hey guys, it's just not, ok? It may be good practice for you, but practice pieces belong in your personal folder, for your personal use. it doesn't matter if the lines "doesn't match up exactly", it doesn't matter if you've changed the hair to make it your personal character, it doesn't matter if it's official art from the mostest popularest anime or an illustration from an artist no one's heard before--it does not belong in your gallery masquerading as your "original concept".

So many people on dA seem to think this is a good idea, or is permissible. I don't get it.

I was thinking of clever and cutesy ways of glitzing this up, but I am filled with phail tonight.

I welcome your thoughts and opinions on this issue, but please keep the discussion civil and intelligent. Thank you!

EDIT)

I wanted to clear my views on tracing up, since I've been getting such comments as "Is what I'm doing tracing" and "It's fine if it's _______" over the last few months. I have no issues with people tracing over their own artwork--many artists do this legitimately for a variety of reasons; animators pretty much make a career out of it. Nor do I consider "looking at something and drawing it" tracing--drawing from life is an important part of one's artistic education, and I myself have drawn portions of other artist's images (only photography and realism studies though :3) to get a feel for the technique. Although I would never post these things in a public community, as long as the original artist does not object (I myself discourage people from copying my art) and there is appropriate credit given, I don't think this is a big problem.

What this stamp addresses is people who trace over other people's artwork and claim it as 100% their own work--tracing over screenshots, for instance. Some people will change minute details (thus personalizing it) and claim that this negates the fact that the image was traced. An infamous popular deviant (who is still a notorious) tracer once claimed that her images--which perfectly overlapped other artist's work for the most part--were 100% original, but with slight "influences". It's people like this, who negate the original artist's efforts and then make weak excuses, that I'd like to dedicate this stamp to.

I realize that tracing is a finnicky business--what if your lines didn't line up because...you're just a lousy tracer? What if the original artist doesn't mind? What if you're really some sort of godly eyeballer and you've managed to approximate every curve and every angle?

I think the operating guideline should be "respect"--if you don't know if the original artist would mind a reproduction of their work, you should assume that they would.