Kitbashing. It seems like a dirty word to most. Only wannabes with no talent resort to kitbashing. People who can’t make skins on their own.
Well I’ve got something to say that might shock you. I don’t mind kitbashing. In fact, I love it. Kitbashing made me the skinner I am today. In fact, I still have a couple of skins that ARE kitbashes. And quite a few that are little more than recolourings of in-game skins. These facts are, of course, mentioned in the readme files, but I don’t see anything wrong with it.
I started skinning from Gryphon’s bases. This was before I even had the game. Back when I just played the demo. I don’t even know how I stumbled onto his site. Let me tell you… those skins sucked. Hard. I think I made about five of them. Then I forgot about Freedom Force. Some time later I finally got the game. It was sweet, and I loved it. While looking for Gryphon’s site again, I came across even more sites with skins. And then a whole forum. After downloading some skins I got to thinking… maybe I could use some pieces from them to make my own skins. I’d change colours around, mix and match. Most of them were kept personal, but some I showed to people. I’d give credit where credit was due, but I enjoyed the fact that I could make my own characters, and have them look fairly decent.
Eventually I started working with GIMP more, and found I could do some neat stuff, all by myself. I would still occasionally trace over other people’s skins to find correct shapes, but I learned to wane myself off of them. These days I still study people’s skins for reference, but I can make something look just fine all on my own. Still, I wouldn’t have gotten where I was without the original kitbashing.
Now, I can understand why it is frowned upon. People don’t want their work stolen. People don’t want other people running around claiming to have created what they, themselves, spent hours doing. I get it. Heck, I don’t want that either. That’s why I am setting up some rules.
That being said, if these rules are followed... I allow any of my skins to be kitbashed. Hopefully this will help new skinners to learn and to grow, and eventually become good skinners in their own right.
Rule 1:
Credit. Make sure to include me somewhere in the readme file. As simple as “some parts kitbashed from the _____ skin by UnkoMan.” A link would be nice, but isn’t necessary.
Rule 2:
Don’t be a jerk. You can show the skins off, and you don’t have to explicitly state what’s mine, but if somebody calls you on it… accept it. Some people get all “No way! It’s totally mine! Look at this and this!” Don’t feel bad about owning up to kitbashing. Especially since they are going to be able to prove it, and you’re just going to look like an idiot for arguing.
Rule 3:
Don’t just kitbash. That is to say, maybe you want a guy in pants and you want to use some I did (although I don’t know why you would, since mine stink). Do something with them. Change the colour. Change the cut. Experiment and try things out. The reason I want to let people kitbash is not so they can just cut and paste pieces to make their own skins. It’s so you can discover how other people do things and take those techniques and expand upon them. Ultimately I want to help people become as good, if not better, at skinning than I am. It’s not that long a road, so at least try it out.
And that’s pretty much it. Just remember that I still reserve the right to ask you to stop using my skins, or hosting skins made from mine at any time. It’s only if somebody ends up abusing the right, though. Most of the time I won’t bother exercising this, but some people always have to try and ruin everything. I know, this whole thing maybe was a lot to read, but I thought it important that I get it out there. Hopefully somebody will take some of this and apply it. If I can help just one person along, I know I did right.
Welp, happy skinning everybody.
