Tracing/swiping other people's art and passing it off as your own was "legitimized" in mainstream culture by Roy Lichtenstein (yes I know I am risking triggering our old friend Crimebuster by saying the name) whose work earned him millions while the artist she swiped from (Russ Heath and others) toiled in relative obscurity. That genie has been out of the bottle for a long time, and no corporation (at the top or in the trenches) is going to try to mandate that genie be put back in the bottle (not that they ever could).

That said, I do think that artists who are having their work used in such a way need to be credited and compensated. You cannot just order people to stop doing that when it it makes jobs more economical and efficient. However if you make it more expensive to do so, by enforcing compensation to every artist whose work was used in such a manner, you will see such activities be curtailed. However, such an initiative is not going to come form those who benefit from the activity-you won't see corporations championing this cause, you won't see artists in the trenches who use it championing this cause, and those whose work is being exploited usually lack to resources to champion such a cause effectively because of the cost of the legal action to do so. And we really can't realistically expect laws to protect those artists either, as we have repeatedly seen copyright and trademark laws get altered to the benefit of those with the most money (Disney anyone).

Digital art is not going away. It's not the problem. It's a tool like any other. Its the abuse of the tool that is the issue, but unfortunately abusing the tool is to the economic benefit of those who are doing so, and they are the only ones with the economic resources to challenge and halt such abuses, and they won't. But until such a time that someone finds a way to flip the balance and make such abuses economically unfavorable to those using them, it's not going to stop.

Sure an editor could choose not to hire Greg Land. But Greg hits his deadline and sells books. If the deadlines are missed and the book doesn't sell as well because the editor chose not to use Land, they will lose their job, as might the editor-in-chief, the publisher, the VPs etc. Until you find a way to make employing someone other than Greg Land have a better cost/benefit ratio than hiring Greg Land, real change is not going to take place. There's no incentive for it. Publishing comics (and all commercial art really) is not about making art, it's about producing profitable products. And until and unless it makes business sense to change the way that product is currently produced, it's not going to change. Anything that makes it cheaper, faster and easier to get the product to market will be embraced by the producers. If they didn't do it that way in the past, the most likely reason is that the tools were not available for them to do so. Someone like Wally Wood would have wholly embraced methods that would allow him to produce faster with less effort. And I adore Wood's work. I am not a fan of Land. I despise the use of AI to replace human creativity. But I am also a realist, and unless or until you can find a way to make the use of that financially unattractive, people will continue to utilize it (whether openly or clandestinely).

It's not a question of should they use it, that debate is irrelevant as people will continue to use it as long as it benefits them or their bottom line. The question is and the discussion needs to be centered around-how to make it a financial drawback to use such methods instead of other means or how to make those other means more beneficial for the bottom line for companies producing such products. Because that's the only argument that is going to carry any weight in the matter. As long as the world is ok with someone like Lichtenstein gets fame and fortune for using others work while the original artists get bupkus, you're not going to be able to make effective change without something to leverage such change, and arguments like it's wrong, it's unethical, traditional art has more value, or AI/digital art sucks, aren't going to give you any leverage in the matter.

I won't buy products that us AI generated art. I don't use AI to generate art or text that a human can create. I, to the best of my ability, don't support products that facilitate AI, etc. But lots of people do, and will continue to do so because it is faster, easier, cheaper, and more convenient for them to do so. Until that changes, nothing else will.

-M

THIS is how you do it. There is PLENTY of photo-referencing going on here, and maybe even some tracing... but he has the creativity and chops to back it up. This is not laziness, but pure dedication to his craft.

Excellent art! That is how to do it. If faces must be traced, pull it off by integrating it into your style so no one can see a difference.

As for the "comic artists won't sue because they lack the resources" comment- one artist said he couldn't sue because it was work for hire he created. Only the publisher could sue.

i hope that I didn't come off contrary. I was more defending (and should have given that context in my first post) of the one example of Larroca someone posted that shamed him for tracing a random picture in the public domain he found on google. We all have very good intentions in our conversations here, and it is one of the things that can draw me, a very non-confrontational person, into a debate.

i don't think any artist (since art is what is the target of the conversation is) sells out by doing their job. My point was that while comics are a creative medium, drawing can be a gifted talent and maybe some artists are just using that talent to earn a paycheck. Because they can make more with art than say going into a trade. I imagine most people who have a skill they excel at use it in their monetary favor. I think that as fans of the medium we romanticize the process by which we get the finished product, when really it is, to me anyway, any different than the mechanic finding the problem with my car and fixing it.

All that said I am not a fan of what was posted. But then I don't buy modern comics, so I don't really have a dog in the race, that this could be what modern comics become. I got out of them long ago for my own reasons.

The thing that surprises me about those Greg Land samples on the previous page is how crude and amateurish some of them look.