Hey @theshoemaker thanks for asking about the right way to do something like this. Your dark theme looks good and I appreciate you taking the time to put this together. @vortico and I have already discussed adding a dark theme for VCV plugins (there’s a screenshot in this thread for example) and we might implement something like this one day for the Fundamentals and other modules.
Unfortunately as @vortico has mentioned the CC BY-NC-ND license does not allow derivative works. The VCV logo is also a registered trademark and shouldn’t be used without permission.
So I would prefer if you kept this repo private. Not only will it be redundant if we end up adding a dark theme for VCV modules eventually, but when you distribute this material to others it may appear that the material was created/supported/endorsed/approved by VCV. Personal use is not a problem of course. It’s only a problem when derivative material is shared with others. Others may take your material and use it in a commercial product for example. We have no way of enforcing that violation of the license if the material is located in a repo that we do not control. You will inherit numerous problems and responsibilities by using copyrighted material in this way.
As for recreating the module designs from scratch in your design software, using the original vector graphics from the SVGs and and the position data and so on is not the problem. The problem is whether the final product looks like the original design. Recreating copyrighted material from scratch – such as typing out a chapter of a book instead of copying and pasting it from a website – does not automatically give you unique rights to the original material. If the final product is substantially similar to the original then it’s probably still a derivative work.