UPDATED August 16, 2010
After a lot of thought, I have decided to open the majority of my smiley, emoticon, and pixel-font work for Commercial use. They are being licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
This page is to outline my requirements for use of my graphics. Allowing commercial use without payment is a big thing and I hope that users will be fair and honor my small requests in return for the use.
• I must be credited somewhere in the project. If it is a website and there is a credits page, I request that my name and moniker be used. Example: Smileys by Michelle Lehmann (a/k/a Mirz123).
• With the credit, there should be a link-back to this site. It may be a small text link and does not have to be clickable. However, it should point to the main page of http://www.scriptmonkeys.us.
• You may not modify the smileys or build upon them. If you need something special, please contact me. I do commission work. However, for the right project I might be willing to do some freebies.
• If you have a commercial website, blog, etc., you may use the images and/or fonts without payment.
• You may not sell the images on their own or as part of a pack. In short, you may not profit from the direct sale or distribution of this font. As example, and to make this more clear, you cannot add the smileys/emotes to a CD of smileys you are selling. However, if you are developing a forum system which you intend to sell, you may include the smileys in that project. If you have ANY questions about this provision, email me and I will be happy to clarify. If you are interested in distributing the individual graphics or fonts on their own, a different license is required and available. Please contact me to discuss terms.
• For commercial products and/or websites, you must contact me and let me know you are using my fonts and/or graphics. This is not for restrictive purposes, but the fact that I like to know when my work is being used for profit. It’s also a general courtesy. In addition, I must be provided with a copy of the final product (or link to a website/blog/etc.) so I can include same in my portfolio.
• My previous terms of use still apply. You may use my works, free-of-charge, for non-commercial use on your chats, websites, blogs, forums, and other systems. You may re-distribute them on collection sites as long as they are offered free-of-charge (no subscription needed, payment for premium content, etc.), as long as the filename and credit remains in-tact. For non-commercial uses, I appreciate a credit and link-back to my page, but it’s not required.
As an open-source developer and user myself, I understand and appreciate the value of good, free-use, resources. I know that offering this license may open my work up to abuse. But, honestly, if people are devious enough to not live up to the TOS, they would have most likely violated the terms even if I hadn’t changed the license. This change is for all of the good, fair, and honest people out there who want and need quality resources for their projects.
Of course, if you ever need custom graphics done, I hope you’ll keep me in mind.
Legal Stuff: These terms of service may be changed from time to time, without notice. I reserve the right to revoke this license at any time.
I have to admit, I love WordPress. I didn’t always love it. Years ago when it was still evolving, I found it more trouble than not. Admittedly, that was when I was still married to the old “hands-on HTML is the best” way of thinking. Well, WordPress certainly changed since then, and so has my attitude about it. I’m simply a girl in love.
Another one of my loves is smileys. I think it’s great that WordPress incorporates smileys into its system. However, the choice of smileys is not very exciting. There are some great plug-ins that allow you to expand your smiley options, but the available alternatives are few.
Recently, my own pixelling has been heavily in the emote area. Yes, even though I still think of them all as smilies myself, there IS a difference between emotes and smileys, and there are some people who are VERY particular about it. Nevertheless, when setting up a blog recently, I wanted a nice set of colorful emotes–and simply could not find any. Necessity is the Mother of Invention, so I went and created a batch myself.
This pack include 22 emoticons. All were hand-pixelled by me. The graphics are static, as I know there are many people who prefer non-moving emotes for their blogs. However, I am working to make an animated set of these emotes in the near future. Even though these emotes were developed for WordPress, they can certainly be used independently on forums, websites, chats, etc.
The pack also includes all of the necessary files for WordPress, as well as a Readme with my terms of service. I do want to also note that the file names of the smileys are the same as the base names of the default WordPress smileys. So, if you don’t want to mess with installing a pack, you can just upload these to your smiley directory. They will overwrite/replace the originals and should work fine.
You can download the pack HERE. We’ll also be listing it over at the WordPress site soon. scriptmonkeys-basic
This has been a side project that I have worked on the last couple of weekends. Thing is, I’m really excited about it because it didn’t really take that long at all to do and the results are pretty impressive.
History: A smiley artist name Laie created a program to generate graphical signatures which ran in DOS. He would take requests from users for signature graphics featuring a smiley spray-painting the letters. Unfortunately, the demand for graphics was more than he could handle. Eventually, he worked with another programmer to create an online version of the utility. However, due to professional differences, Laie and the programmer parted ways and the generator was taken down. The programmer went on to create his own, different version, but many online users desired for the original generator to come back. When I saw the original signatures years ago, I had wanted to write a program to automate it back then. Eventually I learned that the other programmer had already done it, so I never followed-up. Recently, when I learned that original version was disabled, I approached the artist about making a new, improved version based on his original code and concept. I was excited when Laie expressed interest in collaborating on the project.
Laie developed and owned the original DOS source code for the project, as well as the graphics and concept. The source code for the online version was written by someone else and since we did not have permission to use that code, I knew from the beginning I needed to build the new version from the ground-up. That was okay, since I was eager to write my own code for this–not to mention Michelle works for lawyers and wouldn’t have let me re-use the code if I wanted to. The original version was written utilizing Gifsicle to generate the graphics. To differentiate the programs, as well as for personal preference, I decided to write my script utilizing only GD libraries. My work on GifMonkey (a command-line program I wrote for my wife to help her do complex animated gifs) was very useful, as it gave me experience in what to do and not to do in the coding. The source code was not the only thing re-done. All the graphics were updated so that automatic functions, such as changing the letter colors, spacing, and other aspects were refigured and deficiencies corrected. That was probably the hardest and most time-consuming part, and thankfully it was taken care of by the artists: Laie and Mirz.
