What do you consider "cheating" in art?

[Lensing]

I often read that people talk about cheating when creating art and
I never 100% understood that, so here is my question.

What do you consider cheating in art?
Does it matter if you do it?
Who does it matter to?

If it matter to you as a creator or reader then please explain why.

Where does the cheating start? Is using a ruler already cheating because
you are not able to draw a straight line?

Tracing over someone elses art and pretending you created it is theft.
Using AI is theft too. So both of those things are not in the "cheating" category.
Making a collage out of existing photos or art pieces could be called theft
but is also an established art form. But AI and tracing over someone elses
art is not subject of my question.

[faisalhussein394]

Greg Land, he cheated by using other people's art and changed them to look different, he even uses body language from pornographic magazine, and shutterstock images, there is a video about him

If you don't want to see the whole video, just get to the most replayed part of the video:

Using AI for art is considered cheating if they're making profit out of it, or to gain more and more popularity, it's alright if they use it for fun, and acknowledge that it came from AI art

[Lensing]

I´m familiar with Greg Land and saw the videos.
For me this is theft

[darthmongoose]

I think it's when you take from somebody else without permission, especially if you take and then try to pass it off as your own work. So basically "theft" I guess is what I'd also consider "cheating".

I don't see a lot else as "cheating" really. AI is like... well, fine, if you're using it from a database you have the rights to use all the images from, tracing over 3D, or even tracing over photos is like... yeah, fine, if you have the rights, go for it.

Like I don't trace 3D models for characters and faces, but it's not because I think it's "cheating!" it's because I think it looks static and "posed", it tends to create a lack of variety of physical builds, and setting up the models takes longer for me than just drawing the figures. If somebody else wants to use that approach, that's their choice, they have to deal with the downsides of that approach as well as the upsides.

Saying other creators are "cheating!" for using time-efficient methods is often an excuse people use for not branching out and learning to use new ways of working to compete. The audience doesn't owe a creator their attention for using a method that takes more time, like painstakingly constructing 3-point perspective from a grid on all your backgrounds, working with trad media etc, and the people who sensibly choose to use timesaving methods to make pages faster to deliver more entertainment to their audience in a competitive market, and so build a bigger following aren't "cheating".

I think the only thing I can think of as "cheating" that isn't actively theft would be something like pretending to be from a marginalised group to get boosted by Tapas. Like if somebody white like me submitted to Black History Month, that'd be cheating. That's an awful thing to do (and if anyone ever found out...hoooo boy, you'd be in for it, so it'd also be an extremely unwise thing to do).
That said, because I think this is an important addition, I don't think putting diverse characters into a work to appeal to a modern audience, and building a readership thanks to doing so is "cheating", even though I do see people implying or outright saying it is. People aren't stupid; if you put diverse characters into your comic without doing research and it comes out not feeling genuine, or is insulting, it'll have a negative effect, so like any approach, it has upsides and downsides and isn't just an easy "get readership fast with this one weird trick!" thing, so it's not cheating.

Using sock puppet accounts or bots to artificially generate the appearance of engagement. That's definitely cheating, and against site rules. That's something I'd call "cheating".

Sub-for-sub is kind of cheating... but also it's such an ineffective approach to promo, it's like a form of "cheating" that's actually worse than the alternative, so I don't know if I'd even call it "cheating". Although... the phrase does go "cheaters never prosper" so maybe that fits? It's a quick way to boost the numbers without the hard work of research and improvement to build an organic following of people who are genuinely entertained... It's kinda cheating, and like most forms of cheating, it doesn't really pay off; you just end up with a comic with enough subs to unlock revenue...but not enough activity to generate any.

I dunno, I can't think of a way of cheating that's actually cheating that wouldn't almost certainly have a worse outcome than just doing your best to make good work and advertising it honestly, but paying attention to trends in audiences, design and marketing to make the most of them.

[Legendofgenii]

I think as you’ve already said, plagiarism.

Other than that, for a human being to create a piece of art, anything is permitted I suppose.

[Lensing]

That was, like always, a very satisfying answer.

I always found the use of the word "cheating" weird, especially from creator to creator.
I never understood it. Stealing is a different discussion and there is a clear difference imo

[Flug]

the category theft contains all acts of damaging someone by unpermittedly taking their property. It refers to a power and its law above both parties, ruling what counts as property of a natural or juridical person. The habit to subscribe artwork stems from national property laws extended to the immaterial sphere of ideas and skills. A tricky thing as collaboration and the exchange of ideas was humanities strength long before any organized law. Theft is damaging the income of another artist. In feudal mongolia, that was not an issue. Monks were fed by the herders, no matter how original their art was.

