Moho Forum

Well, you quoted me, but I never used the word "immoral." I must ask you to clarify what you say about Norman Rockwell. Are you saying he projected 35mm slides onto his canvas, and traced the projection? Or are you saying he merely used slides as photo references, while still painting by freehand? If it was a trace, that would reduce the accomplishment of his work in my eyes as compared to other painters who did not use tracing. I have nothing against artists who use live models as reference, and I disagree with your art teacher about the need to reinterpret what you see if you're painting from life. I happen to be a fan of classical French Academy photo-realistic paintings of the sort that are featured on the Art Renewal Center web site. Where I "draw the line" (so to speak) is in tracing another artist's drawing to make a new drawing, and -- importantly -- failing to adequately inform people of that situation, thereby allowing people to give undeserved credit. I have the same sort of issue with people who upload short films to YouTube which are not theirs to upload, and then accept the praise of the people's comments as if they were the creator.

The unnamed film you mention, which I assume is The Polar Express, has its own issues with the Uncanny Valley, and while I don't consider motion capture (which has been in use since the mid-90s at least) to be "cheating," it's not animation, it's acting.

There is nothing wrong with rotoscoping or tracing as a "reinterpretation". I heard the same thing about Norman Rockwell. He was still interpreting the photos. He added his personal touch to his references. There is no way you could look at his work and say it could have been the same using photography.

Even a "craftsman" will add something to the reference material. Even photorealism has a piece of the artist in it. There is always the brain of the individual as a filter even when "tracing".

I use references all the time. I don't trace but I like having the reference. I also use Poser as one of those, artists manikins.

If you rotoscoped Snow White or Citizen Kane and called it your own that is a horse of a different color. It isn't the process that is at question it is the origins of the source material and how you acknowledge it with any work you present as your own.

In this specific thread we are also talking about "fan art". This is a genre unto itself. There are lots of well done fan art or parodies... some that surpass the originals in rare cases.

-vern

Copying other artist's work was an accepted and unavoidable part of becoming an artist since the very beginning. Museums were filled with students sitting around, doing sketches or even paintings directly in front of the masterpieces. So this habit can't be wrong just because it is animation now.

Using technical means for more realism in the artwork is another old tradition. We don't know exactly what old Egyptians used, but they certainly had their own little helpers. At least they did know about the use of grids to trace and enlarge artwork. In Renaissance other things developed, especially some grid which was put in front of the model (there's a woodcut, I think by Albrecht Dürer, which shows that apparatus in use), as well as the principles of perspective.

When photography came up in the 19th century, painters of that time immediately adopted it for their own purposes. Have a look in your books, all the great names used photographs as reference.

It's no use to say somebody is a bad artist because he just used a certain technique. It should be the other way round. "This film is so good that I don't care how it was made." Of course I prefer something new and original, but even an old story could be told again in a new way. Hollywood is doing this all the time. It's just your very own artistic decision wether you create something which just fills a time slot, something which just repeats some old recipe because somebody pays adequately for it, or something as personal and new as you can think of. Of course, this only applies as long as you are in charge of production. If I'm working for somebody else, he already decided upon that (normally).

Grr... This fallacy is being repeatedly cited here. "There were people who copied" does not equal "Everyone copied". Sentiments like this in my opinion only cheapen the accomplishments of the great artists who perfected their skills and created their works without the use of such devices. I have lived with artists and worked with others who I could watch create astounding pieces of art without even any reference.

I do not dispute the utility and sometimes necessity of copying in a production environment, but I would like an acknowledgment of esteem of the skill and talent of great artists who do/did not, such as one of my personal idols, William-Adolphe Bouguereau. See here for a defense against claims that he and others used optical aids such as what you describe:
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2004 ... yoder2.asp

Touched wrote:Grr... This fallacy is being repeatedly cited here. "There were people who copied" does not equal "Everyone copied". Sentiments like this in my opinion only cheapen the accomplishments of the great artists who perfected their skills and created their works without the use of such devices. I have lived with artists and worked with others who I could watch create astounding pieces of art without even any reference.

