Rude/Shady Webcomic Creators

[claiborneart]

Yeah, most of these "famous creator is a tracer/style thief/fake artist!!!" accusations rarely seem to hold much value.

It seems like this artist uses 3D backgrounds, and possibly also those 3D character models as bases to draw over, but that's hardly the same as drawing over someone's else artwork.

[Kiweevil]

What? Why would you unfollow them like that ;_; that's so kind of them to make that fanart. If that were me I'd love to see what all those artists did next.

[DualDragons]

I think @Ghostie meant that they made the fanart because the artist in question followed them and begged them for free art.

[Kiweevil]

Oh, my bad ^w^" by "you" I really meant the artist. They're the butt in this story

[sekabead]

About silent maru... I once impressed by the way the delicious sexy detailed abs art found here was drawn. I thought, "it was one of the most detailed I've ever seen in a comics". Not long after that I found this

Well, I won't call it tracing though. From that moment I've learned that referencing from still pictures is okay for professional work...

[Cavechan]

I would call that tracing. Referencing is looking for examples of something to better visualize it in your mind when you put pen to paper. That panel is exactly the same in the lighting, placement of muscles, even thickness of the body. wow.

I don't like to talk poorly about other people's art, but those CG backgrounds are difficult to look at.

edit: Even the shirt lines are almost exactly the same. And the comments make me sad... There's a whole thread of comments talking about how wonderful the abs are drawn.

Kinda depressing for someone like me who doesn't trace and takes the time to study ab references and has to draw them over and over to look halfway decent. ._.

[indagold]

I thought online webcomics were synonymous with that since the dawn of time, especially good ol' B^U

[joannekwan]

They can look up an ab picture, but they can't look up a stiletto heel xD
That was one wonky ass shoe!

[bunzi]

The whole SilentMaru is tracing and heavily taking refs/inspiration from Sweet guy and other artists/photograph is an open secret lol. One thing I noticed is that SilentMaru cant draw shoes properly at all, they can draw people pretty well even if they're "heavily referencing" coughtracingcough and I gotta admit they did a good job editing those 3D background to match with their artstyle but when it comes to shoes...oh boy.

[Cavechan]

I gotta admit they did a good job editing those 3D background to match with their artstyle

I really don't agree with this at all. The lineart of the backgrounds is very pixelated and low quality. The characters look like they fit well into the space, but I think the artist really would have benefited from manipulating the CG image and then redoing the line work on it since it's so low quality.

Here's an example of what I mean:

Again, I don't like to speak negatively about other people's artwork, especially when they aren't here themselves, but for a professional, this is amateur quality. I hope the artist has been able to take some concrit into consideration and have improved their artwork since. I wouldn't blame them if the quality has suffered because they have a quota they have to meet and are taking shortcuts, but I feel like Webtoon is really just being rude to their users, both readers and creators, if they think this is okay.

[bunzi]

Well, many Webtoon "Originals" creators tend to be amateurs anyway and nowhere near professional level. They're just creators that upload their comic online with little to no experience and got picked up by Webtoon due to either how good their art is or how unique their story is,some even got picked by Webtoon because they have a large following and not necessarily because their art or story is good and up to professional level.

Not saying that all Webtoon original creators are amateurs because some of them are actual professionals,but if you look at the Originals section you can definitely tell which creators are amateurs and which are not. And Im talking about the English ver of Webtoon creators,not the Korean ones since they have different standard and regulations on how they choose their Original creators.

Not defending SIlentMaru at all since they're a pretty shady creator in general but I say their background is actually pretty good compared to other creators on the Webtoon platform,they actually took the time to edit the background to match their artstyle rather than other creators who just slaps on the 3D background with 0 editing.

[aqua03]

"Style thievery" is always something that confused me. Like, how do you even "steal" an art style beyond just outright tracing/plagiarizing their work straight up?

[Kelheor]

Like you said, it's basically one artist is straight up copying another one, mimicking the style without doing any changes at all. It should be hard in the long run, since the style of the original artist will probably change with time, but you can always go and try to copy Takeuchi's Sailor Moon that's already finished

[aqua03]

Ah, that makes more sense when you put it like that. So more basically plagiarism under a different name, more or less?

[Kelheor]

I guess so?
Most of us copy things, that's how we learn, and it's okay to do it in the beginning, and then try to learn from another artists too. But if you can clearly see this is another artist style, I believe we can call this plagiarism.
Of course, some people may accuse artists of "stolen colour palette" or the "lighting technique" or even more preposterous things, but I don't think that's within the same scope ^^

[aqua03]

Yeah, that makes sense when you explain it like that. Thanks for the help!

[sekabead]

Yeah. But some people accusing someone stealing some "techniques" where it's actually common techniques (that's universal and people mostly learn it before finding their own style e.g. natural proportion or natural lighting or even perspective) is going too far.

[Louhi]

Honestly a style theft is and has been one of the dumbest concepts to come out of the artists community. Usually the people who try to claim a style as ”theirs” are mediocre artists who realize that the only reason they have even a sliver of popularity they do now, is due to their style and if someone came along and did what they did but better, they’d be screwed. There’s a reason you never see high profile artists whining about this, because you can’t copy skill. Now cheap copycat imitations are annoying but those go beyond just the artstyle and into the ”let me literally copy your whole identity” instead and that’s creepy.

But style theft alone is a stupid concept and those with truly original styles would in reality be too hard to copy. So you’re left with some online Karen’s whining how their unoriginal, seen a milliontimes style is being ”stolen”.

[Kelheor]

There’s a reason you never see high profile artists whining about this, because you can’t copy skill.

No one denies this, really =) Of course, everyone who's crying all over the internet about style or colour palette stolen are kinda attention seekers. Maybe this even gives them that attention, I don't know. But people do try to copypaste other artists sometimes. Like you will find some Insta accounts that are purely second arc of Sailor Moon series, there's no denying that. They are really good copypasters and they draw like they own the style. But that's 100% not the style they somehow came to in any way, sooooo...

Not talking about people who were hugely inspired by other artist, talking about pure copying here. Everything is debatable, of course, people are always inspired by this or that, and I guess sometimes it's pretty impossible to say if it's really mimicking.

Is this bad? Is this good? I don't know. No judging here ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[azzy-m]

Hah, I remember seeing a story that graced upon my twitter timeline about an artist who got DMed by someone saying that they stole their art style and stating that the way they draw eyes is the same as theirs. Then they showed a picture and it's like... completely different.