isnt that cheating? they just move the 3d model from clip studio paint and TRACE OVER IT.

look at this dude…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOH3Pa0Q2CA&t=287s

giving a tutorial while tracing like omg…..why is this allowed?

yestarday I went to web toons and SAW TONS OF THIS…people just tracing…and moving the model….for me thats CHEATING.

use thaT as a REFERENCE,,.,…only…almost all my drawings are PURE skill, non traced art. I make the skeleton in red then trace BUT IT MY ART.

and u know whats worst? all those “artists” have tons of likes and praise…and making money…while they trace models from csp.

not fair.

thoughts?

Yeah, there were a few comics I was reading on there where it felt like it was barely disguised. Like the backgrounds and horses were straight up low poly CG models with their drawn characters slapped on top.

…and like, I've never really brought it up or bothered anyone about it, I can't say it's expressly “wrong” or anything, but it rubbed me the wrong way. It made the comic feel really cheap, taking me out of the story every time it became noticeable (which was always) and just giving me the impression that the creator didn't care.

…and to play devil's advocate to my own comment, I do understand that creators on Webtoon actually have someone they report to. Like they have obligations on length and need to keep to a schedule, so I'm not unsympathetic to feeling like you need to cut corners…but as a reader it pulled me out of it and made me less interested. So it's a double-edged sword.

Makes me feel a bit better about my comics though. My art may be trash, but it's ALL mine, baby!

There aren't any rules apart from Copyright so it's not cheating. It's an old technique to save time. Pro comic artists have been doing this since the begining.
The BEST ones don't but the ones that do need to do it because of speed.

We can say it goes back to old masters painters using Camera-obscura to draw models- that device basically turns real images into a 2D projection you can trace over. But people would also trace from the paintings of others as well as engravings…

If you're really good and committed to doing interesting, original, unique work then you won't trace, you'll leave in the errors and you'll take the extra time and your art will look great because of it.
But not everyone is at that level or has that time unfortunately.

That is literally why the 3D models are there dude. That's what they're for.
Here's a thought, art isn't a competition so nobody is “cheating” for working with tools that help speed things up a little and give artists something to work with when references are harder and harder to find. There is both nothing wrong with doing line art over base models, or even using something like ComiPo or Poser or any other program that comes with a lot of assets you can purchase rather than produce yourself to make comics or any other program except for generative AI where the art is all stolen.

There's definitely artists here that use the 3D model method that as well, and no it's not “unfair”. It's allowed because even professionals, yes professionals, trace from time to time whether you like it or not. It's like getting mad at people for using the perspective tool, paint bucket, rulers or a mirror tool!

One of my favorite authors uses the posing dolls to pose the characters and draws their line art from them as thumbnails. The artist already knows how to draw without them and has years of experience to show that. The only thing it effects is they're able to make their comics faster.

I'm sorry but whose rule is it that you have to eyeball only the blank doll made explicitly for tracing over? The dolls were made blank BECAUSE they are meant to be traced. The ones with hair/faces and whatnot, not as much, are made to be used as comic characters themselves it's why there's options to change the line art and shadows and give them props.

Even the example you're all fired up about shows the artist putting their own line art and details on it using their screenshot reference of Luffy, not just tracing stills from One Piece.

People have been using bases (it's line art offered to other artists explicitly for them to trace and then add their own details to) for forever even before Clip Studio included poseable ones in the program.

Comic artist Greg Land gets paid, and so does the artist for Wonder Woman of Earth One, and both these dudes trace screengrabs from porn and it looks hella awkward, but they do it. Everyone knows they do it. They still get hired and paid by Marvel/DC. It's when you're tracing someone else's actual art without permission that people have a problem.

Hell, even the printed manga “The Way of the House Husband” uses 3D bases for their art (it it's not straight up 3d-to-2D conversion).
(look at the hands and the cart, the background is literally a photo that was run through a filter to make it line art, with extra lines and details added obviously)
Here's the thing. I don't care, as long as the artist didn't steal someone else's stuff, how they come to make a comic if the end product looks good and the writing is good. There's no ethical problem at all with using the blank 3D models you have to pose yourself over drawing the stick figures yourself. Thumbnails are just the trash art you build your good art on and discard? If you can't draw, tracing isn't going to help hide your flaws believe me.

There's only 1 problem with using this method and it's not a moral one. Sometimes it looks stiff and weightless if the artist doesn't put enough of their own influence into it. That's it.

(Edit, haha Ozone you posted when I was still writing but that's what I get taking hours to type and yes I agree)

I would never use it cuz I enjoy figure drawing. But people do all kinds of stuff with comics. The only thing I would consider cheating is enlisting the services those goddddaaaamnnnnn thieving robot, may they rot in robot hell.

voip phone

dragonsong12 wrote:
Yeah, there were a few comics I was reading on there where it felt like it was barely disguised. Like the backgrounds and horses were straight up low poly CG models with their drawn characters slapped on top.

