On Tracing in Fanarts
Jul. 3rd, 2015 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dagronratI saw something yesterday (at least I think it was yesterday), about someone plagiarising fanfiction & also tracing their fanart.
The word for word plagiarism of stories? Serious stuff, not to be taken lightly, agreed.
Calling them out on tracing? Sure, there can be some issue of plagiarism/dishonesty with that, but I don't think it's quite that comparable when the pictures traced were clearly references - photos used to help with the pose desired and figure out tricky folds. It'd be a different kettle of fish if they were reposting/tracing exactly another fanartist's work and claiming as their own, but no... It's tracing pictures of sportsmen and changing the head while putting other fandom characters alongside, giving the picture a different tone.
Don't get me wrong, it is good to call them out on tracing. Just don't equate it to plagiarising artwork outright.
(Although I understand that using photo references that aren't one's own is not always smiled upon... but so very many artists do do it, professional as well as amateur. I myself am very guilty of it since as much as I love using references for art, I am lazy and google images is my downfall. You try finding a person/place/object matching the image in your head that is willing to pose/available for you to sketch/photograph yourself when its for fanart and you don't want to feel self-conscious about it or explain what you're doing.)
I find that tracing from reference images is most problematic because it is lazy. It should only be a tool, not a crutch.
It's what you do when you want to practice shapes you find difficult to eyeball (aka draw by looking at), or want to get certain proportions just right or what not.
People tried tracing filmed footage of actors for doing cartoons: Rotoscopy, and it ended up looking all wrong and dead and stilted because guess what? An image captured by a single lense is horrendously flat compared to what we see everyday with two eyes. The composite image our sight puts together in our heads brings in the depth and volume and all that detail that a traced image just files away. When you're tracing you don't get the wee construction lines or exagerations that copying by eyeballing gives you. More often than not you'll end up with uniform thickness lines that'll have none of the descriptiveness of drawing with varying thickness (aka: weight - how hard you push on the pen/cil) to your lines that can hint at shadow, heaviness of a shirt, solidity of a box, that sort of thing. (In video & photographic footage this sort of indication is provided by the million varied pixels that capture lighting.) Putting images together solely by tracing is like only using black to make darker shades of colours when painting - it can very easily "kill" a picture, and you need to be very, very good at it to pull it off, or aiming for that impression in the final piece.
I understand how tempting it can be to rely on tracing with programs like photoshop that make it ridiculously easy, especially when drawing directly into such software can be very difficult and frustrating (I should know, it drives me to distraction more often than not, graphics tablets being what they are and mice being useless), and also with the possible lack of scanning devices or decent cameras for hand drawn stuff when you just want to visually share this image created from your head...
I'll be honest, I really wasn't surprised to learn that the person in question had traced their fanart. It certainly explained the flatness I'd sensed when looking at it (though I loved the concepts, and I really respect that they made the effort to look for references). Hopefully being called out on it, they might attempt to eyeball some of their next drawings more & improve... if they are willing and can put in the extra time & concentration required.
At the end of the day - it is just fanart, done for fun, to share with fellow fans of the characters and brand. Not every fan out there has the time or inclination to train their hand-eye coordination for the level of art they envisage. Tracing is a legitimate way of doing that. Just, you know, be aware of its limitations.
The word for word plagiarism of stories? Serious stuff, not to be taken lightly, agreed.
Calling them out on tracing? Sure, there can be some issue of plagiarism/dishonesty with that, but I don't think it's quite that comparable when the pictures traced were clearly references - photos used to help with the pose desired and figure out tricky folds. It'd be a different kettle of fish if they were reposting/tracing exactly another fanartist's work and claiming as their own, but no... It's tracing pictures of sportsmen and changing the head while putting other fandom characters alongside, giving the picture a different tone.
Don't get me wrong, it is good to call them out on tracing. Just don't equate it to plagiarising artwork outright.
(Although I understand that using photo references that aren't one's own is not always smiled upon... but so very many artists do do it, professional as well as amateur. I myself am very guilty of it since as much as I love using references for art, I am lazy and google images is my downfall. You try finding a person/place/object matching the image in your head that is willing to pose/available for you to sketch/photograph yourself when its for fanart and you don't want to feel self-conscious about it or explain what you're doing.)
I find that tracing from reference images is most problematic because it is lazy. It should only be a tool, not a crutch.
It's what you do when you want to practice shapes you find difficult to eyeball (aka draw by looking at), or want to get certain proportions just right or what not.
People tried tracing filmed footage of actors for doing cartoons: Rotoscopy, and it ended up looking all wrong and dead and stilted because guess what? An image captured by a single lense is horrendously flat compared to what we see everyday with two eyes. The composite image our sight puts together in our heads brings in the depth and volume and all that detail that a traced image just files away. When you're tracing you don't get the wee construction lines or exagerations that copying by eyeballing gives you. More often than not you'll end up with uniform thickness lines that'll have none of the descriptiveness of drawing with varying thickness (aka: weight - how hard you push on the pen/cil) to your lines that can hint at shadow, heaviness of a shirt, solidity of a box, that sort of thing. (In video & photographic footage this sort of indication is provided by the million varied pixels that capture lighting.) Putting images together solely by tracing is like only using black to make darker shades of colours when painting - it can very easily "kill" a picture, and you need to be very, very good at it to pull it off, or aiming for that impression in the final piece.
I understand how tempting it can be to rely on tracing with programs like photoshop that make it ridiculously easy, especially when drawing directly into such software can be very difficult and frustrating (I should know, it drives me to distraction more often than not, graphics tablets being what they are and mice being useless), and also with the possible lack of scanning devices or decent cameras for hand drawn stuff when you just want to visually share this image created from your head...
I'll be honest, I really wasn't surprised to learn that the person in question had traced their fanart. It certainly explained the flatness I'd sensed when looking at it (though I loved the concepts, and I really respect that they made the effort to look for references). Hopefully being called out on it, they might attempt to eyeball some of their next drawings more & improve... if they are willing and can put in the extra time & concentration required.
At the end of the day - it is just fanart, done for fun, to share with fellow fans of the characters and brand. Not every fan out there has the time or inclination to train their hand-eye coordination for the level of art they envisage. Tracing is a legitimate way of doing that. Just, you know, be aware of its limitations.
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Date: 2015-07-04 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-06 06:39 am (UTC)People tracing Gosho's art used to annoy me, but I think it's mostly because the ones I saw never tried to make something new with it. I'm all for if it's to create fun stuff!