| Posted: 19 February 2008 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | 9
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Most artists swipe at some point. But there are different levels of swipes, some of which are considered acceptable.
Wally Wood was a master of the swipe. He is famous for his whole mantra about not drawing what you can swipe etc. But his inking so radically transformed the traced pencil drawings that the swipes became barely recognizable as such. His art was in the inking, not the swiped pencils, so he's forgiven.
Some artists swipe heavily when they're new. If they swipe from earlier issues of books they're working on, that's usually seen as accpeted by editorial, making it not as much a legal issue as an ethical one.
Then there are the hacks who trace from many different and highly recognizable sources, without concern for how the traced art fits with the storytelling or whether the characters look consistent.
The negative legal side is if you're swiping art or photographs copyrighted to someone other than yourself or your employer. A Superman artist who bases his Superman on licensed artwork depicting Christopher Reeve as Superman is different from a guy who bases his Wonder Woman on the likeness of an actress in a highly recognizable photo spread by a famous photographer. If they're litigious, there is no defense.
The negative ethical side is if you're tracing artwork in such a way that you're appropriating their style as well. There was a very high profile example in the 80s when Keith Giffen, while trying to improve stylistically, started tracing Jose Munoz's work in detail. Lifting entire panels as well as his style. I don't think he suffered legal consequences, but ethically, he's still living that one down.
In short, unless your reference is copyrighted by you or in the public domain, or constitutes only a small part of an overall piece, you should seek to "transform" it either stylistically or compositionally in order to bring your own artistic personality to bear on it as much as possible.
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