Alright, so I am a junior in college majoring in Graphic Design, concentrating in Illustration.

In my current illustration class, there has been a great uproar. There is this guy in my class who is known for barely getting through class by doing the minimum (he's failing the majority of his classes). For his last two projects in my illustration class, he's presented projects that are very questionable. We all knew he was tracing/copying his projects from other works, but no one wanted to start drama, so we all avoided telling the professor.

Recently, it has been brought to the professor's attention, and his treatment of the student has degraded greatly. The professor told the guy he no longer trusted him after other students (including me) presented the images the guy drew from to the professor.

For this project (to create a gig poster), the guy explains his process as the following: he drew over the original image in adobe photoshop, and then used the live trace feature in adobe illustrator (to smooth out the lines) and then put it back into photoshop to add textures. I couldn't find the original images, though I've found a few relatively close to the original:


On this project (we had to draw someone of great importance in history; the guy chose Shigeru Miyamoto), he most certainly was plagiarizing from the image of the character Tingle at first (he drew the position and details exactly), however someone grew the courage to tell the professor. The professor told the guy to change is project. So the guy did, to the following:




What does everyone think?
My professor is considering whether he should fail this guy for plagiarism. However, the guy swears up and down that he's an honest man and would never steal another artist's work. I know this situation boarders the line. Do you think this guy should be failed? Is this plagiarism or isn't it? Why?

... if without the plagiarism problem, is the things he produced high quality?
The reason why I don't study graphic design or fine arts... XD I am too picky.

It does fit in what I learn about online plagiarism. If your university have strict policy, plagiarism should be a punishable act. My university take plagiarism seriously, and the punishment being kicking them out of school. But our university's courses are more to science or facts for business, there are no subjective art for us to debate on.

His graphic design work is nice, though his illustrations are very lacking. But he's an illustration concentration.

Plagiarism is taken seriously at my school. The professors gather to consult the extent of the punishment to give the student: failing the class, terminate the student's major, or expel the student. The professor for my illustration class is very forgiving, especially to this guy who shouldn't even be in our class (he had to get special permission because he failed so many classes), and only wants to fail him.

Well then, I guess it depends on your lecturer.

I am don't know how things are done in art courses. But if it is plagiarism, lecturer should be fair and report it.

I would say that this would be considered as plagiarism because he basically copied the image, enlarged it, flipped the image, pasted Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto's face, pasted the image on a blank canvas, then colored the canvass with a simple design. The drawing quality is poor...i mean look at the left arm! there is no elbow crease and it doesn't look well especially with that scroll.

The scroll was basically his changing of the position...but he drew the scroll from yet another image.
But during the critique, the guy told our professor that this piece was 100% his own work.

oh jeez. how will he survive working in a design/creative arts firm if he can't do a project without plagiarizing?

For starters, I do consider tracing another person's work plagiarism. That is why when I do that with my pixel art I don't say "This was totally all me". I give credit where credit is due. I also refuse to place anything that is traced on my DA because it would be dishonest.

I think if he's so sure he's capable of drawing it, he needs to SHOW he can do it without copying. Possibly a live or recorded drawing. Otherwise by the looks of it at least for the first one it is in fact plagiarism.

The second one however, if that was the reference he used, they do look different. Adding that man's face however, I'd think you would need someone's permission for that?

Originally Posted by The Wandering Poet

For starters, I do consider tracing another person's work plagiarism. That is why when I do that with my pixel art I don't say "This was totally all me". I give credit where credit is due. I also refuse to place anything that is traced on my DA because it would be dishonest.

I think if he's so sure he's capable of drawing it, he needs to SHOW he can do it without copying. Possibly a live or recorded drawing. Otherwise by the looks of it at least for the first one it is in fact plagiarism.

The second one however, if that was the reference he used, they do look different. Adding that man's face however, I'd think you would need someone's permission for that?

I agree with this.

If someone traced or copy-pasted anything and claimed it as their own, I'd consider that plagiarism. If they drew something by their own hand without tracing or copy-pasting, it isn't.

However, that doesn't mean it's not violating any copyright laws. I would think it's fine by classroom standards, though, since he's not profiting from it. Nintendo is one of the most laid-back companies when it comes to fanart, as long as it's not adult-themed.

I never had a problem with fan-art and copyright in any of my graphics/art classes.
However in my animation class, my teacher would warn us to just not draw anything Disney-related out of paranoia of being sued by the Disney company. Everything else was okay by her.

Even if he managed to make something with his own work for the most part I have found through tracing to learn that my level of skill will never match that of skill at using a reference and copying it.

Let me show you an example. This is what I'm able to do if I use another base as a reference:

Now this is what I'm capable of WITHOUT a reference:


That's a pretty big difference, because when I don't know how to make something I can just "take it from somewhere else"
I think I only actually made the hands and legs without reference of the whole thing.
Also note how much bigger I can make it with a reference.

@ Kouki - The violation is where he is claiming full credit. If he said "I used this as a reference" it wouldn't seem as bad.

Like with the images above. Sure I made both of them pixel by pixel. But I can't take credit for the top one because much of the outline was taken from a tutorial image. So while yes I can use it to make "fan art" (basically art for users) I would not view it as fair to use it as a source of money or a grade as it distorts what I'm really capable of.

Ironically, our course, the lecturers love it if we use lots and lots of references.
Have to define references well, because we are not tracing it. We are just abstracting the idea behind the surface.

If you use a reference as a model, while not actually tracing it, I think that is a standard practice for fine/still artists. Especially when it comes to anatomy/perspective on poses, it's difficult to draw intricate poses without a model of some sort, be it a human model or a pose-able stick figure, unless you have photographic memory. The references are there for just that, reference.

