Sorry for not replying too fast, I'm getting quite a lot of questions and it's hard to reply everyone quickly.

The photo references for griffin:
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-3268534/stock-photo-studio-shot-of-a-white-lion-cub-months-in-front-of-a-white-background.html?src=B2658D50-7E9D-11E2-AB40-FB1E1472E43D-3-0
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-12126589/stock-photo-lion-cub-months-in-front-of-a-white-background.html?src=B2658D50-7E9D-11E2-AB40-FB1E1472E43D-2-30
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-16122787/stock-photo-lion-cub-weeks-in-front-of-a-white-background.html?src=52327FD8-7E9D-11E2-B5EC-ADE0ACE6966E-2-29
The bird part isn't referenced. If you will move your look to the left, you will see another griffin of this type on my avatar which were created before the Aywas was launched.

Ariento, thanks for posting an overlay, I think it's self-explanatory.

Kolibri, I agree that redrawing stock items will give the game more individuality. But there's another point: the site was developed for almost 3 years. Remaking the existing images will mean the stop of further advancing. If we will redraw every stone pile for another half of year instead of adding new content, the project will die.

For those who saying about impression that I draw everything here: please post my exact quote where I was saying this.

About using DAZ renders. From DAZ EULA:

"User shall not give, sell, rent, lease, sublicense, or otherwise transfer or distribute the Content on a temporary or permanent basis without the prior written consent of DAZ. User may not reverse engineer, de-compile, disassemble, or create derivative works from the Content except as set forth in Section E above. These restrictions do not pertain to rendered 2-D images or pre-rendered animations."

Now lets not get ridiculous! It would NOT take half a year to redo the items , buildings, backgrounds and ONE pet!  Especially not, if you make it a contest as it has been suggested a few times by now!

You are afraid the site will die because there wont be any new contesnt for half a year. From my experiences on many other petsites who dont jank out new stuff every second day/week, I can tll you that you shouldnt fear about that, since it wont happen. It will not kill the site!

What will kill the site however is when the main administry keeps insisting on having it their way, even thought it can endanger the site majorly as a whole and even though the USERS are the ones who have multiple concerns about the issue!

This way you only scare away users / potential users and without users, the site WILL die.

I'm still not convinced about the Aywas Griffin part. It's too alike. You've posted lions that have similar poses, but the Griffin in question has the same inturn on the feet, flared wing pose and overall stature.

I'm not a professional artist but I have eyes. I'd be peeved if someone heavily referenced my art and started a site without credit.

Like I said, do a contest. I'm sure there are many people here biting at the bit to keep this site fresh. Redoing art does not slow development. It's part of development.

The other bonus of having a site-wide contest to redraw site-pets is that we'd have much more workable .psds to make custom skins with, which would attract even more users! 

The other bonus of having a site-wide contest to redraw site-pets is that we'd have much more workable .psds to make custom skins with, which would attract even more users! 

Exactly that, too!

@RedRarebit: An excellent point! You could have shading all on a separate layer, markings divided and areas of the pet sectioned off for individual colouring

Angel, I bet if you found someone willing to work on this as a project, you could continue using stock images and replace them as the new images are finished. I would keep the idea in a box in your mind. Small items are generally easy to spit out in short amounts of time.

I do also hope that you understand that we're trying to help. I generally enjoy your art, especially your horses that I've seen on Howrse (even though I'm not particularily impressed with the site itself). Complying with the concerns and demands of the user-base will keep you in check, and prevent backlash from outside parties. Like many here, I urge you to consider the options we've provided. You've shown us that you're more than capable of providing your users the suggestions they've made. Don't falter now.

Prof_Jamew, I have a normal job, family and about 10 pets, not mentioning other real-life things. The time which will be left after this (about 1 hour a day) will be used for remaking all the things you mentioned. How long should it take to your mind? And right now we don't have finances to pay the third-party artists to remake anything. No matter what form it will have: contest or direct payment.

Concerning commercial use of images. Commercial use means selling the image or its derivative, not the selling some in-game content which doesn't refer to this image.

There's a great quote which defines the commercial use of an image from http://www.techdirt.com:

Dont sell my photo!
Dont sell my photo retouched!
Dont sell my photo retouched with a lizard photoshopped into it!
Dont sell my photo with a retouched lizard, traced over with a digital pencil!
Dont sell a t-shirt with an image of a tracing of my photo with a retouched lizard!
Dont take a photo of someone wearing a t-shirt with an image of a tracing of my photo with a retouched lizard and use it on your ad blog!

 

We don't sell our images. And we're not going to.

Kolibri, everything is ok :) I understand that you all want to help us to solve the copyright issues. But we don't see copyright issues right now, though they will definitely appear if we will use the images which will be drawn for free by people which we don't know in real-life.

Angel! I did write you this very morning that I would work for free! And I am sure others would gladly do so too.

The problem is that once you start to profit from the site, you are profiting from using those images. Aka comercial use. -Especially- once you allow people to upload edited versions of that image using a currency bought with usd.

There are people here willing to do this for free, which is a fantastic opportunity! 

Edit: Sorry, didn't see the extra bit on the end there. There will be no copyright issues using the images that people have drawn expressively for you, for free. They'd be gifts, you could use them - there would be no issue at all, provided the person providing the drawing understood that ocne you accepted the art, it was yours and they had no claim to it.

The key point here is that the art would have been drawn for you to use. The artist would have agreed thats what the art was for, and you would own the art. 

about some of these things ... you are right to defend your use of poses cause you cant copyright a pose.

at this point in time every thing has been done befor if i drew a snail would i be said i was copying the persons who do the art for spongebob.

though i do say that if you say you got the refefrence for photos post the photos for the griffon. if you cant just get a new one.

but on some of the other points: mostly the legalility stuff

using stock images for this site should not be happing unless you show us proof that this site will NEVER take in others money to support it. once that happens this site will become comercial.

http://www.thehelpful.com/creativecommons/what-is-commercial-use.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1660885/what-does-commercial-use-exactly-mean

for this kinda thing though you would HAVE to consult a actual lawyer on its just best to get your own hired art then you dont have to worry about paying for a site completely out of your own pocket

takes the howrse bit back ... miss read something i though she was saying that she took the coat that she submitted and recolored it for this site for a bit -my appoligies.

please dont get yourself in trouble just cause you dont want to do something. you dont have enough money in your pocket, or it will take to long
 

In all honesty I see no resemblence with the Unicorn and the Coat from howrse. Mainly because the legs look much straighter and the tail is a tad different. The head as well is relatively different. The coat from howrse looks....how should I say this...less realistic?(Not trying to offend, just saying). However I do agree that the griffin looks a tad bit similar. But like being said, you can't copyright a pose. I'm not an artist but I do understand how bad this would be if people claimed you used their art. Still, I don't think you stole anything and poses can't be copyrighted.

Koben; she didn't copy the coat, nor did she recolor it. I'm pretty sure some of those lines on the unicorn were re-done.

The difference on the griffin is that not only is the pose the same, the concept is also the same. When both are the same, it comes into an issue of copyright/using an image too much as a reference. If it were -just- the pose things wouldn't be an issue, but too many of the features match up as well.

I am wondering why some people just can't accept that they are wrong.
But more I wonder why devs wasting their time trying to prove something to such people.
I would suggest to just ban all those jelous underage persons and spent freed time on implementing new features and fixing bugs.

I am sure most of the players should be happy with that.  :)