anyway, shown in the HUD preview when the user doesn't set a specific icon for their game, so it really doesn't matter to me, any other will do).
Edit: hm, it looks like the submitter updated the pack and removed those, saying "*NOTE: Due to Sony's trademark of the ∆○×□ icons ("triangle circle cross square"), the corresponding buttons have been omitted from this pack. Although the use of these symbols is generally considered Nominative Fair Use, there may be circumstantial restrictions on their application."
Edit2: as it turns out, I was correct, you cannot trademark basic geometrical shapes, and Sony haven't either. They have trademarked the combination of "green triangle, a red circle, a blue cross, and a pink square" with a particular color, so I've replaced the icons with a color-less version for the time being.
Thanks for the warning, and this means the buttons are added to the should-be-redesigned list :-)
Cheers,
bzt
I dont no about eu but us they have trademark it. you are right it is all the shapes together though not just each shape by itself
this is for all the shapes together colored or not https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=79252718&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchTyp...
this is trademark for those shapes in the specific positions https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=79089053&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchTyp... i dont think it matters they are colored or not but that is us not eu
>edit first link was old is new trademwrk now
Thanks for the links, but it doesn't matter, the buttons should be redesigned anyway, just to be on the safe side.
BTW, I'm a hardcore programmer, not a gamer, I never ever had a controller in my hands in my entire life, what are the most common symbols for the buttons? I did a quick websearch, and it showed me mostly PS controllers, that's why I've picked that one from the pack. (And I've checked, the first download link on that submission page isn't an OGA attachment, I guess that's what mislead me, I was downloading from the external source accidentally.)
Cheers,
bzt
well for pc gamers who use gamepads (like me) i would safely say the xbox button layout is most common. it used by the majority of third party "generic" pc gamepads that i have seen / bought / blew out the left stick and had to buy again. green A red B blue X yellow Y. afaik there is no issue with us trademarks either.
i would say switch to those buttons from the same xelu prompt pack and you are probably golden.
Yeah, that trademark is so stupid. I'm sure your usage of them would be perfectly fine (monichrome or otherwise), especially since the plan is to have playstation be one of the available platforms, correct? The difference is your usage probably falls within the "fair use" mentioned by that disclaimer, but our hosting it on OGA under a CC0 license doesn't pass muster.
Regardless, Ragnar's suggestion is also solid (A, B, X, and Y... which cannot be trademarked) and buttons for them can also be found in that same pack.
Don't forget to include a link to your engine in the request! Seeing what you've got will help attract more artists. :)
P.S: Based on the logo, I was reading the name as "Tirna Nog" instead of "Tir Nano G". I assume "nano" for its portability and G for Gnu Public License, but what is "tir"?
--Medicine Storm@bzt are you aware that the TirNanog Player page 404s? https://bztsrc.gitlab.io/tirnanog-player is the link on your page. i am playing around with the editor but can't playtest without the player.
edit: nevermind, i see from your other forum post that it's not ready yet.
Thanks for your comments!
@MedicineStorm: "Yeah, that trademark is so stupid. I'm sure your usage of them would be perfectly fine"
Yeah, besides of fair use, I don't think the trademark applies here in the first place, because as a matter of fact I'm using this for touchscreen icons and not for physical game controller buttons. And also as I've said, this is just the default image in the preview if the game creators haven't configured their own icons yet (this image never gets into the game files, not distributed with the games and not shown to players at all).
"the plan is to have playstation be one of the available platforms, correct?"
Ideally yes, I'm planning to port the player to as many platforms as possible, that includes Playstation. For the first milestone Windows, Linux and Android is the goal (and that latter is the one which needs touchscreen icons for the controls). However the editor, which these icons are for, are desktop only (Windows and Linux).
"Based on the logo, I was reading the name as "Tirna Nog" instead of "Tir Nano G". I assume "nano" for its portability and G for Gnu Public License, but what is "tir"?"
Nope, the engine is named after Tir na nog, a celtic otherword for youth and joy. Should have been "TirNaNog", but file extension ".tnn" doesn't look as good as ".tng", that's why I've changed the second 'N' to the last letter instead. The capitalized letters are therefore totally arbitrary, they just serve the purpose to create a distinguished writing for the engine's name.
@Ragnar Random: "i would say switch to those buttons from the same xelu prompt pack and you are probably golden."