So, unless you find any images of Tingle in that same exact pose and lining he drew, or any pictures of Shigeru with the same angle and features of the face drawn on it, I don't think it should be considered plagiarism.

Unless he traced and then modified it to look like he did all the work.

In his original drawing, he took the pose straight up from the picture and copied his drawing of the mans face into it.
The professor told him to change it. That was straight up plagiarizing and everyone could tell. So the guy changed his drawing, however, I still think it is plagiarizing. It's just too recognizable to the original art of Tingle. The position of the legs is a near exact copy of the reference image and he's mocking the style too much. In an illustration class, we are expected to create our own artwork 100%. If you can't say that something is 100% your work, then you shouldn't submit it as your project. The guy claimed he came up with everything on both pieces 100% on his own. But it's so easily recognizable that he didn't, even if he free-handed the body.

Maybe I'm leaning towards the extreme because of the frustration this guy causes me. Even if this isn't plagiarizing, it's still a shame that he calls this his own without credit where credit is due and that this guy still does not have a style of his own and has to resort to mocking that of others to create his artwork, yet calls himself an illustrator.

Sure he needs to give credit, but the more I look at it (as a pixel artist I find it important to analyze all of it) they are very different. Sure he definitely used it as a reference and is plagiarizing because he refused to give credit to the image he was referencing, but if he said "I used this image and this image as my references to create a unique piece of art" then he would at least be giving credit where credit is due. (Though by using references I'm pretty sure his grade would be quite a bit lower).

Now there's another factor. He admits to being a tracer. Anything (I mean ANYTHING) that is traced, you deserve zero credit except that you colored it and I'm pretty certain they want more than that.

Like this zoidberg emote I made. I used a reference. But I did not trace it. Had I traced it I would have no real right to claim any of the work at all besides saying "I colored the pixels"

A art based lawyer actually came and talked to one of my classes about similar things. One of the cases she walked about was...I believe with the artist Shepard Fairey who did this famous poster. Here's the poster next to a photo of Obama. Fairey lost the case because he lied and said he never saw the Obama photo before. He could have possibly won it though. There are a lot of cases with this subject and it's pretty case by case, but there are certain things to look for to say if the image should be considered legal or not. One thing is the audience that the image is intended for. The Obama photo and the Hope poster were meant for entirely different audiences and published in different ways and the poster actually helped the Obama photo gain notoriety and MORE profit rather than stealing.
But really, appropriation art is all over the place.

As long as he free-handed it without tracing/copypasting, it's not technically plagiarism.
It's just a copyright infringement. However, if he claims to have invented Tingle and Shigeru Miyamoto from his very imagination, then that could be like plagiarism. I doubt he'd be stupid enough to say that, though. He could be misunderstanding when someone asks "Is this 100% your creation?" as "Did you draw this by hand?".

Perhaps educating him about copyright, and to be more careful about it? It'd be better if he learns about it in detail, than to fail him without him knowing what he did wrong...

PS: This is an example of one drawing I did by using an anime screenshot for reference. It is probably infringing copyright, but it shouldn't count as plagiarism:


vs.

lol. I would say that the headshot sketch is a pretty generic expression and view angle to be call as plagiarism. XD
But the dialogue... maybe.

yeah, that headshot is a bit generic, if it was just the drawing.

But seriously, TRACING IS NOT PLAGIARISM! Prince vs Cairu. Prince won the case even after using cut outs from Cairu's photos in his art.

It's not plagiarism unless he says the original photos are his. This line is always hard to walk, but if the photos are used and manipulated, they are a material like any other.
I think tracing/eyeballing is okay as long as you alter it. If you're just copying something, it's copying, not making art (what people do when they trace or eyeball some official art of something exactly as it is and then go "look what I drew!"). Tracing is a tool for learning how to make art, not actually making your own art, but that's another can of worms.

Basically, the guy in your class isn't in the wrong, he's just lame and could do better.

It is plagiarism if that photo is copyright. You can do reverse image searches to find origins (or at least best guess the origins) for any photos you use.

I used to think that some things just couldn't be categorized as plagiarism because they seemed so different. Take the highly popular Obama poster done in red, blue, and off-white. I thought no judge would consider that plagiarism because how could any person own another person's likeness? All anyone would have to do is ask Obama to move his face a certain way (a standard 3/4 view) and they would have the same image as what one photographer claimed to own outright. Bottom line is, that photographer won his case.

Even altering a photo is plagiarism. There are plenty of stock image photo sites out there for free. If you're really worried about it though, just pay for the images you use. It'd be in your best interest overall because the quality of those images is good and you'll have no problems approaching clients/potential employers when (and they will/do) ask about where you got your images.

http://gettyimages.tekgroup.com/imag...pyright101.pdf

That's a good guide for what to watch out for and how to protect yourself. I think there are so many misconceptions out there for what passes and what doesn't. If in doubt just make it all yourself. take your own photo or hand draw it with multiple references.

The result of this whole thing...The guy didn't fail. As a matter a fact, on the last project, he got a better grade than me. Because my portrait was too caricature-ized.

It happens :( Its the unfair pat of art classes. They're largely subject to the professor's/teacher's preferences :(But don't change it! Develop your own style and continue to do things your way.

Haha. The thing is, I did everything the professor told me to do. Oh well. It just brought my grade down by a lot. :(

Yeah art teachers often grade you on how much farther you take it unfortunately... so you gotta read between the lines.