Hatake kakashi (AS & Mirage)

[clay82es]

I don't think anyone here really cares about the rights. But people are commenting on the "art" as if they aren't aware that it's traced, when as far as I can tell, the purpose of the posting is not about the art at all, but about the compositing in Mirage.

I see other examples on your site, Clay, which I'm guessing is your own art, also showing compositing examples. Are these your art?

http://es.geocities.com/jordan82es/niranda.jpg
http://es.geocities.com/jordan82es/Flaut.jpg

If so, I think it would be just as effective in demonstrating your methods if you used those.

Thank you Touched about your explanation. But don´t worry if you don´t like I post any render or any compositing I don´t put anything.
I just showed a simple exercise, but don´t worry, if this is a big problem for you, I will not put anything in this Forum.
I´m sorry if I annoying.

[Bones3D]

Clay, I find your efforts to be very inspiring for anyone wanting to achieve professional looking anime character designs in AS/Moho. I know from my own experiences that this can be a time-consuming process whether it's being drawn entirely from memory, or traced.

I would personally hate to see you discontinue posting your progress on this kind of content, simply because it has educational value to those who are just starting to learn AS specifically for the anime aspects. Your explanations have helped a lot of us understand just what is involved in creating convincing anime characters with the AS tools. (In fact, much of your earlier work inspired me to explore AS/Moho's capabilities a bit more closely.)

If anyone is annoyed by these kinds of threads, I say let them be annoyed. So long as there aren't any Cease and Desist letters being issued to the site admins, there's no reason you should feel required to censor yourself needlessly. Those who are annoyed can simply choose not to read these threads.

[jahnocli]

Ditto

[LittleFenris]

If anyone is annoyed by these kinds of threads, I say let them be annoyed. So long as there aren't any Cease and Desist letters being issued to the site admins, there's no reason you should feel required to censor yourself needlessly. Those who are annoyed can simply choose not to read these threads.

What they said.

[Touched]

Please tell me you guys are not coming out in favour of tracing and plagiarism.

[LittleFenris]

I'm certainly not for copying others work for your own financial benefit, but for your own artistic education I don't think it's bad. He did mention he was doing it to learn from the pro's, plus it seems it was more an exercise in compositing anyways.

[Touched]

Let me explain where I'm coming from. I've been a member of several artist groups over the years, and in these groups there has always been a disdain of tracing, especially since most of us make our living in art.

Now, seeing it here, I'm also concerned that it could give Anime Studio a reputation or an image as a tool for people to rip off professional animation, whether or not that's the actual intent. I don't want to see a culture of theft fostered here. Does that really seem out of line?

[LittleFenris]

Does that really seem out of line?

Not at all. I understand where you are coming from and agree completely.

[Rasheed]

Ouch. Did I start a controversial discussion here?

I think I understand both sides. On the one side, it takes a lot of time and effort to create original artwork, and you'd like to be respected for that and possibly compensated for that. On the other side, it is very hard to create original artwork, and it takes a lot of time and effort. Why not borrow from existing artwork and go from there. After all, aren't we all "borrowing" from great artists?

It is the old artists versus artisan discussion. Artists create original designs and artisans apply them.

However, there is a catch. Artists have to approve that their work is used by artisans. For artists who are long gone, this isn't a real problem, because their work is often put in the public domain, as being the heritage of our culture. For current art from current artists, as is the case here, this does not apply. Their work is still too recent to be deemed "public domain". Using popular current artwork for tracing is fine for personal use, but should not go beyond that, and certainly not be published on the internet. It is morally wrong to do so, even if the law would permit it.

So trace all you can for you personal study, but please don't publish.

My 2 cents.

[Bones3D]

Please tell me you guys are not coming out in favour of tracing and plagiarism.

Not at all... at least, not in the sense of profiting from it. However, as a learning aid, it's far easier to work with an object you already recognize vs. the typical method of random trial and error from scratch, only to discourage yourself with recursive failures.

Instead, using an easily recognizable starting point provides a constant reference point that you can gauge your own abilities by. The closer you get to recreating the reference point reliably, the more you know you've improved. There's nothing there to discourage you from trying again for as many times as it takes.

Soon, you move to trickier images and animation sequences until you master those, and finally, you can try going solo with a decent level of confidence you're actually getting somewhere.

Honestly though, if you really think about it, animation at its very core has always been about taking other people's work and replicating it several times over. Whether you're a lowly tweener, or a fill/outline painter, you make your living by plagerizing your coworkers. It's actually no different than what clay has been doing here. The only thing that's changed is the technology involved.

[Bones3D]

Using popular current artwork for tracing is fine for personal use, but should not go beyond that, and certainly not be published on the internet. It is morally wrong to do so, even if the law would permit it.

I fail to see what makes using such an easily recognizable piece of work as a point of reference to rate one's own abilities by so immoral. How many times has the "Mona Lisa" been replicated for various commercial/personal reasons since it's creation, and done so to the point that the public was fooled into thinking it was created by anyone other than Leonardo da Vinci? There has to be a point where something becomes so recognizable that it ceases to be immoral or illegal to replicate/alter it for whatever reason.

My point is, if you don't want something you created to be reproduced, altered or mocked in the future, don't make it available to the public in any form! You have every right to create something, and then let it rot in some dark room for the rest of your life, if that's your wish. However, most artists create items to be observed by others for whatever reason. Isn't it arguably just as immoral for any artist to create for any purpose beyond creating for the sake of creation itself (recognition, fame, fortune, etc...), only to turn around and attack other artists for being inspired enough to imitate them?

