I've settled on a short-eared owl (Asio Flammeus) to serve as the mascot
and icon for Owltide. This is not a settled and final decision, but
rather a branding that's good enough for now.
To create the mascot I sketched some owls that I have saved to
/assets/mascot/owl-sketch.png and then selected one I liked. Going
clockwise from the top right the sketches were based on the reference
photos [1], [2], and [3] found by searching for "owl" on Wikimedia
Commons. I then lightly refined it to work as a small icon.
To avoid confusing terms that only make sense for software the artworks
are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
License. This has a similar spirit to the AGPL and ensures that should
improvements be made upon them they can be incorporated in the project.
[1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Athene_cunicularia_-near_Goiania,_Goias,_Brazil-8_edit.jpg
[2]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hibou_des_marais.jpg
[3]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uhu-muc.jpg
The name is inspired by the watchful owl perching from the tree tops
with complete overview of all that's going on combined with -tide in
the sense it's used for in words like summertide and eastertide.