Aside from re-doing the program, we also added dozens of features. Many were requests from users of the old program, while a good number were things that Michelle had always wanted in the original and felt were good ideas to incorporate. Laie was ever present through the whole process, adding new graphics and input on the layout and functionality. It was a nice collaboration.
Due to the varied ownership of the graphics and original idea, the code will not be sold or distributed. It will remain a free online utility which will be hosted on a few sites owned by the contributors to the script. Nevertheless, it is a project I am very proud of. If you would like to see it in action, you can see it HERE.
As some of you know, Michelle is the graphics part of our team. She is the one who designs the layouts of most of our templates and websites. She is also a talented pixel artist. We have both wanted to foray into full-length animation, but haven’t had the time or the project. This past December, Michelle got an idea to make a Christmas lights house display set to music. It ended up being quite a challenge, but we managed it. I know it’s past the holidays, but it’s still a pretty good watch and we’re very proud of it. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure.
Since I do a lot of pixel-art, I often find myself doing signage. Particularly with smaller pieces, it’s hard to make the letter legible. Usually it requires hand-pixelling the letters, which can be tedious. The Nano-Bit font was developed to be distinguishable and for lettering which will be read quickly and briefly. It’s not intended for large blocks of text.
This font is really best used in all-caps, though it features lower-case as well. This is a condensed, short font, but it is pixel wider that what you need, so it cannot be considered the most compact of fonts; it still may give you fits in super-tight spaces, but hand-kerning can help with that. This is a full font set, including ALL special characters. The zip file includes the font, a readme file, plus a copy of the graphic above so you can see the full set. When using a graphics program, this font works best at 6pts.
This font is free use for personal and non-commercial projects. If someone is interested in licensing for commercial work, there is more information in the readme.
Download the font HERE.
This font is named after the superhero character in my pixel-art/smiley comic, Bitmap World. When we first started the comic, 2 1/2 years ago, I created 4 unique pixels fonts for use in the strip. Rasterman is not one of the those 4, but a new creation based on one of the older works. It is a condensed, shortened version of the Bitmap World font (which is used for the main lettering of the strip). I don’t have any plans of releasing the official Bitmap World font, so this is as close as you can get!
This happens to be one of my favorite fonts. It’s much different than most other pixel fonts, yet is still very stylized and readable.
This is a full font set, including ALL special characters. The zip file includes the font, a readme file, plus a copy of the graphic above so you can see the full set. When using a graphics program, this font works best at 6pts.
This font was created based on hand-pixelled lettering done by an artist friend of mine. Devil-Man-Josh over at deviantArt had done an avatar using the lettering. I liked it so much, I asked him if I could convert it to a font. Since he only had a few letters, he went and created the whole set. Problem was that his uppercase letters were a bit too big, so I ended up creating all the capital letters as well as the special characters. So, this font is a collaborative effort.
This is a full font set, including ALL special characters (only a few are shown in the example). The zip file includes the font, a readme file, plus a copy of the graphic above so you can see the full set. When using a graphics program, this font works best at 6pts.
You can visit Josh at his page on deviantART [link].
As with many of our creations, my foray into pixel fonts was out of necessity. I was working on our upcoming webcomic and wanted a pixelated font for the lettering. Thing was, I was not concerned about size. I wanted something on the larger side, but still with some style to it. At the time, most of the fonts were just too small to be read on a large scale. I was lucky enough to come upon an online bitmap font maker [link], which allowed me to create my own. The site is awesome for the casual user. You can create a full font set, including all standard typographical character. However, since it is an online utility, the fonts can be a bit off and need manual kerning. For a free utility, though, it’s a small complaint.
Eventually, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase commercial software to make my fonts. Since then, I have remastered my original fonts, plus made several more. My true love is pixel fonts, which is what I have exclusively made thus far. I may branch out into regular fonts later, but for now am happy to stick to this.
I will be featuring the fonts in separate entries. To view them all, click on the FONT category button in the left-hand navigation bar.
I remember when I first saw a “mood” in a blog program, I thought it was the coolest thing. Now, mood-designation is everywhere and is a nice part of online life. It’s a good way to let everyone know how you’re doing without “getting into it.”
When we switched over to Phorum, the mood is one of the things I missed most about our old system. However, at the time, we just didn’t have the time to code it. Plus, Jim was not nearly as knowledgeable about the Phorum system then. Flash forward a few months and Jim has finally tackled the mood!
The module comes with 30 pre-installed moods. The graphics were created by me using various smilies, some created by me, some not.
You can download the module from the Phorum website HERE.
You can pretty much put the mood anywhere you want, but the module adds it to the user’s posting info. Screenshot below. You could easily use the Custom Profile module and have the mood displayed there as well.
This was a module that was requested by several people on the Phorum Support forum. Personally, I had never thought about this, but it would be an important thing for those who have closed/private forums. We’ll be using this module on several of our forums.