…and like, I've never really brought it up or bothered anyone about it, I can't say it's expressly “wrong” or anything, but it rubbed me the wrong way. It made the comic feel really cheap, taking me out of the story every time it became noticeable (which was always) and just giving me the impression that the creator didn't care.

…and to play devil's advocate to my own comment, I do understand that creators on Webtoon actually have someone they report to. Like they have obligations on length and need to keep to a schedule, so I'm not unsympathetic to feeling like you need to cut corners…but as a reader it pulled me out of it and made me less interested. So it's a double-edged sword.

Makes me feel a bit better about my comics though. My art may be trash, but it's ALL mine, baby!

Shut up! your art isn't trash in the slightest.

“Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.”

That's a quote from Wally Wood, one of the all time greats. If Wally says it's okay then I wouldn't worry about it.
Readers don't care how you go about it, they just want a story they enjoy with art they find appealing. If they're enjoying they want as much as you can give them, so if this helps to speed things along why not use it?

Genejoke wrote:
Shut up! your art isn't trash in the slightest.

Nah, I'm a pretty big believer that art can be judged objectively (to an extent) and that we just need to be able to call a spade a spade. On pretty much every level my work is just. plain. bad. And considering I've been working on it more or less daily for three decades now there's really no excuse for it to be such hot garbage. I could go into specifics, but it isn't really relevant to the topic at hand and I've already talked about it too much.

So it's genuinely nice of you to say, but I think we'll just need to agree to disagree. I'll keep going either way, so it's all good.

Back on topic, I do agree with a lot of the push back, I think using these types of programs as a tool to help your work IS totally okay and no one who uses these techniques should be shunned or anything, but I still maintain that when it's done sloppily it can absolutely be a detriment to the work as a whole. Everyone WANTS to turn off their overly critical brain and just enjoy the show - I know I do - but once you see the strings, it can be hard to go back to suspending your disbelief. So it's a fine line to walk, I think, and it's a bit of a risk/reward sort of thing.

Knowing when to use reference for inspiration and technical accuracy is an aspect of being professional. Outright lifting and claiming it as your own is lazy and will limit your development as an artist. Put in the work to learn what you don't know!

I agree with Oz and Amelius 100%. Tracing over models is a standard of the industry and the craft especially when you need to crank out work fast. And in manga the old ‘filter to turn a photo into lineart’ trick is so ubiquitous you sort of expect it.

The problem arises ONLY when you trace someone else's art to create your own. This has several problems and copyright is only the most egregious one (you're stealing someone else's work). You are also stealing from yourself because tracing over other art rather than over a model or even a photo (that you took yourself or isn't copyright or isn't artistic) binds you to the abstractions and thinking process of another artist. This limits your art rather than letting you further develop your style.

And it makes you a thief.

Anyway, bottom line: tracing isn't a problem and you shouldn't feel cheated out of anything, memo. Like Amelius said, we're not in a competition.

JohnCelestri wrote:
Knowing when to use reference for inspiration and technical accuracy is an aspect of being professional. Outright lifting and claiming it as your own is lazy and will limit your development as an artist. Put in the work to learn what you don't know!

Exactly

I started working as a professional illustrator before 3D rendering programs existed. I remember drawing things like a restaurant filled with 200 bent-wood chairs, each chair in perfect perspective, each laid out by hand with a ruler and T-square. It took hours, sometimes days. Now, with the advent of 3D models, I am glad that I never have to do that kind of slave labor ever again.

fallopiancrusader wrote:
I remember drawing things like a restaurant filled with 200 bent-wood chairs, each chair in perfect perspective, each laid out by hand with a ruler and T-square. It took hours, sometimes days.

That's a nightmare but so fascinating. I learned how to do that back in the 80s in highschool, with all the gear…. nice big drafting desk, all the rulers and protractors and compasses, a big set of special pens.

I actually LOVED it to tell the truth! Hahaha!
I took every unit of it I could and studied it for a year. I could draw mathematically correct 3 point perspective of an scene with nothing but a mechanical pencil and my rulers. I love technical drawing and technical illustration SO MUCH! It was such a shame that computers took over :(

But these days yeah its so much quicker and easier. I still never use 3D for that (although I learned how to model, render and animate at university), but I use the computer to get my lines right haha!

This page of GirlSquadX was all laid out with a ruler, triangle, and ellipse guides. It was done around 1992. It took 2 days to finish. Come to think of it, building a 3D model of that scene would probably take just as long :P

fallopiancrusader wrote:
This page of GirlSquadX was all laid out with a ruler, triangle, and ellipse guides. It was done around 1992. It took 2 days to finish. Come to think of it, building a 3D model of that scene would probably take just as long :P

Beautiful, man! just beautiful!

lol. one word; camera obscura
okay maybe two