Illegal tracers getting more subs

[KitKat]

I have been observing this site, its users, its comics, etc. Overall an amazing place to interact with! ! You get help, motivation, inspiration and so much more.

But...
This problem has already been going a lot commonly... but it's just a small vent that really annoys me sorry

Though, things I have observed. I won't mention who is who, I have a friend who has an eye whether it's traced things/people off of Google Images on Anime or not. I hope this acts as reminder.

But I have found a few people here who traces and getting more subs than people who worked so hard on their artwork. Like seriously... why?

I mean it's fine getting references and all that, but exactly tracing the lineart of someone's work is a big no no.

Anime pictures is I think number one that gets traced by a lot of people. And it can be easily seen. I appreciate people who pick up their own style of anime and you can easily tell that it's their own style inspired off anime. and the sketches and proof they show. But if it's common anime art that first shows in google images when you type "anime guy/girl" and they have been traced, my god.

Another annoying thing is people who have spent a lot of their time on their comics, you can tell by the quality, amazing skill, background, they get less subs than those who effortlessly didn't try to their layout their comics well and the art is even traced and a beginner in anatomy and even all over the place! . (I am talking about the comics that got published on a time basis almost at the same time and same maximum of episodes/pages)

I guess these people know different ways to promote their own comic, thus they get more subs. or more friends to help them ? Or maybe because of the preferable genres? I dunno. Depends on a lot of things, just a tiny rant I am so sorry!

I am not mentioning these people, but I hope you all have the guilt that tracing art / being an art thief and even proudly promoting them to any site just to get more subs like this one is an injustice to people who worked a lot on their art and are even underrated.

I know these things happen all the time, but I wish these more deserving people would reach their number of deserving subscribers soon than those who their art so effortlessly. I wish everyone to get the deserving fans and supporters they have!

People who worked hard for it will surely get what they deserve. This goes to the people who are starting out and have 0 audience, never give up and don't lose hope. Just continue doing what you love that would abide by the rules in creating art/comics, and you're fine.

I wish there was some sort of an art patrol around here that can monitor each comics being promoted and be determined whether they are traced/ stolen.

Another option, have a social media that posts how you do your art or posts wips, sketches. Simple as that. I am pretty sure a handful of people will like to know how you do your art and they can learn from them too.

[Charli.Snow]

I 100% get your frustrations... I have a question however. I am not confident in my art skills, and I am new to digital art. And when I try to just come up with a character or whatnot off the top of my head, I am not satisfied with it. I am one of those people that has to Look at something and be able to take inspiration and be able to proportion it properly, stuff like that. Is it wrong to look at my favorite artists work for inspiration or proper proportions, etc.?

[Charli.Snow]

I would say that I have a hard time proportioning the eyes, and the facial structure to my satisfaction unless I am looking at a reference of some kind. And sometimes I look at pictures of actual people, but sometimes I look at my favorite artists work as well.

[punkarsenic]

Is it wrong to look at my favorite artists work for inspiration or proper proportions, etc.?

absolutely not. every artist studies other artists to develop, and theres a thing called a 'master study' which is where you copy another artists work play by play. this would only be a problem if you pretended it was your own original work, or didnt credit the original artist.

that said, for your own development, id recommend also drawing directly from life - photos of people or models if ya lucky - for getting more confident in art and proportions, because this will help you develop your eye as an artist and develop your own way of drawing.

[mariusthered]

i get you frustrations. I have been on here for over five years now and I still have under 100 subs. thing is you just have to do your own thing and not sweat the small stuff, things will come and go when they are meant too and if a trend in your kind of comic happened you might just get a boost, but on the whole as long as you keep enjoying your art that's all that really matters.
personally I would not want the art police here, not because i trace but because it's the first step to causing major discord among artist's and the last thing we want is people reporting one another just because one person has higher subs or some other silly nonsense. I have been on other sites where people judge each other work and all it does is encourage troll behaviour and discourage upcoming artist's. if they trace now well they either stay at the same low level or they decide to improve later on, but people upsetting one another just makes people give up drawing.
Directly stealing each others comics is though a different matter that needs to be watched for.

[unknown_user]

Ok, I have drawn more than half of a poses in my comics, starting from sketches, made by tracing Google images, 3d models and my own photos. Of course, after that I added suitable clothes, changed figure type and some details (if necessary), which ironically often made everything look worse... For drawing heads I often use either 3d model generic heads (I rotate them to different suitable angles) or generic good sketches of heads, and then change hair and add face features, to get my characters.

But where is my fame? And where is good speed of drawing?

All what tracing allows me to do is getting not very horrible poses and correct head proportions in less time. And by less time I mean 3 or 4 hours instead of 10 for every pose drawing, which I would spend on it without trasing.

[KitKat]

It isn't wrong to get inspired by your favorite artists / comic creators for proper proportions, etc. I think all comic creators and artists have their own inspirations, they didn't just BOOM did their own art without someone's own art inspiring or motivating them. They learn from them a lot. Though one thing I could suggest is not to heavily use people's art styles and instead practice and come off on your own to make it known that it's totally you. I c o ni c dude

And for proportions, we have different ways of how to practice them, by referencing off real life images, etc

Coming up with your own art style will still be based off real proportions in real life I think . Don't know how to explain this though. Just make sure you don't like copy someone's art style heavily on your comics, if you do just because you didn't find your own art style yet, make sure to credit them that you get heavily inspired by their art. Art styles aren't copyrighted .

Some other artists' art style is a mix of a lot of people and cartoon art styles honestly which is totally fine.

[KitKat]

Like.. deviant ART. I hate that place personally it has been so strict as hell and there are loads of drama. But I think it's a little dead now? ? Considering it's quite a little inactive for me last time I checked.

