Terms of use

The Site lets you publish a new icon by making a small change to a pixel-art icon that's already published (“evolving” it), and lets you search and download published icons — all for free. No account is needed.

If you're a minor, please get a parent or guardian's consent before you use the Site and publish icons.

Anyone may use the icons published on the Site for free, on these terms, except in the ways prohibited below:

• Personal or business, commercial or not. For commercial use, though, one work (a website, app, video, printed item and so on) may use up to 16 icons. Non-commercial use has no limit.
  • A line's evolution shown generation by generation (the Site's evolution GIF, or images or a video in generation order) counts one per 8 generations (with any left over counting one too — 20 generations count three). An evolution that branches, as in a family tree, counts each branch's end by its generations from the root.
  • Icons you evolved and published yourself don't count toward the 16 — those icons themselves only: their parents and descendants, and evolutions, count as above. The prohibitions below apply to your own icons all the same.
  • To use more than 16, please ask through the contact form.
• No credit (the Site's name) is needed.
• You may edit them — change their colors, shape or size, or combine them with other material.
• You may use them as part of a website or app, a document, printed matter such as flyers, a video, and so on.
• You may input them into generative AI, such as image generators or AI chat services (including uploading them as images, and using them as a reference or source image for generating images), and use them as training data for AI or machine learning. Images generative AI makes from an icon count as edited icons: the same conditions and prohibitions apply to them.

But you may not:

• Distribute or sell the icons themselves as material (including as an asset pack, icon set or template, distributed as a training dataset, or built into an app or service as icons or avatars its users can pick — whatever the number).
• Use an icon as a logo, mark or trademark, or register one as a trademark.
• Make and sell or distribute goods whose main design is an icon (including T-shirts, stickers, merchandise, digital stickers for messaging apps, and printed matter where an icon is the main design) — except by the operator, under (4) of “Rights in published icons”.
• Use them for the activities of a political party, political group or candidate, for election campaigning, or to promote a political cause.
• Use the icons in a way that suggests the Site or its operator made or endorsed your use.
• Use them for anything against public order or morals, to defame anyone, or against the law.

These restrictions apply to edited icons just the same. And you won't use an edited icon as grounds to claim or register copyright or other rights in the original icon, getting in the way of the operator's or anyone else's use of it.

• To publish an icon, tick the confirmation on the publishing screen and agree to these terms. For each published icon, the operator records which version of these terms was agreed to, and when.
• Anyone can view, download and further evolve an icon you publish. Once published, its drawing can't be changed or deleted (its name and tags can).
• By publishing, you guarantee that the change you made is your own creation and doesn't infringe anyone else's copyright, trademark or other rights — existing characters, company or product logos, other people's work and so on.
• You can change the name and tags of an icon you published from My record, in the browser you published it from. What's needed to change them is kept only in that browser and can't be issued again: you can't change them from another device or browser, or after clearing the browser's data. Anyone who can use that browser, or who learns the address (URL) of the icon's edit page, can change the icon too.

Every icon on the Site is made by users changing an ancestor icon prepared by the operator, or an icon of a later generation. The copyright in the ancestor icons, and in the example evolutions the operator made (shown in How it works and the evolution hints), belongs to the operator. Where a user's change is creative, the icon may be a derivative work of the icon it was made from, as its original work, and the user holds the copyright in the change they made. That copyright stays with the user after the icon is published. On top of that, so that everyone can use icons in which many people's rights overlap, and evolve them further, without worry, you grant the following license:

• When you publish an icon, you grant the operator, under the copyright you hold in it, a non-exclusive, irrevocable, free license, without limit of time or territory, to:(1) publish and display the icon on the Site, and let other users evolve it further (including modifying it and making and using derivative works of it);(2) make the icon available for anyone to use as set out in “Using the icons” above (including sublicensing its use to third parties for that purpose);(3) use it to introduce and promote the Site and the service;(4) make and sell or distribute products whose design is the icon (including goods, digital stickers for messaging apps such as LINE stickers, and publications such as books), including having a third party make or sell them on the operator's behalf.
• If the operator hands the running of the Site over to someone else, this license extends to them.
• You agree not to exercise moral rights in the icons you publish against the operator or anyone the operator allows to use them (including people using icons under “Using the icons” above, and people who evolve them further).
• You won't assert any right in the icons you publish in a way that gets in the way of their use under these terms.
• You agree that the operator may use, change, delete or publish, free of charge, the names you propose in a naming vote (including one chosen as a new species name), and you won't assert any right in them in a way that gets in the way of those uses on the Site. You also won't apply to register a proposed name as a trademark.
• The operator offers published icons for anyone to use for free, as set out in “Using the icons” above — the users who published them included.

The rights in the Site's design, text and software, and in the database of published icons, belong to the operator or their rightful holders. Collecting icons in bulk by scraping or other automated means, or using them for a service similar to or competing with the Site, isn't allowed without the operator's prior permission (ordinary indexing by search engines excepted).

You may not publish, as an icon, its name or tags, or a name proposed in a naming vote:

• Anything that infringes copyright, trademarks, portrait rights or other rights of others.
• Information that identifies a person, such as a name, address or phone number.
• Anything defaming people or groups, discriminatory, or sexual.
• Advertising, solicitation, spam, or anything meant to send people to other sites.
• The names of existing characters or works, or the names of real people.
• The names of political parties, political groups or candidates, or political causes.
• Anything against the law or public order and morals.

Putting excessive load on the Site's servers, and unauthorized access, are also prohibited.

We may hide or delete, without notice, icons or proposed names that break these terms or that we judge inappropriate. The operator may change a species name that's inappropriate.

When we hide an icon for containing something that infringes another's rights, we may also hide the icons evolved from it that carry that element on.

For an icon that infringes the rights of the operator or others, that we judge likely to come to infringe them as it evolves further, or that we judge doesn't fit the Site, the operator may stop evolving from that icon and its descendants — for a while to look into it (“dormant”), or for good (“fossil”). Dormant icons and fossils can still be viewed and downloaded unless they're hidden.

If you notice an infringement, please tell us with “Report this icon” on the icon's page or through the contact form.

For how things arising from using the Site or its icons are handled, see the disclaimer.

The Site may change its content, or pause or end the service, without notice. The operator isn't liable for damage this causes, except where caused by the operator's intent or gross negligence.

We may change these terms as needed. Before a change that's unfavorable to users, we'll announce the new terms and the date they take effect on this page in advance. Other changes take effect when they're posted on this page.

These terms are governed by the laws of Japan.