Byrne Robotics: Cheating and artwork

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Armindo Macieira
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Joined: 15 October 2006
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Posted: 06 June 2013 at 4:50am \| IP Logged \| 1

I'm all in favor of the use of photos as reference. I do it myself a lot! It's an indispensable tool not only to draw people but also backgrounds and objects (objects are always much more complicated than we usually imagine them).

I'm against tracing and "photoshopping" people's photos and put it on a comic book page. That's not drawing and that's not comics.
I can accept tracing some backgrounds, specially if it's a known location, because backgrounds (or cars, or ships,...) should be accurate, don't have to be dynamic, don't have to show emotions and, unlike characters, are not the core element of a comic book.

The worst part is that, 9 out of 10 times, tracing/photoshopping people into pages doesn't work well, specially in superhero genre. The anatomy of superheroes in not 100% realistic, there's exaggerations in poses, muscles and even emotions and all of that is lost when tracing photos. You end up with a bunch of stiff, cold characters.

Besides, like Terry said, it will probably be much more difficult and time consuming to find images of the same actor doing all the different poses you need online and trace them than just...let's say... draw it?!
If you can't draw, you should either practise or just find another career.

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Glenn Brown
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Joined: 16 April 2004
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Posted: 06 June 2013 at 5:02am \| IP Logged \| 2

There is a HUGE difference between using photographic reference and tracing photographs or using photos altered with Photoshop filters and calling it original art.

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John Byrne
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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 06 June 2013 at 5:20am \| IP Logged \| 3

I suppose the real "trick" to using photo reference is that the artist's style should still be the most prominent element of the finished image. Jack Kirby occasionally used photo reference, but the results still looked like they were drawn by Jack Kirby. Ditto Neal Adams, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert.

I have found in my own work that when I DIRECTLY trace and image, ie doing so with pen or brush, without pencils underneath, my line actually changes noticeably, and in order to avoid this effect I use pencil for the tracing, and then ink the result as if it was just one of my pencil layouts.

The images at the top of this thread give no sense of the artist's personal "style". Only what he can do with Photoshop. (Sadly, in the modern world, that has actually become a "style". )

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Steven Legge
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Joined: 28 July 2012
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Posted: 06 June 2013 at 9:15am \| IP Logged \| 4

Not only is there no distinct style, but the images, which I'm guessing are directly based off screen grabs or other reference, feel stilted and lifeless even though they might look nice. This is an element that artists generally put a lot of thought into, even in simple settings of people standing around talking.

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Armindo Macieira
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Joined: 15 October 2006
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Posted: 06 June 2013 at 11:09am \| IP Logged \| 5

Paolo Rivera is a good example of someone who uses photo reference (mostly himself) for drawing some figures but does not trace or photoshops it into the page directly. Like Mr. Byrne said, he keeps his style consistent and his figures look alive.

In the other end you have Greg Land who blatantly traces images and other artist's work. No matter how pretty his figures look it always gives the impression I'm looking at a catalogue from FHM. Yes, he keeps his style consistent but that means stiff, plastic figures and some "porn faces" all over the pages...

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