Cheating on the other hand refers to damage done to your admirers and customers, who praise or pay you for work you at least partially only pretended to do. I use photo references myself and porn certainly is many peoples access to anatomy. So where do you start to talk about cheating? When someone is pausing or pasting? Did you ever ask them and they pretended not to?

I would be very carefull with judgements like that, where the judge is replaced by an unqualified and irresponsible Lynch mob.

[Lensing]

I agree on the first part.

I don´t understand the second part
I´m a creator but also an admirer, reader and customer myself.
I don´t know any case where I would feel like the creator has cheated.
I know many cases where creators have done theft

[Flug]

I think youre pretty unlikely to feel cheated at, as youre an open minded reader, who accepts art is not necessarily the spiritual birth of a lonely -genius- assisted by only a brush and a bottle of red wine. XD

[Lensing]

It´s probably because I´m old

I once read the comments of a kid who stated wrote himself in rage about cheating
and then they wrote that using reference is cheating too. People have crazy and naive
opinions how the artists they admire learned their craft and how they think they produce
their art. I maybe had that opinion too when I was a kid, in my mind an artist would just
take a piece of paper and a pen and it would all just flow out of them

[Flug]

Absolutely. As a kid, I had the same naive assumption of halfgodness of artists and inventors. And if I remember correctly, elementary school and bad children literature backed this saga like with Mr. Benz' "german ingenuity". Only later I learned he really had worked on coal gas motors with Lenoir and others in Paris and was also blessed with a wealthy and impatient testdriver/marketing talent of a wife.

[simonitropunk]

Let's compare this topic to music, they're both forms of art... so here we go:

Couple of years ago, I discovered a metal band from Portugal named Attik Demons and their music sounds almost as exact as Iron Maiden. The riffs, the music, the vocals... ALMOST everything sounded like Iron Maiden.

It had me thinking of a question... what's the difference being INSPIRED or A RIP OFF? in a forum. So, to be inspired is to take an established style and do almost exact by creating your in its spirit while rip off or "cheating" is when taking that same song and ripping it off and just changing the song name and few kinks here and there. That's what means to me as cheating.

It's like you see a panel of a comic that you like and just copy and paste it onto yours without changing or little change. Now, an inspire or using something to learn is to replicate that and re-working it onto your own and also admit that you liked that art-piece and it inspired you re-create it in your own style. It's like cover song and decided it's a good enough cut to make it onto your finished album. It's like you have an Iron Maiden song there copy and paste in your album and claim that IT IS MINE!!!! BACK OFF!!!! It's a full blown plagiarism.

I hope, that makes sense.

[Lensing]

It does make sense and I like the music comparison.
I know a shit load of bands who are either just very successful because they are a cover
band or they copy a style one to one. I played in a Johnny Cash cover band myself for
2 shows. I steal a lot of elements when I write songs, I steal riffs, arrangements.
I learned sound engineering and worked / work in recording studios.
There are only a few recordings which don´t include cheating. Like when you do a classical
orchestra and you want it to sound like exactly like in the room.
Autotune, effects, overdubbing etc. Autotune got really good in the last years, it´s
really disgusting when you think about it. Playback at live shows. The list is endless.

The rip off thing is another cartegory in my opinion. Everybody does this to some degree.
One of many examples: Heinrich Kley - Disney and many more - Dean Yeagle and many more - Paris Christou and many more - me and many more.
We all stole from Heinrich Kley, Disney ripped him off / was inspired by him. Dean Yeagle took the faces
of the Disney princesses and made them into sexy pinups. Paris Christou copied Mandy from Dean Yeagle and
invented his own pinup and threw some Disney back into it. I stole from all of them.

You should check out Heinrich Kley´s work and compare it with Disney Work, it´s kind of shocking how much
he ripped it off

[simonitropunk]

Oh yeah!

Disney has a history ripping off almost everything and we could never forget the whole Kimba The White Lion and The Lion King thing. Now, that's a huge historical rip off and they claimed it "their original idea".

There are videos and pics showing the exact scenes like shot-by-shot and even the characters look exact. I have a Japanese friend that she does have a bit of a gripe from Disney because of it.

[NickRowler]

I sort if consider taking 100% credit for stuff created by ghost writer and artist sort of cheating.

