Sprite Thieves

Of all the concepts that I've had to defend on message boards over and over again, the one that makes me feel like a broken record is the subject of sprite thieves. With that in mind, I'm going to write this feature that I will link to for the rest of my days whenever the subject comes up. That way, I'll never have to explain it ever again.

What's Sprite Thievery?
That's when someone decides to take credit for a sprite or a sprite edit. The most common case is when a thief takes someone else's sprite edit that is much closer to the target character than any normal, ripped sprite is, does some minor editing, and takes full credit for all the work.

Why do people get all upset about it?
There's lot of reasons. For one thing, passing off someone else's work as your own is just rude, especially if you're using it to get attention. It gets even more annoying when people creating fan-based games like M.U.G.E.N. or Beats of Rage decide to snatch someone else's work and throw it in a game without credit. That's because people will start to assume that the original spriter or sprite editor took their work out of the game and call THEM the sprite thief. As bass-ackwards as that sounds, it happens.

Here's one of my favorite golden rules about anything: Anyone who has done something that you couldn't do or were too lazy to do deserves to be credited if you use what they've done in a project. If it weren't for them, you couldn't have done it. I think that sounds fair.

So what?!? I'm gonna use this sprite edit as a base anyway. I mean, how would anybody find out?
Ah, this is where the nature of the human mind comes into play. See, if you're foolish enough to think that and follow through with your plan, then you're probably not smart enough to notice all the little details that have been changed in that edit. Sometimes, editors add an extra shade of color that wasn't in the original sprite or do some resizing techniques. Other times, we use a technique called Frankenspriting where parts from multiple sprites (or even multiple characters) are cut and pasted together into a single sprite that still looks like the base company's style. Editors also make parts from scratch, especially weapons. In other words, we add a lot of things that would be almost impossible for anyone else to duplicate exactly. This even goes for people taking sprites from M.U.G.E.N. SFF files of seemingly non-edited characters. For a while, it seemed like at least one person a week got horribly embarassed after getting caught snatching edited sprites from the Evil Ken.

HentaiTifaFanlollerz

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Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 7:39 PM

This only took 10 minutes to do :)

comments, plz

get rich or die tryin'

HentaiTifaFanlollerz

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RE: Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 7:40 PM

Commnets plz

get rich or die tryin'

NeonKingKong

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RE: Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 7:41 PM

A few tips:

1.) NEVER save as a JPEG. It destroys all the detail in the pixels.

2.) Captain America is way too huge of a base for that character. You should've tried some Vega (claw-guy, not Psycho Crusha-guy) sprites to get the right body proportions.

3.) That's just sloppy in every aspect. I can't even begin to critique all the mistakes. You got the colors right from the original KoD sprite, so it's not as if you lacked the needed reference material.

4.) Using other people's sprite edits as a base for your own without crediting them is bad form. Punk.

It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.

HentaiTifaFanlollerz

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RE: Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 7:42 PM

No I made that from Captain America.

get rich or die tryin'

Agent GameSmith
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RE: Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 7:55 PM

Come on, son. That's just a half-a$$ed edit based on a sprite from ScrollBoss. Not only is it someone else's sprite edit to begin with, but it's a purposefully-bad sprite edit that's mocking sprite thieves. It's like a subconcious admission that you're a f@#$ing moron. Don't even try to claim that you made the bow from scratch and it just miraculously turned out to be the same, exact pixel placement as the one on ScrollBoss. No, wait... I dare you to try it.

I am POM.

HentaiTifaFanlollerz

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RE: Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 7:55 PM

I forgot that I got that from scrollboss and I forgot to credit it.

get rich or die tryin'

Agent GameSmith
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RE: Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 8:08 PM

Quote: No I made that from Captain America.

Quote: I forgot that I got that from scrollboss and I forgot to credit it.

So... which story do you plan to stick with? Here's a hint: neither one will keep you from getting suspended or banned for life.

Better luck on the next board, @$$.

I am POM.

NeonKingKong

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RE: Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 8:32 PM

Can we get an admin or mod up in here for some hot 'Ban-on-thief' action?

It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.

King-S from F-Mountain

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RE: Elf dude from King of Dragons
Posted: March 7, 2005 9::04 PM

TifaFan, did you read the board rules? No sprite thieves or dirty centaurs.

BANNED.

edit: I'm locking this thread before Gamesmith causes this kid to start cutting himself.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Read the rules, for crap's sake.

That's just a nice version of how it usually goes down. Not a pretty sight, is it?

Who are you to judge me?!? If you make sprite edits then you're stealing sprites, too!
Yeah, we hear that a lot from people who have a habit of missing the entire point of things or just want to get away with something. Here's your Muppet News Flash, son: it's called a sprite edit because it's an edited version of a pre-existing sprite. The mere name of it tells you that the person doing it isn't taking any credit away from the original company. That'd be like calling Rage Against the Machine 'song thieves' for doing a remake of Afrika Baambata's Renegades of Funk or claiming that action figure customizers are trying to take credit from Toy Biz or Hasbro manufacturing plants whenever they do a custom figure.

By the way, one main goal of sprite editing is to make an image that looks as if the company who made the original sprites also made other characters in that same style. Sprite edits are a visual way of saying things like, "What if Capcom had made a DC Comics game?", "What if SNK had brought all it's Metal Slug characters into the KoF series?" or "What if there was a Sega vs. Capcom fighter with Capcom drawing the sprites?" It's definitely the reason why I do it. Before I even had a computer to sprite edit with, I'd sketch out what I'd love to see in a Marvel character that hadn't been in a Capcom fighter yet. That's right, I fantasized more about what Capcom would do more than if I could personally make my own comic fighting games. That's the same kind of thinking that many sprite editors and spriters have when they do sprites in a pre-existing style. Kinda hard to claim that we're trying steal credit when we're purposefully trying to get people to imagine that the company made the sprite, isn't it?

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