Short of the cavemen, can you honestly name any current day artist that didn't start out by imitating other artists before them? Are children immoral for drawing a popular cartoon character and showing it to friends and family? Are the parents immoral for encouraging such activity by sticking it on the fridge with a magnet?

Look around you... there is almost nothing in existence today that wasn't somehow derivative of someone else's creation. If imitation is immoral, then so is the advancement of the human race as a whole.

[Touched]

Honestly though, if you really think about it, animation at its very core has always been about taking other people's work and replicating it several times over. Whether you're a lowly tweener, or a fill/outline painter, you make your living by plagerizing your coworkers. It's actually no different than what clay has been doing here. The only thing that's changed is the technology involved.

Hmm, I have to admit you have a valid point in there (though I disagree with a few of your particulars). In my professional work, I do often animate other people's character designs, in the cases where I didn't design the characters myself. Of course, it's not plagiarism when the owners asked me and paid me to do it. That's why you can't call it "no different."

I also disagree that that's what animation has always been about. In the large production environment, yes. But that's not at all what it's like for the independent animator or the very small studio (of which there are more and more these days). I'm one of those small studios that began as an independent, and I came originally from a comics and illustration background, which as I said before, has a very strong emphasis on original work -- which is not to say "original" as in something that's never existed before, none of those "nothing new under the sun" arguments, but original in the sense that you've developed the skill to do it on demand. This is why my personal projects, my original shorts, feature only original characters of my own design.

Well, I'm rambling on too much, but the bottom line is, we agree on some points, Bones.

[Rasheed]

Imitation is good, making downright copies may not be (and there is a difference). Actually, plagiarism is rather hard to prove in court, because if an artist has added/modified enough parts of the alleged original, most judges will rule in favor of the accused.

[heyvern]

I'm not at all familiar with the characters in question so my assumption was that it was original until I read the rest of the posts.

I don't have a problem with tracing to learn. I did it as a kid all the time. I think it helped me learn. At a minimum you could be clear upfront for people like me who don't have a clue.

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Funny (and scary) True Story Alert!

Years ago when I worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant to pay for school an old friend introduced me to someone who needed a logo for a new "Dojo" he was starting.

This person was... uh... scary. If any of what he was telling me was true I should have run away screaming. He claimed to be a "top level" expert in several forms of martial arts and told many frightening stories (he claimed to have beaten up several police officers to escape being arrested).

He also had bunches of shoe boxes filled with "Polaroid stories"... sequential photos of he and his friends acting out kung-fu movies.

I tell you this to set up what I was dealing with for what happened later.

He came a few days later to talk about the logo design with me and brought his own "artwork". Not only was he skilled in kung-fu he was also a very talented artist and wanted to show me his work.

Well... it was terribly and tragically obvious to me that every thing was traced... badly. He only had a few very simple line drawings of popular cartoon characters.

At this point he then informed me that he was the reincarnation of Bruce Lee. In my status as a non-kung-fu expert I was NOT going to point out the fact that Bruce Lee was still alive when he was born. (It was 2 in the morning on a slow night. My backup was 1 waitress and the stoned cook).

Nor did I make any comments about his traced artwork. I just nodded my head and made positive "hmm mm" noises. I didn't want to set him off... like I said this guy was very scary.

He pulled out 3 Polaroids from a shoe box filled front to back. I mean these were stacked vertically tightly packed. Must have been 150 at least (how many polaroids fit in a shoebox?) and this was just one box. He insisted I take them... no really I said he shouldn't "break up the set" but he insisted. Like if I didn't it would be an insult.

I acted like it was honor to have them and thanked him.

He never came back after that night and I completely lost track of him and never finished the logo... I was relieved to be honest. Maybe he met someone who's Kung-fu was stronger.

True story.

-vern

[rplate]

Please tell me you guys are not coming out in favour of tracing and plagiarism.

In an art class I attended at the University of Minnesota, my instructor informed me I was not an artist because I did not try to reinterpret what I saw but rather drew things as I saw them, realistically. He told me we had cameras that could do that faster and better. And, I was not an artist, I was a craftsman. Those of you who are familiar with Norman Rockwell, illustrator for the Post magazine cover for many years, you may be aware that he often used 35 mm slides to project his images of real people to set the stage for a scene he wanted to integrate into his illustration. Was he immoral to copy what he saw and use it to make a living and reputation?

The film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, is entirely computer animated using a novel technology called performance capture to provide natural movement and expressions for the characters. It stars actor Tom Hanks in six distinct roles, including that of the 8-year-old protagonist.

Would you call this immoral or lack of artistic talent because they traced Tom Hanks?. Or is it simply a means to an end.

I personally like using point animation and rotoscoping of images I have either filmed or set up and animated in a 3D app such as Poser. Looking at the demand for realistic animation, such as mentioned above, I think if animators insist on being "purist" and demanding original hand drawn images, they are doomed for failure.

I have personally felt a sense of a cold shoulder to some of my contributions to this forum, because I admit to rotoscoping, in essence, "tracing" my images.
I enjoy being a craftsman. I have other outlets to express the "artist" in me. I like painting, woodcarving, computer graphics and working with my hands. When I built my house I copied a lot of other peoples skills to get the job done. I didn't have to reinvent the wheel.
My 2 cents