Bloax wrote:?
Tapsu wrote:[...]shading the sum of cylinders of more regular fur[...]
The cylinders of individual hairs in the fur are not in the same direction as the general shape, this is why you see a dark spot on the forehead in my version while the general shape should have a highlight there. That way there is some hope that the brain derives that it must be fur without having to draw individual hairs at this tiny scale. This kind of effect is somewhat difficult to achieve and I am not trying to claim that I did it very well.
That being said, you can modify the sprites as you wish, I guess my preferred license would be cc0. I don't know what license you would usually expect, though.
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Some more comment about the adder shading example. In my version the adder is shaded holding the head up sideways, not up like cobra. Also, if characteristic features of real adders are attempted, then I strongly feel that the neck curve of the adder should be different and also the body and tail should be curved differently.
However, if users expect the neck direction to be up, this may be worth considering.
Also, my opinion is that banding is a final polishing issue, and should not be a priority over consistent highlights. But that is just me, I guess it is obvious that the current adder sprite works very well without consistent highlights.
Another user expectation is tentacles of real octopi in water being curved (that was a funny one, a few posts back). In order to best understand why the tentacles tend to be straight lines, often at right angles, a video may be useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7AqaKzJU3c&feature=youtu.be&t=30s. So, yeah, not perfectly straight, but the principle of tentacle movement creates straight lines. So should tentacles be drawn as straight lines? I think no, because user expectation trumps realism.
Most of the time there are some reasons to do something in a certain way, and there are other reasons to do the exact opposite.