About Us.
iSourceTextures.com is co-owned by Liz and Martin who are work associates within the Computer Graphics industry.
We are both freelance texture artists who have been working in the commercial texture industry for several years.
Because of our background in virtual worlds, online games and commercial texture creation we know only too well how difficult and time consuming it can be to find good quality, legal texture stock by browsing the Internet.
During a discussion in 2009, we compared our experiences of stock sourcing on the internet and discovered we both faced similar problems and hit the same "brick walls"
We found after spending hours searching for a specific texture on standard stock sites, the images we did find were very often taken from "artistic angles" making them impossible for many types of digital artwork were the final image required seamless capabilities.
Then, quite often we were faced with the "Extended License" fees required if you wish to distribute/sell your end product.
You can find out more about Extended Licensing here:
http://wiki.envato.com/buying/licenses-buying/videohive-regular-and-extended-license-usage-examples/
The required license for "electronic distribution" on most stock sites can cost in excess of $100 - $500 per texture.
It was not cost effective for us to pay $100, we simply do not get a big enough "return" in profits to justify that kind of license fee.
It was fairly obvious most stock sites aim their stock at publication houses and advertising companies with corporate budgets, not self employed, freelance artists like us.
We were both excited to find a wonderful free texture site that misleadingly advertised "FREE Textures - commercial use".
When we read the small print in the User License it explained any form of distribution of artwork was not allowed, commercial or not.
Quite often licenses on websites would appear to contradict themselves or were written in lengthy legal "mumbo jumbo" that was hard to make sense of.
(Of course if in doubt, ask. It is always the best policy, even if the owner never replies to you, never make assumptions. It's not worth the potential risk of breaching another persons copyright)
In short, we found there were almost no texture resources on the internet that allowed CG artists to share or sell their artwork created using texture stock as derivatives.
A good texture resource is vital to any digital artist who requires the ability to sell or share his end product with others, and the types of distribution can vary.
It was this frustration that pushed us into taking our own texture photos.
We would have happily paid a few dollars for legal high resolution stock that allowed commercial distribution. Sadly, all except one website did not allow such use or if they did, you had to pay extended license fees which cost way above the return in any profit we potentially could have made.
In April 2009 we decided to develop the iSourceTextures website you see today.
The site went live in July 2009 and we are now able to offer our texture stock for sale to other artists who work in similar CG areas as we do.
We have tried to keep things affordable and simple.
We made all of our unedited textures available for free download at the smallest resolution size of 600 pixels whilst still allowing some commercial usage.
(With the exception of creating texture collections for distribution. See user license - http://www.isourcetextures.com/user-license)
Our free textures would be perfect for tutorial and blog sites, game developers, graphic design courses in colleges and for props and scenes in 3D applications, commercial or not.
But more importantly, we offer the ability to purchase our Large and Extra Large textures for around $1.00 to $2.00 each and they can be used as derivatives for "commercial texture distribution"
These would be perfect for commercial 2D or 3D artists who wish to include their textures as part of their end product or texture artists who make and sell texture collections.
We do not charge anything for "extended licenses" because we don't sell them.
The ability to sell or share your artwork having used our textures as derivatives is included in the price of the texture.
You won't see $99.00 extended license fees on our website.
We believe most CG artists would much rather pay a few dollars for the speed and convenience of using legal, good quality texture stock as derivatives within their own artwork than waste precious hours of "creation time" taking photographs.
Our aim is simple, we want to bring CG artists and low price, high quality texture stock together under one roof.
Whilst we are still fairly new in our venture, we hope in the months and years that follow isourcetextures.com will become a well known name within the online community of digital artists and perhaps the first port of call when you're looking for a texture resource for your next art project.
More Questions? Please visit the User License tab or contact us directly from the Contact page.
