One of the things I could really use is an animated dragon sprite that is compatible with the LPC assets. I have looked several times if I could find something similar, but so-far I haven't been able to find one. Making my own from scratch is out of the question, since at the very least I lack the animation skills (and possibly the drawing skills as well, though I've created some workable pixel art in the past and am up to modifying existing art to my needs).

This morning it occurred to me that back in the late 90s, I wrote something that used an animated dragon sprite that is similar to what I want. The killer: I took that dragon sprite from WarCraft 2 (using a tool that allows extraction of the sprites). I still have that project (and the sprite) sitting somewhere on a harddrive (they're findable in a google search as well). Of course, using this for anything at all is out of the question (even if I wanted to, which these days I'm not so inclined to do), but it occurred to me: if what I need from the image is a reference for how to do the animation, perhaps that's ok?

So what I've done is the following: I identified the location of the joints in the images, placed dots over them and so produced a rough skeleton that shows how the dragon moves. I then started drawing the overall shapes for head, body and wings that I want without reference to the copyrighted image.

Whether this will end up with something that is usable by me, let alone someone else, is an open question, but my immediate question is this: would doing this result in a derivative work based on non-open art, and thus not something that can be uploaded to a site like this? My mental image of what the sprite should look like in the end may well make it come out similar to the WC2 dragon anyway (drawing skills permitting) and the way I derived the control points will probably make the animation look similar as well, but I don't think the former should be a concern. I'm not sure about the latter.

Thoughts and suggestions welcome.