have any of you also hit that point where you love the adopts/custom designs you have and then realize that you probably can't do anything with those designs outside of your head @_@?

i wanted to participate in nanoreno with a short visual novel of my characters, but... then realized that none of the designs are my own!! even though the characters are my own, their designs aren't in terms of reproduction and though that should've been Plum Obvious (tm), it only really hit me now orz

it would've been a free game too, don't get me wrong, but what if i wanted to do more with them after? or what if i had a donation button? it's too close to the realm of 'putting characters out there in a potentially commercial way' that i'm not comfortable with it. i considered contacting the artists, but i know that's not something artists want to have to wrestle with + some of the artists have vanished off the face of the earth o(-<

at the end of the day, i bought the adopts i bought because they inspired something in me, so i guess adoptables could be considered like... stock reference for characters? LOL argh it's gonna suck having to detach my emotional attachment for the designs, but maybe this is a good wake-up call for me to design my own for once

i don't know where i was going with this, but it's kinda been weighing on me and sapped a lot of my love for the designs i have and i just wanted to spitball it, sorry T_T