So much tracing drama between almost everybody here, so little time for me to think about it. You wanna know what I think?

I find the following forms of tracing acceptable - inking, you know like how comic pencilists would allow inkers to make the lineart and stuff, as well as doing it by yourself, digitally or traditionally - transferring your own sketch from one piece of paper to another [I do this when transferring something from my sketchbook to watercolour paper for example, and it's a good way to keep the original without erasing it] while tidying it up. Also, most animation isn't animation without the ink and trace department - how else could you get a perfect animation that's on model throughout?

The form that everyone rags on is obviously going over an anime screenshot or an official artwork. I'll give three examples, simply named A, B and C.

Deviant A is very infamous by now, has an ED page and everything. Many of their 'ieces' come from anime, and while they now admit to tracing, they are categorised as "vector", but also lists that it was done in Photoshop. As far as I know, proper vector is any graphic that can be transformed [scaled, rotated etc] without making it look like shit. What this person does is raster, and the pieces aren't even that fantastic anyway. There's no way a good vector could take just 1-3 hours. It's all done for the purpose of grabbing attention.

Deviant B does the same, but with western cartoons. Before this, they have some drawings in their own style, which aren't even that bad, so why do this? Again, for attention, friend mongering, circle jerks etc, but unlike A, they are still in denial about it. They could hide comments all they like, but it's so obvious, and the end results are just as lazy looking.

Deviant C used to trace, again with western styles, and sourcing from children's magazines, screenshots and even animator sketches. Under the pressure of being ragged on by many other deviants, they finally own up and give a hefty journal about why it's not good. What's become of them and their own drawing skills, who knows? The only hope is that they're improving their own skills and boosting their good reputation.

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I used to trace as well. It would start off with that Disney colouring book that I liked too much I would trace it, and almost send it off to Disney and Me magazine. I was about 10 back then, but I officially stopped a few years ago. I didn't do much even then, but most prevalently was my first pixel art [the Duckula moodset], which I done as an experiment but got too proud of the results. I start that sort of thing from scratch now. As for my general art, the most you would get was a lot of old SpongeBob and Duckula pieces that were eyeballed if anything, though now I try my best to create original pieces.

So, everyone who's rabidly ragging at every tracer out there and wants an ED article about them all, may he without sin cast the first stone.

There's no stopping me from looking down on tracers though, especially those that do it solely to impress the public, because I have struggled like fuck to come up with a decent picture, while those no-talent shitheads do their so called "vectoring" and savour the ungodly amount of "OMG SO KEWL" comments they get from their personal army. God forbid that they'll ever get a job in the graphics industry.

SW out.