Ok, regarding copyright, fan art and related stuff:
Fan art in itself is a derivative work, as pointed out by ficedula. Without the expressed permission from the original authors, fan art is a copyright infringement. There is, however, the exception of
Fair use. Basically, fair use is about the possibility to make a derivative work without the expressed consent of the original authors if you make a
fair use of the original content. In US law, fair use is defined along 4 principles: purpose& character, nature of copyrighted work, amount of copied material, effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
I can't see that it falls under fair use at all, realistically.
I personally see our work falling in the category of fair use, namely based on the following key principles:
- The purpose of our work is to improve the quality of the original art (transformative work, rather than derivative work), without getting personal profit.
- Our mods has to work on the original game: following that principle, anyone willing to play our mods has to pay for the game. In doing so, the only possible financial beneficiary of our mods is Square Enix. If we ever start to make a standalone remake, then we're heading for troubles, as history as shown with the Chrono Trigger resurrection project.
In order to be in the clear, the materials we use to achieve our goals should be our own, or used with expressed permission. This principle also follows one key direction in this site regarding models (i.e. ripped models are forbidden, even parts). In my opinion, the rules we have about the models have also to apply to the textures.
If you're working on the assumption of "likely an infringement of someone's copyright => don't do it", you kind of need to shut the whole project down.
If instead you're going for a more practical approach of "we don't care about copyrights, we just want to avoid doing things that draw attention" then, well, that's completely understandable, but be clear about what the approach is.
I believe we have to be in the clear regarding copyright and fair use. The approach of "we don't care about copyrights, we just want to avoid doing things that draw attention" is not viable at all. If this project is to be completed one day, there will have to be a moment when we get the word out, simply because we need manpower. At some point we will have to draw attention, and try to attract people to work on this project. We'll have to be very careful about how we do that (and that's why we'll have to stand in the clear), else we're going to get the same reactions as Kaldarasha got on Deviantart. Here's one basic consideration:
- I'm working quite a lot on this project, pretty much as much as I can while managing a balanced lifestyle (including a demanding full-time job). If I manage to complete my optimistic objectives I have set for the year, I will have finished about 10 scenes.
- There are 600+ scenes in the game.
- Do the maths about how many people we need and how long we need them, in order to complete the project in a reasonable amount of time. We can't achieve that if we stay underground.
I am sorry I though it was obvious that it was a joke. I didn't even fill in the black properly and it looks terrible please, nobody, consider using it for real. Seriously though, if I was gonna do it I'd probably do a 3d model first of a chibi in a similar pose but with more detail (like TA Cloud chibi). And then render him into the image.
Sorry for the misinterpretation - that's a classic shortcoming of written communication. Especially when you joke and speak seriously on the same topic. That's why we have all these emoticons