Thank you, I'll probably do that. Or maybe I'll just go with a symbol-less version (I never intended to suggest this is a Playstation-only engine, and I don't want to suggest it is Xbox-only either, so probably the symbol-less will be the best).
"nevermind, i see from your other forum post that it's not ready yet."
I'm finishing up the editor right now, I'll release a new binary today or maybe tomorrow. When that's done, then the work on the player starts.
Cheers,
bzt
-Version called 686 gave me error in windows XP
https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/tirnanog-editor/raw/binaries/tnge-i686-win-sta...
@bzt "Thank you, I'll probably do that. Or maybe I'll just go with a symbol-less version (I never intended to suggest this is a Playstation-only engine, and I don't want to suggest it is Xbox-only either, so probably the symbol-less will be the best)."
problem with symbol-less is how will anyone know what buttons are what? i imagine you wrote / intend to write your own gamepad parsing code. i am only familiar with how sdl lib does it, but i believe the actual identifiers for buttons are "povhat n e s w" for dpad and "1 2 3 4" for the face buttons in a backwards z shape starting from the south face buttons. that might be a good compromise? i dunno. i understand that ppl making games with tirnanaog will put whatever they want there, but i would think the vast majority of them will want to use the abxy setup, as it is most used on pc.
i haven't really dove into tirnanog much, as i can't testrun anything i make with it. seems like trying to make something with it right now feels like an intellectual excercise than actually making something. i guess because my brain can't "see" what is made. it is something i am keeping an eye on though.
also this: i was unable to create a new project using the lpc package using the editor. it created the folder and teh credits files in my /user/myname/tirnanog folder but nothing else was extracted to that folder by tirnanog, and it did not recognize folder to open file. when i manually extracted archives content to same folder, i was able to open project and fiddle with it. win11.
how about some sort of community support forum for tirnanog in the future?
Thank you for your feedbacks! But is there anyone volunteering to redraw the icons...?
@Commander: "Version called 686 gave me error in windows XP"
That's not the version, "i686" is the platform :-) I've never intended to support XP, Win7 is the oldest Windows version I'm testing with, but if you open an issue on gitlab and willing to provide feedback for me in a trial-and-error iteration then I might look into the required modifications to support ancient XP too (but again, Win7 is the required minimum Windows version).
@Ragnar Random: "problem with symbol-less is how will anyone know what buttons are what?"
That's not a problem. As I've said, these are only the default icons shown when the game creators haven't configured their own icons yet. You are supposed to provide your own button icons that goes with the look'n'feel of your game, and in that you can use whatever symbols you want.
"that might be a good compromise?"
Yeah, that's a good idea.
"also this: i was unable to create a new project using the lpc package using the editor. it created the folder and teh credits files in my /user/myname/tirnanog folder but nothing else was extracted to that folder by tirnanog, and it did not recognize folder to open file."
It should have extracted everything. I'll look into this. The reason why it didn't show up is because the directory was missing a valid "config" file.
"how about some sort of community support forum for tirnanog in the future?"
If @MedicineStorm agrees to that, I'd be very happy to do it!
Cheers,
bzt
Starting out the best way to do that is simply start a thread like "TirNanoG support" in the OGA community Projects forum (or perhaps the Programming forum if you don't consider this a project for OGA).
Once the project has a full featured editor and player (as is the plan) and gains a bit more momentum, I'll look into adding a separate TirNanoG Project forum like we have for FLARE.
Good point. Apologies for pulling the thread off-topic. Further discussion of troubleshooting the TirNanoG engine or trademark weirdness should probably be done in a separate thread.
@Artists! Looking for a designer to give a consistent look'n'feel for the TirNanoG Editor's icons.
--Medicine Storm@MedicineStorm: thank you, that would be great! I wrote this engine with primarily LPC assets in mind, so I'll go with the "OGA community projects" if that's okay.
Cheers,
bzt
-OK, thanks.
:)
quite frankly i think editor icons are fine as is. "consistent looknfeel" is less important than "game making tool that actually makes games" at this point.
@Commander: your logo does not meet the criteria, sorry.
@Ragnar Random: I'm unhappy with some icons, it would be great to have a better icon set.
Cheers,
bzt
It`s OK, I enjoy to make this little pictures just for fun. So main problem is a few icons like that house. Hmmm .. hope someone will appears with a will to help.