• Have you ever drawn over a photo ?
  
  ( I'd limit this to digital, but who knows, maybe you like to draw on photographs XD; )
  
  Do you consider it cheating ?
  
  Personally, I like to do a weird kind of... lazy vector. It's not detailed, but I like to draw over a photo to do it.

Yes I have, definately.

It's "cheating" if you claim credit for drawing it by yourself, nut I don't think it's cheating if you note that you've traced, and/or if you show the image you traced it from with it.

I went to an animation college, and one of the things pretty much all of my tutors told me time and time again was that I should trace, and copy. They told me I should do it over, and over again, recommending it as the fastest way to learn.

These were guys who worked in the special effects departments of films, guys who'd worked on computer games, and, in one guys case, a man who'd worked for Hanna Barbera. They're good, and they're proffesionals.

I'm going to trust them, and what they say is a good learning method, far more then I'm going to trust the people over the internet who say you can't learn by tracing/copying.

This reminds me of some drama on Gaia... :lol:

Ehh, yeah, my defensive attitude comes from discussions I've had on Gaia.

Peeps keep dissing tracing, I've got no problem with it, and people seemed to get mad at me. It got heated. <333

It's ok when people use it for learning purposes, but once someone claims such a "paintover" as their own work, especially without linking to the original image, I consider it art theft.
Because the copyright belongs to the person who took the photo... an photography is an art like any other!
It' just bad to make profit (be it real money or digital gold) off someone else's work without their knowledge or consent.

Gaia is really bad in this aspect...I've seen a few people there who do paintovers all the time and enter them into art contests as "their own work".
I know someone who made MILLIONS of gold like that, I'm surprised that the mods haven't caught on to that yet.
A friend of mine made overlays of that person's so-called art and the original photos... 1:1 match.

• Oh. Nice.
  
  I think tracing is fine. I take my own photographs and draw over them. :3
  
  That way, it's 11o% my work.

Originally Posted by Otohime

This reminds me of some drama on Gaia... :lol:

Are we thinking of the same drama? xD

I've done paintovers for fun but I never post them or anything. xD (and I don't do them that often because I'm lazy and it's boring.)

But anything's cool as long as you're candid about it and you have permission to do it.

Drawing over your own photo or tracing for learning purposes is fine, but I'd avoid that method
I prefer to do it by sight and trial + error. Gridding, if I'm desperate.

However, I don't like when people copy a picture in the magazine or a celebrity and then claiming as "I made this" or something. It's not cheating, it's just not original and I don't consider it art unless they made it different in some way.

I've done vectors where I've traced over some of my own images, I certainly don't see anything wrong with it, especially since I took the photos for the purpose of vectoring over them.

I do however have a problem with people who can't admit they've used reference or other pictures as help. It all has to be judged after the case though... it's a hard thing to decide.

When you're doing animating/comic work it is very important to have your art look very similar to the art of others. Therefore being able to easily copy styles is an important skill for you to have. Your ability to draw original works is far less important than for you to be able to reproduce a character for animation purposes.

However, I disagree that copying is the fastest way to learn how to draw if your desire is to do something original or if you do not wish to be an animator/comiker. If you do not learn anatomy and proportion and understand what it is you are drawing, you will be handicapped by your copying. =(

I think that "paint overs" are dishonest if you try to pass it off as anything other than a tracing job, although when learning lighting and value they have their purposes.

Copying has it's purposes and they are for learning. But as looking at them from an artistic standpoint... I think pieces created in such a way are at the bottom of the pile, no different than your gesture sketches or drawings from lifeclass. Useful, but they do not show and individuality.

If doing something like that went against having to do something original, it may very well be cheating, but in other occasions, it's nothing more than tracing.

@stillettolover: Actually, my figure drawing tutor recommended this to me as well, as a method of learning how to draw pictures, not copy other peoples styles. When I say I was told by professionals that it was the fastest method of learning to draw, that's exactly what I meant.

I wasn't saying it's the fastest way to learn to imitate.

I misunderstood, I appologize, but I still disagree with that point, from a professional's lips or not. I have had many teachers who told me the exact opposite. So it just depends on who you ask and what your learning style is.

The animation courses I took, however, we were encouraged to copy styles. Well, I shouldn't say encouraged... it was required of the coursework. Completing animation frames. The goal of the class was to have a full short film by the end of two semester, done by the ten students in the class. @_@ It was... Exhausting. I nearly failed all of my other classes.

I guess it's different methods for different people. I was one of the worst artists in the group initially, I came in pretty much without any ability to draw, and the things that worked for other people just weren't working for me.

After following their advice, I've improved a lot. I mean, I'm no great artist, or even really a good artist by any stretch, but what they taught me really helped me out.

The goal of ours was for each student to individually make a 3-5 minute animation, however they'd like. Digital 3d, plaster models, hand drawn, flash etc.

I made mine in Flash.

We had a bunch of other assignments too, the most stressful being one where we had to create a 3d game level in a group of people.

Never. XD & I also don't consider it cheating. It's learning. :D

D: This course was designed to focus on what companies like Disney looks for: repetition. I felt less of an artist a more of a xerox. Which is one of the reasons I changed my major the next year. That and my university decided they didn't want to add animation as a major and my credits for the class were worthless. But it was a one of a kind opportunity, and despite the ulcer I developed because of it... *shudder*... I think it was worth it.

I found it very difficult in the beginning, because I was taught to do figure studies to learn the realism not the stylization first. For that purpose it would most likely have been easier for me to have learned through copying. But now I can draw figures without having to look at something very closely where as some of the people I know who learned through copying alone did better in the class but are still xerox machines. Happy little xeroxes, to be sure. A couple Imagineers at that.

Oh yes, we had out repetiton things too. Though the course had a heavy gearing towards 3d animation though, so largely we were being taught to model and animate 3d objects for games and nosomuch drawing.

The school was set up by the governemt to help support local industry, there are several 3d games companies there, so that's what we were geared towards. (None of nearby companies were any most people would know.)

=| No 3D animation was one of the big reasons why my university passed on it. It's not an art college so they weren't too keen on picking it up.

hahaha in the uni i went to they stressed that in order to mak our images look better, we should sketch them out, get them fixed to how we like them, before tracing it and moving it onto our finail piece (big 18x24) paper to turn in *shrugs* we traced a lot of our own work in uni alot.

I'm at a different university now, doing a multimedia degree. I've got a 3d games course that I'm doing at the moment, but the focus is on the programming, and making sure that the physics are right. I think there are a few 3d modelling and animation modules that you can take up here, but they're few and far between, limited to specific degrees.

The college I went to was an animation and programming college, specifically geared towards the games industry.

i don't trace over pictures. As long as the artist admits that they have, though, i don't really have an issue with it. It is a good method to use to learn/practice, as long as you actually understand why things are a certain way, otherwise it's just mindless copying, and you really won't derive any long term benefit from it.

It annoys me if someone insists they didn't trace, but it's clear they did. That's just another form of art theft, in my view, even if it does take some effort to copy.