I do not dispute the utility and sometimes necessity of copying in a production environment, but I would like an acknowledgment of esteem of the skill and talent of great artists who do/did not, such as one of my personal idols, William-Adolphe Bouguereau. See here for a defense against claims that he and others used optical aids such as what you describe:
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2004 ... yoder2.asp

I went to the site and read about Bouguereau and found this exerpt about his process.


"The craft of picture-making as practiced by Bouguereau basically followed the principles of academic theory as codified by the seventeenth-century aesthetician Roger de Piles. The code embodied the fundamental idea whereby a painting could be judged logically and objectively by its conformity to ideals established for its divisible parts, which were determined to be: composition, drawing, color harmony, and expression. The method Bouguereau used to execute his important paintings provided ample opportunity for the study and resolution of problems that might arise in each of these areas.

The separate steps leading to the genesis of a painting were:

croquis and tracings;
oil sketch and/or grisaille study;
highly finished drawings for all the figures in the composition, as well as drapery studies and foliage studies;
detailed studies in oil for heads, hands, animals, etc.;
cartoon; and, only then,
the finished painting.
Evidently Bouguereau was constantly making croquis or "thumb nail sketches." Often these preliminary studies were done during meetings at the Institut or in the evenings after supper. For the most part they were scribbled from the artist's memory or imagination, others were sketched directly from nature. These drawings, hitherto unknown to the public, constitute a very important element of Bouguereau's work. For one thing, they yield a wealth of information about the artist's method. They also show in many cases how a particular composition evolved. Executed either in pencil or ink, they served as a means of determining the grandes lignes, the important linear flows and arabesques, within the entire composition and within individual figure groups as well. They were often refined by means of successive tracings."

Bouguereau, was not without his critics as well. It seems to be a past time of artist, to criticize and scrutinize each other.

Thanks for the URL direction, I enjoyed reading the articles and realizing that artist good at what they do, always had a critic.

PS: I wasn't quoting you when I used the word immoral, the word was used in the over all discussion on this topic, as well as implied.

rplate wrote: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?

If he took the photos to use for projection I see absolutely nothing wrong with that technique. I myself am an Illustrator by training and have used the same technique of taking a photo (myself) and projecting it on the canvas to use as a "realistic" backdrop for my characters to "live in". It's a nice change from the hand drawn "out of my head" backdrops I do a lot. The biggest point is that I, the artist, took the photos so in essence I created the work since I chose the angle, zoom, f-stop, etc...Mother nature and whatever man-made objects also helped create the image if you want to get technical (like some of you are trying to do in this argument).

Well, eyes are an optical tool as well, aren't they? So even looking at the model while painting could be considered eyeballing it, or even trying to image the model in your mind.

Attribution and legal copyright have come to a point of paranoia. Hollywood would DRM the path between the TV screen and your eyeballs, heck, between your eyeballs and your visual cortex, if they could. I'm all for free exchange of ideas and images, as long as you know and acknowledge that those are not your original ideas and images.

And if you appreciate an artist, buy his or her work to help to continue the output of this artist. If you then produce some fanmation to spread your enthusiasm about this artist to others, all the better. I'm not appreciative of people who copy an artwork and then claim it as their own. I call that stealing.

However, you should know that not everyone is so open-minded. And some have deep pockets and powerful lawyers to make you change your free thinking attitude towards art and artists. You do not want to be in a legal battle with a company like Disney.

rplate wrote:The separate steps leading to the genesis of a painting were:
croquis and tracings;
[snip]
They were often refined by means of successive tracings."

Bouguereau, was not without his critics as well. It seems to be a past time of artist, to criticize and scrutinize each other.

From the context of your quote, it seems that the writer is talking about him tracing his own rough sketches to refine them, which is a very different thing. But yeah, of course Bouguereau had and still has critics. He's not all that popular, just a personal favourite of mine.

Ok... admittedly, I kind of went off on a rant in my last post. However, that doesn't mean I don't see where a couple of you are coming from on the whole "imitation vs. plagerism" debate.