I think you should admit if someone helped you. Even if they want to be anonymous, you could still mention that someone did assist with the writing without stating their name.

Example, there was a fan who made some art and animation for Butch Hartman. Hartman reposted it and didn’t give credit, and everyone thought Hartman created it. That is cheating. Even if it was based off of Hartman’s idea, the artist should be credited for their work.

[NickRowler]

Someone did a long video debunking the Lion King is a rip off of Kimba.

Like the lion on the cliff from the Kimba show was from an opening that was never released in the US. And the cliff is just some random cliff, nothing like Pride Rock and there were no animals cheering at him.

If you want to talk about actual “cheating” in the Lion King, look into the history behind the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.

[ThunderChicken]

One thing I don't know whether I would call cheating but it's something that I would consider lazy is copy & paste. Used correctly it is a perfectly acceptable thing to do (such as repeating backgrounds over several panels), but when you see people copying and pasting their characters without changing anything, or maybe only changing the position of their lips, it comes across as lazy. I realize drawing the same scene over and over can be tedious, which is why I would make allowances for backgrounds, but the main focus of the comic shouldn't be copied and pasted, or at least if it is enough things should change that it doesn't look copied and pasted.

This is not a new phenomenon, and it is not something that only amateur artists do. One of my favourite comic artists has always been Berke Breathed. He drew the Bloom County, Outland, and Opus comics through the 80's and early 2000's, then resurrected Bloom County again in 2015. I've got all of his books and have been a fan since I was 14 years old or so. One day years ago I was reading one of the books and noticed some anomalies that proved that ol' Berke used the cut & paste. Now, keep in mind this was before digital creation was really a thing. He literally copied, with a xerox, and pasted with paste. It did not ruin the comic for me, nor did it lower my esteem of Mr Breathed, but now I can't help but notice things like that:

[TAMAnnoying]

Cheating is good for you and you should always do it. There's a lot of "cheats" that artist have and it would not be classified as most of the things people have mentioned... As most of those things would be theft... Which isn't cheating it's just illigal.

Most cheating tips I've learned over the years to make comic making faster/easier

Reusing backgrounds - especially if the background has not been seen in a couple of pages there's no reason you can't copypasta, trace over, or use it as a reference for establishing shots. Movies do it all the time, why can't you?

Tracing- no not other people's art YOUR OWN art! Yes it's a big brain idea isn't it (it isn't) if you got deadlines, things to do, having a panic attack, got into a car accident- sometimes you just need to get your shit done. Trace your own shit for that one panel that just isn't working for you. Maybe you could have done it once you got a good night sleep but shit needs to get done tonight and you don't got time to sleep. This also leads into my next point-

Copypasta faces- if youre trying to do something slapstick and your gonna have multiple panels of people standing in one spot there's no need to redraw it over and over and over again, just copy pasta those panels till the final panel where everyone is screaming or laughing. If anything this can make the slapstick better.

Copypasta resources- I mostly see this from a lot of premium (sorry premium friends I'm about to out you) a lot of them will make these HYPER detailed earrings, bracelets, necklace and other garments- they do this by making this item super detailed in one saved file and then reusing it (resizing it and distorting it) on wherever they wanna put it on their characters.

Don't put backgrounds in panels- if your characters arnt moving around or sitting in one place for a long time there's no reason to draw the same.background over and over and over again. Most people know that your character have in fact not moved yet.

Filters - another premium comic thing I'll see is using free stock photos- throwing a filter on it and throwing it into the background, I personally find this one a bit more trachy but you gotta do what works for you and find chests that work with your style and timeline.

Brushes - making custom brushes to make the lines that you would normally draw but it draws it for you instead- clip studios is much easier to work with this cheat then Photoshop but you can manage somewhat in Photoshop. The creator of the comic Sunstone has a lot of great tutorials on this possess it you need examples

And that's it for what's on the top of my head.

Remember cheating is good for your work flow- but you have to find chests that work for YOUR work flow.

[Chocolate]

Did he ever get in trouble or getting into lawsuits for tracing his art from popular media? 🤨🤨🤨🤨

[BoomerZ]

One thing I don't know whether I would call cheating but it's something that I would consider lazy is copy & paste. Used correctly it is a perfectly acceptable thing to do

I really like using copy/paste on faces that go from blank stare to a single line of dialogue. It's a frozen pause in animation terms. Usually the only thing you change is the mouth. This is a technique I don't have a problem with as it's an effect you are trying to achieve.