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Post by rich on Oct 8, 2024 7:57:49 GMT -5
I should say I'm not opposed to tracing photographs of faces by hand... so long as it's not incongruous with the artist's style (and they stick with one model for one character, as opposed to using their favourite porn actress to be the face of all the female characters in a story, or using different models from panel to panel for the same character.)
Edit: Having to trace other comic book artists bodies and faces in every issue, that's more of a grey area. David Mack admitted to doing that, and not to get a consistent look for a character, which at least would be understandable.
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Post by kirby101 on Oct 8, 2024 8:22:56 GMT -5
Well, Adams was on Kevin Smith's podcast advocating tracing. A, Are you saying Land 'merely' traces? B, Is Adams' use of tracing distracting and unnatural when you look at his work? Neal discussed tracing as a preliminary and learning tool. Do we really see a lot of examples of tracing in Adam's work? |
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Post by impulse on Oct 8, 2024 8:43:08 GMT -5
I mean, let's just get to the point. Surely we can agree there is a difference between using tracing as a tool in your art versus literally copying other people's work and passing it off as your own? You can't draw a car? Trace a photo, sure. You need to reference a pose or cityscape? Sure? Okay. But what those Land panels show is egregious, naked, low-effort plagiarism. It's just plagiarized from enough sources it's different apparently. Not just that, but it's lazy. He's making zero effort to actually integrate it into a style. It's just taking other people's stuff and stapling it together and changing the paint.
You can tell when someone is just totally half-assing something and doing the absolute bare minimum to try and scrape a pass. This is that but lazier.
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Post by rich on Oct 8, 2024 8:44:53 GMT -5
A, Are you saying Land 'merely' traces? B, Is Adams' use of tracing distracting and unnatural when you look at his work? Neal discussed tracing as a preliminary and learning tool. Do we really see a lot of examples of tracing in Adam's work? Not that I can recall. But I haven't studied his art closely for a long time now, so can't be certain. It would make sense that he discussed it more for preliminary sketches/character designs, and for learning. |
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Post by rich on Oct 8, 2024 8:47:19 GMT -5
I mean, let's just get to the point. Surely we can agree there is a difference between using tracing as a tool in your art versus literally copying other people's work and passing it off as your own? You can't draw a car? Trace a photo, sure. You need to reference a pose or cityscape? Sure? Okay. But what those Land panels show is egregious, naked, low-effort plagiarism. It's just plagiarized from enough sources it's different apparently. Not just that, but it's lazy. He's making zero effort to actually integrate it into a style. It's just taking other people's stuff and stapling it together and changing the paint. You can tell when someone is just totally half-assing something and doing the absolute bare minimum to try and scrape a pass. This is that but lazier. I agree. It's a shame because he seemed a decent artist in the 90s, before he discovered photoshop. Around about 2000 suddenly a lot of his faces were giving the 'uncanny valley' effect. |
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Post by commond on Oct 8, 2024 8:47:25 GMT -5
Adams was very good at tracing a photograph and making it look like the rest of his art. What Land and another artists can do with computers these days is beyond simple lightbox tracing. Whether it's done well or not, the point remains that tracing has been around forever, photo referencing has been around forever, and swiping has been around forever. Moreover, I don't particularly like the swipe file mentality. I think it leads to silly accusations against artists like Charles Burns. I also feel sorry for young artists who don't have all the tools to produce perfect drawings, look to other artists for reference and are accused of swiping. Especially, when a lot of the great artists of the past admit that they did the same thing and that was how they learnt to draw comics.
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Post by rich on Oct 8, 2024 8:57:04 GMT -5
Adams was very good at tracing a photograph and making it look like the rest of his art. So he was changing it, if he was making it look like the rest of the art. It didn't look like a photograph pasted in, like you see with modern digital artists. After Palmer or Giordano had done inking it, Adams art certainly looked legit and not faked. His poses definitely didn't look traced, by the way- unlike certain modern artists, whose sequential art can look wooden or awkward. |
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Post by impulse on Oct 8, 2024 10:29:14 GMT -5
Adams was very good at tracing a photograph and making it look like the rest of his art. That's the whole enchilada, though, isn't it? He made it part of his art and fit it into his style. As you say, while tracing and referencing has been around forever, what these guys are doing now is beyond it. You can trace something on a lightbox and have it still look like crap. There is a level of skill and effort in tracing something in a way that fits into your work and is different from the starting image. I don't think anyone here is saying tracing is automatically bad in all circumstance and that no one should ever reference or trace anything else ever. It's a perfectly valid way to learn and a useful tool. The problem is when it's not being used as a tool for one's own art but is instead only a composite of someone else's work. The other artists would trace something in a way that its drawn into their style and integrated. That's not what those most egregious Land examples did.
He JUST swiped. It's not transformed. It's not integrated. It's just pasted in. Not to harp on it too much, but I think the amount of effort to integrate it into your own art is absolutely key in it not being JUST a swipe.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2024 10:41:13 GMT -5
If given the choice between this, and someone tracing women from a sports magazine, or Hustler magazine, I choose the tracing, sorry....
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Post by impulse on Oct 8, 2024 10:49:43 GMT -5
Just like some people are bad at tracing, some people suck at drawing, too.
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 8, 2024 10:55:56 GMT -5
I seem to have a mental block for reading comics. I think about it during the day while listening to comic based podcasts but when I get home, nothing.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2024 10:59:53 GMT -5
I seem to have a mental block for reading comics. I think about it during the day while listening to comic based podcasts but when I get home, nothing.
Sometimes I don't care to read a comic for weeks....but it doesn't stop me from adding to the stash. Maybe it's just OCD (obsessive comic disorder)
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Post by rich on Oct 8, 2024 11:04:01 GMT -5
Just like some people are bad at tracing, some people suck at drawing, too. Agreed. Liefeld being terrible at drawing doesn't excuse others passing off photographs with photoshop filters as original art. Unless you just don't, uh, like line art, or the skill and effort being good at it requires, I guess... |
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Post by rich on Oct 8, 2024 11:07:18 GMT -5
Salvadore Larrocca, he of boring turn of the millennium Claremont comics fame, can apparently out 'Greg' Gregs Land and Horn these days... I'll find some examples and we can compare their virtues against Liefeld's anatomic masterpieces.
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Post by rich on Oct 8, 2024 14:23:57 GMT -5
Another funny Land one to share, where his use of Google is surprising people...  |
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