What do you consider "cheating" in art?

[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.

[powerplantanimations]

Meanwhile in Jojoland:

[Chocolate]

Oh I always wonder how come Jojo didn’t get backlash or in troubles for copying from photos?

[powerplantanimations]

THERE'S AN ENTIRE CHANNEL DEDICATED TO THIS LMAO.

And before anyone says "copyright is different in Japan"... listen....

I know for a fact that famous Japanese artists aren't fond of having their shots taken from them. Like the Perfect Blue guy. There was an interview where he got the chance to talk to Christopher Nolan about Memento and Christopher Nolan was like "Oh it's a homage!" and the Perfect Blue guy was just like "Uh-huh...". I don't think he was familiar with the concept of a homage? But when he had it explained he was just like "....". A little bit hazy about it. I need to find the tweet.

Point is, Araki does a lot of the stuff that a lot of artists get trouble for nowadays and it's funny. He's overt with his references to the point where he outright namedrops the references.

Still though, he's my favorite writer/artist... soooooo... Imma look the other way.... and you should too :v

Anyway, going to leave this here:

[HGohwell]

Probably because you can't own poses. Unless you trace over it, there's nothing to get in trouble over except pearl clutching too snesitive children who think you can own a pose and references are bad. Like, if I got my friend to copy those poses and took a picture and uused that as a reference is that copying? I took the picture, it's mine now. Fashon shots like thhat also copy from each other constantly and copy and vibe from classical artworks. And actually talking about using references is a good thing.

[powerplantanimations]

It isn't poses though. He takes from panels from other manga too.

[HGohwell]

Most of what I saw in those videos is fashion shoots. So, what do you expect me do? Judge evidence you haven't given me?

[powerplantanimations]

It was in the first five secs of the second video... :v

Fist of the North Star with Raoh charging. Instead Araki did it with Speedwagon.

[HGohwell]

Yeah those are two pretty generic poses and the video doesn't make it easy to tell how close they are, but I certainy wouldn't call that takes other panels. There's nothing particularly unique about either of them to say that's stolen not just referenced, and the seond one of someone running is just weak like it's not in basically every manga I've ever read (and looks exactly like every generic shot I've seen of American Football too). Stealing is a big accusation and needs series evidence, none of this says anything more than heavily referenced. It's nothing you couldn't do by saying hey that looks cool and getting either a friend or 3d doll to do roughly the same thing and then referencing that.

Now there is an argument that you should only reference stock images with correct creative commons liscencing, and that high fashion editorial shots and manga probably don't fall under that, but again, that falls foul of getting someone else to do the pose and now it's free from copy right because I'm references that not the actual image. And then what about poses that are just in your consciousness. There are many pictures I've done where I've had a pose in mind ony to later what an old piece of media and realise oh yeah that's where I got it from. And this is why outside of tracing the accusation of outright stealing over referencing needs a lot of breaking down more than flashing a few seconds in a video.

[Kelheor]

Quite a few Japanese mangakas are well known for being... very inspired by magazine shoots, whether one calls it a stealing or a heavy referencing is up to a person, I suppose (on the latest messages in the thread, not the general topic)

https://en.cookingwiththehamster.com/amp/naoko-takeuchi-and-sailor-moon-high-fashion-inspirations

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Nobuhiro Watsuki used to straight up lift Marvel designs for characters in Rurouni Kenshin

Most famous being Udo Jin-E ripping off of 90s Gambit.

[powerplantanimations]

Ehhh I think you're reaching with the football bit. Jojo did start off as a Fist of the North Star-copy for a little while (plus it was still fresh at the time). He obviously wouldn't stop with concepts. It's too much of a coincidence for it to match that well.

[faisalhussein394]

JOJO's pose reference is alright, the problem with Greg Land is he copy character poses of already existing comics made by other artist, and they almost looks similar, nearly not much difference, and let's not forget some of the character expressions he made are from pornographic images.

[faisalhussein394]

So far, he's been accused from making an alien comic cover that look similar to the Artist Tristan Jones.

The two left is Greg's and the two right is Tristan's.

So far, he's still working in Marvel because he gets the job done a lot quicker.

[TroyVSTheWorld]

If an AI makes a drawing of a human
And you trace it, fixing it up its errors and adding your own flairs, etc
Is it cheating?
Did you steal from an artist?

[Lensing]

Coincidence, they just showed a well known commission painter on a german craftman tv show.
He was photobashing on the computer, then copying using a grid, then tracing some stuff, then
painting it. Looked a lot like what some people would consider as cheating. I think painters actually
trace a lot because they are more focused on the painting process than the drawing process and they
don´t really care about being able to eyeball proportions or anything like that

[Legendofgenii]

@Lensing That’s true. They used to use those Camera Obscura things in the olden days.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Geez, and we wonder why people are paranoid about accidentally stealing stuff and keep submitting 'is it okay to do X' threads :'D

*coughipabolitionisthottakeincomingcough*

There will always, always be an arbitrary line between what counts as stealing and what does not. Sometimes we divide those lines based on intent, rather than the actual composition of the work, but intent is unverifiable. What seems to be a clear criteria for drawing the line between theft and not-theft in reality doesn't actually end up making things any less muddy, and just introduces a whole incentive to assume, invalidate, go on the offensive and defensive, and be super paranoid about taking inspiration from things.

What counts as cheating, in my opinion? Well, what game are you playing? If you let people believe you drew something yourself when it's AI-generated or straight up someone else's work wholesale, that's cheating. If you say 'I drew this without using any rulers or snaps', it would be cheating if you used rulers or snaps. If you say 'I literally just traced X', it is not cheating for you to trace X. If you're breaking your own stated rules, then you are cheating. It's honesty, plain and simple.

Now we're all free to feel like someone's playing a dumb game; if you're a tracer, no-one would have any respect for you as an artist; if you use Shortcut X, each person can decide for themselves whether they look down on your decision to use Shortcut X. You can win a game of 'chess against the computer but all my pawns are queens' and brag about it, and no-one cares; that's fine. Just don't say you won an actual game of chess when you're really playing 'chess against the computer but all my pawns are queens'.

Conversely, I think people should be allowed to roflstomp the computer with their army of queens if they darn well want to. Idk how they wouldn't get bored of it, but I support people's right to play dumb games and win dumb prizes.

[river121693]

yup, even Rembrandt and Vermeer relied on Camera Obscura and Norman Rockwell traced over photograph.
https://www.livescience.com/55616-rembrandt-optical-tricks-self-portraits.html

Art is really what you make of it. For some people, it's the "craft", while for others, the product, and everything inbetween too. It's cheating to trace if your goal is to become the most skilled artist, but if youre just trying to make a good painting to sell, most "shortcuts" are totally fine. I spend a lot of my time practicing drawings, but when I have a commission, my goal is to deliver the best product. I'll find all the (ethical) shortcuts I know.

@TroyVSTheWorld
The issue of AI "theft" isn't really on of how "transformative" the final product is, but whether involving art AI in creating the product-- saving artwork to an AI database without permission for automated creation-- is theft.
The reason "taking inspiration" isn't seen as theft is because the human artist is doing the interpretation himself using his own skills and perspective.