In an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students’ midterm. It was about the…

  • oceanwaveswoosh
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    6 hours ago

    In the online art community, “tracing” means you’re a bad artist and cheating, people get doxed and bullied offline for tracing.

    For real artists, using tools to trace real-life objects and photographs is normal, and has been since medieval times. Not the photograph part of course, but real life objects can be traced or copied using various methods, and it’s perfectly acceptable to do so.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      1 hour ago

      I’m sure you could probably dig up an exception or two, but by and large “using tools to trace real-life objects and photographs” isn’t an accurate portrayal of the sort of thing that gets people flak online. Every tracing scandal I’ve seen on tumblr is an artist essentially plagiarising work from another artist in the same community.

      It’s the difference between “my character is shooting a bow in this panel, let’s find some references for archery poses so I can get it right” versus “oh hey that’s a cool picture someone drew of an archer, I think I’ll trace it and fill in my character’s face and colours instead and post it online and pretend like I made it all myself without crediting the person who actually did 99% of the creative process”