Yeah.. Tapas isn't a pure strict art website after all I just wished people would have the common sense that tracing off of someone's work and publishing them as their own and getting supporters and subs doesn't do justice. It breaks my heart really.

Just happy that this site isn't very dramatic unlike the others. never seen anyone fighting and arguing so badly over here so far

[Mari]

I sometimes trace sketches for a pose from non-copyrighted material if I'm having a hard time with it (and I mean just the basic triangles and balls) but I do get what you mean. There's a lot of comics I've browsed through where everything is traced until the final steps and that's just outright plagiatrism and kinda illegal. Atleast you should use the free-to-use stuff...

[MangoTango]

lmao Cristali is that someone that came to mind when i read this.

i feel ur pain. I think it's natural that there are lots of hidden gems that aren't discovered yet. But eventually more peeps will def discover them soon.

tbh it's same for me lol, I think I do pretty decent on my art (ik I would always have rooms for improvement tho) but I don't have that much subs and followers yet considering I just started off recently.

Just continue doing what you love to do, and don't judge it by how many people's likes and people following you.

Eventually handwork would pay off soon hopefully

[KitKat]

Yeah just do tracing in a legal way. Considering comics take a lot more time to do, it's alright to use non-copyrighted stuff to help you finish your comic.

[Coati]

I use a lot of 3d models too, but this isn't tracing is basically optimization.

[Tobirone]

Plagiarism isn't just bad but a crime in most western countries, but also morally it's very frustrating to see how people use your own (or others) work to make it "their own".
Whether you make music, do art / comics, write (scientific, blogging/newspaper, novels), it can only be hoped that someone is out there not only identifies it and tries to help the person who actually is being robbed.
While it is easier in music to actually accidentally copy a motive or theme (because our brain is very good at adapting to sound, noise and thus music in away that we immitate those virtually and unconsciously in our brain. There is a whole neuro-science field investigating that) than copying the exact picture to the ink-line.
Now we do live in a world of copy and paste which enhances this problem. In the past several of my countries ministers had to resign because of cases of plagiarism (in their doctor thesises).

I may not be the best artist though I am seriously trying. Especially since I have kind of a little success here which feels amasing to say the least! And I am getting better every day which is kind of my "drug" so to speak. ^^

Thus I can only subscribe to what you say: Get out, look at things. Try to reference them. I got a whole folder with references which is partly the reason I soon need a second hard drive ...

It can only be hoped that people see your art and story as what it is: Something unique and sometimes even a little bit unpredictable.

And to the tracers / plagiarists: Waaaaaaaaggggh! (orcish war cry ... you are in trouble now!)

[MangoTango]

To anyone who wants to take "tracing" the legal way, here's a video that could be an example especially if you're doing your comics.

[Tobirone]

I actually do that ... all the real houses I use now exist in Sims. ^^
What I do as well is using google (maps/streetview)... which still is legal.

[BobbyjoeX]

glad someone said it QwQ

[vothnthorvaldson]

The music example is great @Tobirone , but I'll add a bit to it, because music is a good place to see that while it's legitimate to have concern over plagiarism, it's also important to keep in mind there is a malicious side to the fight against plagiarism.

If we look at the plagiarism cases that have been won in pop music, there are a number where it was just chord progressions that comes naturally to guitarists, just from the way notes are arranged on the instrument, or very simple melodies which can also come the same way, or old music motives for which copyright does not make sense (one of these won cases had a melody I knew I knew. I later found it in Mozarabic chant. Yes, it's probable that the 'plagiarist' got the motive from the first band and not from Mozarabic chant. But it's also probable that the first band did not invent it, but got it from, for example, Spanish folk influenced by these older chants.. if we can won a case for that, then we should be able to won cases for folk elements too. Any big band could come and say 'you did not learnt about this folk song on sheet music in public domain, you know it from us, it's plagiarism). We are almost there! It's not the future I want.

It's true that's it's generally A BIT easier to detect plagiarism in art, but not that much: Imagine a tracing or heavy referencing on a public domain picture: maybe not the best thing to do art-wise, but no plagiarism. Two artists use it: It does look like one plagiarized the other.

I saw it once already in illustrations on Ancient Egypt (but in a fiction setting). Ridiculous plagiarism claims when a simple google search could show that they were both using as reference bas-reliefs that were extremely standardized at one period of Ancient Egypt. It's not even sure both artists were using the same ref pictures.

People can be extremely uncultured and greedy, and that makes me extremely cautious in the fight against plagiarism.

Everything considered, the way I find the safest is to take in account the quality and complexity of the work. These problems to distinguish plagiarism from honest influences and referencing are more crucial to me in simple works, as there is little added to the potentially plagiarized work. If the added value other that the potentially traced image, let's say, it overwhelmingly higher than the value from the tracing, I don't really need to ask myself the question.

[MangoTango]

yeah,, tbh I use easy poser app a 3d model referencing tool sometimes soooo qwq

[TheSpaghettimobile]

When I was, like, 12-13, I was really insecure and doubtful about my art, and so I eventually traced to help make me feel a bit better about myself, which I really regret looking back. Thankfully, I never posted my traced stuff online, but still...

I suppose lots of other people trace for the same reason. Artists can end up comparing themselves to others more often than not, which may lead to jealousy, for want of a better word.

tl;dr: I wanna yeetus my younger selfus

[Menbung]

Not only this happen in comics, it also happen in the commissions land. People will trace from all the sources mentioned and get paid for it !.

So the average buyer won't notice that is a traced art and the guys can keep drawing faster and non stop, so they make more money, have more clients and more praise than your average artist. Sadly this is a pretty common thing.

Education is important so every artist know what's plagiarism and what's not, so the guys that are tracing to learn or get better don't feel guilty and the guys who are tracing for the bad reasons feel responsible for their actions.