The point I had wanted to make is how to determine where exactly one determines the point where imitation ceases to be infringement and becomes a legitimate work of art in and of itself.

For example, take a look at Touched's avatar:



Then, take a look at mine:



The avatar I'm using is a direct screenshot of a character from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Touched's avatar, while an original image in its own rights, clearly borrows several elements from Evangelion itself, right down to the most minute details. Can it really be argued that Touched's own avatar is just as infringing as the one I'm using?

Going back to tracing issue that gave rise to this discussion, it's merely a fact of life that one must learn to crawl before they learn to walk. In the art world, this means observing and eventually imitating the techniques of those who came before you. Once you have that much figured out, you can always take one or more of those techniques and improve upon them as you see fit. You may even go so far off, the techniques used become merged into a totally new technique that is legitimately your own.

In some sense, that's pretty much the definition of being human... learning from the past and enhancing ourselves for the future.

Heh, I wondered when someone was going to point that out. Of course, in my case, I'm intentionally equating myself to Gendou in my drawing -- it's not just "borrowing", I'm actually supposed to be dressed and acting like Gendou, which I intended in a self-deprecating way (considering what a megalomaniac Gendou is). And of course, it's clearly not traced.

Touched wrote:From the context of your quote, it seems that the writer is talking about him tracing his own rough sketches to refine them, which is a very different thing.

At least you can read and understand what that writer said. Seems like others here can't. When they mentioned "tracing" he was retracing his own sketches, NOT photographs or projections.

I request apologyce in this forum for put an exercise in the "Share Your Work" Post.

But I guess is not for the exercise you talk.
And about the plagiarism, are you safe of which you say?

Touched, You are the only person who complaint.

I have not seen in this post anything about putting original images or animations.

If I am not mistaken that only you have said it.

If you have problems with the originality enters in other pages to solve, it like Deviant Art, for example.

Look in this link you can find many images done by people.

http://prints.deviantart.com/?catpath=m ... &q=kakashi

http://prints.deviantart.com/?catpath=m ... 9&q=bleach

http://prints.deviantart.com/?catpath=m ... 9&q=naruto

The Tracing Technique which I use is similar at the 3 Dimensional technique.


If you pay attention, this 3D model is done by a self-taught person. And it is uploading in the link of Lightwave Tutorials. Is Son Gokuh modelling tutorial.

http://members.shaw.ca/lightwavetutoria ... Characters

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/2976/tu/tu_db.htm



I do not know what is the problem to trace a drawing.

What's all that fuzz about? I really can't see why it's necessary to get so agitated.

Nobody said that everybody was copying, and nobody said that anyone was copying all the time. Copying is a necessary part of every artist's education, and it can as well be part of _any_ creative act. There's no use in defining somebody's "artistic value" by how much he is "copying". After all, what does copying mean? Some examples:
1. Tracing some other artist's drawing
2. Tracing one's own drawings
3. Using the same idea as another artist, but with another style or in another context
4. Using the same style as another artist, but for another subject
5. Taking a photography of a landscape as reference for a painting
6. Projecting a photography of a landscape onto the canvas as reference for a painting
7. Photograph one's own models as reference
8. Using someone else's photographs as described
9. Using some projecting apparatus while sitting in front of the canvas, inside or outside
10. Imagining something one has seen before, then projecting it onto paper and tracing it
11. Portrait some human in the same pose as some other artist did

I'm highly suspicious when I hear claims like "A TWUE ARTIST only creates from his own imagination", because it is just plain untrue - except when a blind born artist paints something. In every other case, there is life and reality and experience and a lot of input from the surrounding culture, including lots of other artist's work, before the very first brush stroke is done.

clay82es wrote:I do not know what is the problem to trace a drawing.

I neither, but the result is, of course, a tracing of a drawing, and not an original drawing. I'd rather draw without tracing, just by understanding the drawing, how it was made, and how I could recreate it. That piece of investigation is a creative process in itself, and more important than the end result, which you could just as well through away, because it is the acquired knowledge and skills that count.