Please distribute these icons freely, but always distribute them in their original form, i.e. as you received them, and with this ‘About the Icons’ file. Please do NOT distribute them as an Icon Collector set, for example—so keep a copy of this original distribution set for giving to friends. Thanks for paying attention to this. They may of course be distributed in any CD ROM freeware/shareware collection. Let me know if you do this.
I have no intention of violating anyone’s rights by distributing these icons, and I don’t see how I could have. But if I am wrong (and you’re sure of it), then please let me know quickly, so that I can arrange for them to be removed from the archive.
About the Icons
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These icons are my attempts at drawing various characters from the Railway Series children’s books by the Rev. W. Awdry. I was brought up on these books, and have a particular affection for them. Most of the pictures are copied from the original books. When the series was made into a television programme, some of the characters changed slightly. I found some inconsistancies in Thomas in particular, which may go some way towards explaining why my picture of him here is not as good as the others. (I didn’t have access to a book with his picture when I drew these—only a photograph from the television series in a catalogue.)
I used a variety of methods to draw the icons. I did Gordon first, copying freehand from an illustration in one of the books. James, and Donald and Douglas, the Scottish twins, were done by laying a grid over an illustration. (I have to admit cheating—using the same icon again and making a mirror image for Douglas.) Henry was scanned, and then heavily retouched by hand to sort out the colours. Actually, his picture is a composite of two different ones, as he was frowning in the illustration I had of him seen from the angle I wanted. I didn’t want an icon of an unhappy Henry, so I took his face from another illustration. Unfortunately, this made the nose look odd, so I had to take this from the first illustration. It would probably have been quicker to draw him by hand from scratch…
Toby was scanned, and then completely redrawn, using the scanned image as a rough guide, as was Percy. The Fat Controller was scanned and the retouched.
I have tried to stick to the Apple standard icon colours, so that when the icons are selected they dim properly. Unfortunately, this was only possible completely for Thomas, Gordon, Donald, Douglas, and James. The Apple standard icon colours don’t contain enough greens for Percy and Henry.
There are a few other miscellaneous icons included as a bonus.
