Credits
Who made this.
Above Black is built by whoever turns up and does the work. Everyone whose contribution was accepted is here, by name, with what they did.
Credit follows the IGDA Game Crediting Guidelines 10.1. Two rules from it shape this page. INCL.1: anyone with a real contribution is credited — contractor, freelancer, volunteer, no distinction. INCL.4: when work builds on earlier work, the people who made the original are credited first, in their own block, permanently.
The name is yours. ATTR.11 of the guidelines is explicit that credited names must be “true and correct to each individual’s lived experience”, not truncated and with cultural syntax preserved. You choose the name you appear under when you submit, and you can change it.
If something here is wrong or missing, that is a bug — say so and it gets fixed.
Original work
Character Design
The first sheet a character ever had. This credit does not move.
Derivative work
Additional Character Art
Revisions and replacements built on an existing sheet.
Everything else
Additional Support
Rights
The contributor agreement
Version v1-2026-08-13. Shown on the upload form and recorded
against every submission, with the version and a server-stamped timestamp.
Credit is not a licence, and the IGDA guidelines above say nothing about rights. If Above Black ships with art in it, it needs the right to ship that art. This is the whole of what you agree to when you submit:
This is my own work, and I grant Above Black a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, adapt and distribute it in the game and its promotional material, including commercially. I keep the copyright, and I am credited under the credit rules on this page. If it is not my own work, or contains anything I do not have the right to license, I will not submit it.
What that means in plain terms. You keep owning what you made — the licence is non-exclusive, so you can use it anywhere else, sell it, put it in your portfolio. What the game gets is permission to use it, including in a version people pay for. You are credited by name under the rules above, and the name is the one you choose.
What it does not do. It does not transfer copyright, it is not exclusive, and it does not cover anything you do not own. If you traced someone else’s sprite, adapted a licensed asset, or used AI output whose terms you have not read, it is not yours to license and the agreement does not make it so.
Submitting is refused outright if no agreement is recorded — the checkbox is a courtesy, the database is the enforcement.