To me the idea of you making money off our work, whether or not you compensate us, just goes entirely against what we are doing here. Shipbucket has always been a non-monetized collective of ship artists who do this as a hobby, for our own purposes.
If our artists want to draw ships for you, that's great and totally acceptable but they should do it outside of Shipbucket. What I'm trying to say is that we are not a "drawing farm" where interested parties can show up, "compensate" an artist, throw a quick "artwork by shipbucket" somewhere in the rulebook, and be done.
Colosseum, evidently you've never worked as a commercial artist. There are many companies whose sole purpose is to act as a source of copyrighted material, which others pay for permission to use in their publications. Most artists are pleased when someone wants to publish their stuff, for the professional recognition, if nothing else.
I'm not trying to blow sunshine at anyone, but the Shipbucket website is a valuable resource for writers that need naval line art. It's all to a common standard, and of a uniformly high quality. Line art is often hard to find, and Shipbucket includes many unusual subjects. Most publishers use existing art whenever possible, since commissioning a drawing takes more time and money.
As far as the work not being entirely the creation of one person, the recognized standard is that if the majority of the work is that of the artist, then he has created a unique work and it can be copyrighted. I would also argue (and I'm not a lawyer) that the archive was created for the express purpose of serving as a common source for graphic elements.
Recognize that the drawings on Shipbucket have value, and as a commercial wargame designer, I think that it would improve the quality of my work. Dummy pages to follow.