[Matias Piipari]

Made these up in 15 mins altogether. Look good, I think. But is my technique somehow morally WRONG? I drew these with a pencil, scanned, traced and retouched em a little. They'd look awful without the tracing process, and similar thing would take hours to do without the automatic tracing. Am I a bad person?

[RoadMaster]

if you are tracin a drawing YOU did by hand simply on the computer, I don't see any problem with that, if this is a trace from another person's art than there is a problem, since this piece seems highly on the "creative" side. It's fine if it is your own work, at least that's my opinion on the matter.

[zak]

here we go again, how many threads have we had on this tracing matter?
if you want to hear my advice, dont trace, practise instead. takes longer but pays off. i use a low opacity layer to compare proportions when im finished to see where i can do better next time, but thats about it

[Matias Piipari]

It is my own drawing, yes.
I tend to use these traced versions of my own sketches to guide me when planning and modeling characters for my 3d animations (like these ones). They save a lot of time and help me concentrate on the general shapes and proportions first. But I guess I shouldn't use them for anything public. The End.

[Tom Luth]

People seem to have strong feelings about this. I have long since made the decision to compose on paper, and scan in sketches, then work over those. The downside is the tendency to follow the sketch far too closely.

This is true of traditional painters as well, and I am too guilty of this myself. I love the pre-Raphaelites, particularly Waterhouse. I love the way he can smear down blobs and streaks and refine these into beautiful paintings, making needed changes as he goes. Another Pre-Raphaelite, John Millius, seems to draw a detailed sketch, while he follows religiously. While I love many of his works, many do seem far stiffer than those of Waterhouse, as a result of the process.

This can also be a problem with detailed scanned sketches. What I am trying to do to avoid this problem, is to keep my sketches looser, and not rely on them too strictly.

However, Zak's point is quite valid, and I see that Mullins prefers to work direct in the computer, to keep the work fresh. At the very least, spend some time sketching without scanned images. I try to spend a few hours a week just copying faces from magazines freehand. Most are pretty awful, but it pushes me to develop better technique.

[Tom Luth]

"Oh, Just one more thing..." in the words of Colombo. I just re-read your post, and saw that you specified "auto-trace. That is something a bit different. There are times that one wants that glitchy auto-trace, Streamlined look. Sometimes it can be cool. But, for anything like drawing/painting, I would have to say, "no way!"

Vector painting is a different beast. If you want to draw or paint, try Photoshop and Painter. Illustrator can work great, but it has a different feel. The newer caligraphic brushes with sensitivity can be great for a inked comic book look.

[Novacaptain]

No offense, but in the "discussions" section there have been countless threads about tracing; use the forum's search engine on tracing - it should yield some interesting results.

That is of course if you're really interested in the matter and not just craving attention.

I honestly don't think it looks all that good but that's probably just me and no-one else.

[edit] ok let me be a little more constructive here:

The fact that the issue has been brought up before doesn't mean it shouldn't be brought up again, but there have quite recently been quite a number of them, that is all.

About tracing your own drawing, yeah sure why not? The drawing itself needs work though. I can't even make out what it is supposed to be: A stylized human or a bug-eyed alien?

And hey, 15 minutes! You're darn fast...i hardly don't think i've ever managed to get a post-worthy WIP done that fast, congrats man!

[ July 04, 2002: Message edited by: Novacaptain ]

[Matias Piipari]

I'll put my Freehand/Illustrator skills in development right away and forget those auto-traces

Oh, and thanks for the forum search tip and childish flaming, Novacaptain.

[Novacaptain]

I'm sorry must've overstepped the line. Honesty is the best policy they say, irony and sarcasm isn't though. So I owe you an apology.

Do realize that there is a lot of room for improvement and i assure you, in 2 months (if you make some of that improvement) you will look back on this with new eyes.

[Matias Piipari]

Oh I do realize there's lot that can be done better. I never claimed those rapid little sketches to be great pieces of art, or pieces of art at all. And yes, of course I'll work on my illustrating skills.
And the question I first asked was outdated and posted on a wrong forum, as it seems. Let's just forget this whole thing and not trace!