-Rant- 'So-Called Spriters'

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Offended by what you see here? I don't care!
FAQ #157: Can I use things created by other people in my submissions?
FAQ #306: Does "Crediting" let me use whatever I want?
Read those and THEN come bitch to me! :dummy:


I'm really sick of people who claim to be spriters and only have pixel work that's just spliced or mashed up from an existing sprite. They recolour perfectly beautiful sprites without care it seems. A lot of them are even horrible lazy about it, and it's so painfully obvious where and how the pieces were thrown together. Some of us here actually take time and care to make things from scratch, maybe only referencing sizes or colouring styles if needed. It's not even hard after you try it a few times. It's not going to be perfect the first time, deal with it. Hardly anything is perfect on the first go. I see so many people who have galleries filled with recolours and splices of Pokemon to make new ones, and it baffles me. How original can one get by splicing existing faces and other body parts? If you want a new Pokemon, one that's unrelated to the existing ones, why not just make it from scratch? Instead of making Frankenstien-esque creations made up of other sprites' parts, make something completely new! I can't understand why people insist on splicing. The results are usually pretty ugly, imo.

The first time I ever did a Pokemon-styled sprite of one of my OCs ended up like this- XD002 BW-Style Sprite by Typhloser. The only thing I used that I did not own was a Black Kyurem sprite. However, it was only to reference how the colouring style of something BK's size was, as well as the shading style. I in no way actually took parts of the Black Kyurem and added it to my sprite. The person that really set me off on the inside made this thing, which they dubbed a 'Slowqueen' (possible a fem counterpart to Slowking). The deviation in question was uploaded to Photobucket to protect the original artist.
Photobucket

First of all, like I said earlier, a lot of splices are sloppy and look like they were made by someone half asleep. This one is no exception, but the thing that threw me off most is how they just slapped on the Jynx dress without even editing it to make it smoother. I'll admit now, but the other splices I've seen in this user's gallery aren't as sloppy (except for one, which frankly baffles me on how the thing can even live). This one just completely made me break down and laugh as well as feel dead on the inside. Other 'sprites' made by this user's friends/watchers are around the same level, and are mostly all splices/recolours. OP even mentioned to another user that they were a spriter as well (which made me think, ok, let me see your gallery. Maybe you're original). Curiously I clicked, and dear goodness all there was were recolours and splices. :iconwthplz: It's really sad to me.

Recolouring sprites and splicing them, as well as editing in any way, is a form of art theft on dA. You cannot use another person's art and edit it without permission! This DOES include official sprites! People who make these splices don't seem to get it, and it frustrates me.

There are surely tutorials for spriting from scratch, including :thumb133981868:, Spriting Tutorial by Esepibe, Trainer Spriting Tutorial - 1 by Litera-sure, and this for shadows AT: BW Shadow Tutorial by xXSapphireGaleXx. I think these are nice and encourage referencing and making from scratch. People need tutorials like those more than the 'copy-paste this part and do this to it to conjoin it to this other part' ones. :grump:
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jpp97's avatar
When I make mine I don't cut,copy and paste them together I do them Pixel by pixel and use the sprites of the two Pokemon as reference to properly blind the two Pokemon together.Is this method still against the rules?