The Art of Copying

Recently, the DeviantArt, manga/anime illustration, and Bleach fandom communities slammed Gene Simmon's son, Nick Simmons, for copying art from one of the recent installments to the "Bleach" Manga series. You can read more about the specifics here:
Nick Simmons/Bleach Manga Plagiarism Scandal Rocks Comics Twitterverse

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Having read the article and then assessing my own illustrations I suddenly felt obligated as an intermediate artist to say something on this subject. Having not understood the entire context of the original conversation having entered it late, I slammed someone on twitter saying the following:

DjWaglmuffin: "hey, if artists want 2 sell themselves short by doing zilch but fanwork, let em'. They'll learn nothing and go nowhere in the end."

DjWaglmuffin: "if fanart is **ALL** you do than you're not learning. And I'm not a saint; I'm doing doujin but it's in MY style."

DjWaglmuffin: "For the record; the doujin that I am working on; I've written a story, developed a style and layed out the panels without copying."

DjWaglmuffin: "I've also learned quite a bit from artists that I admire; but when do you draw the line and branch out?"

DjWaglmuffin: "and once you get 2 that point, how do you convince yourself that what you're doing is not just a cheap knock off?"

Djwaglmuffin: "I'm not bashing you, but I do encourage other artists to create their own stuff EVENTUALLY. Practice is always a good thing."

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After that, I thought about correcting myself, but you know what? I'm not going to.

Here's why:

In Japan, it is encouraged during the learning process to reference to an artist or series of artists that you admire; I read this in a book which struck me as, almost taboo:

Shojo Beat’s Manga Artist Academy

This book is written by several popular Shojo Manga artists in Japan.

I understand this process, and anyone who draws comic books or animations, especially manga-ka, utilize this process at some point. It IS a very good teaching aid and you can learn a lot from it.

But all of those arists, regardless of how good they are or how popular they are, have been to school; taken design and fine art courses and that is something that a BULK of the American manga-ka have not done. Those of us who have try to utilize what we've learned as well as applying things from artists that we admire.

But in the end, the art is ours, not the person in which we reference.

The painstaking process of creating worlds is a labor of love. You want to do it because you feel you have something to share with the universe and the only way to do that is to reach inside yourself and yank out every shred of creative energy you have to create something amazing. Every single artist aspires for this and it will define you. But if you stay inside a fandom or a technique or under the wing of one artist you severly limit yourself and, eventually, you will begin to beat yourself up because, in the end: YOU ARE NOT THAT ARTIST.

In my opinion, that's what seperates the cream from the chaffe. To expound on a point I made on twitter: "You can't possibly rely on your ability to draw Mickey Mouse 6000 different ways, if you don't stop drawing Mickey Mouse and come up with your own original characters or art work in general, you'll be stuck copying and be considered cheap for the rest of your short lived creative career."

To be blunt:

If you're not ready to sit in front of a desk day after day to become the God of your own universe you have no business in this media.

Fanart is kind of insulting after a while as well. Granted, I'm probably speaking for a small sliver of the community, but some of us have bent over backwards to create our worlds, stories and characters to share with the planet and to fall through the cracks of "Naruto", "Bleach" or yes, even "Inuyasha" is kind of a slap in the face.

Now, I'm no saint. as I said in a tweet:

I am doing a doujinshi and I love to draw some of my favorite characters every once in a while, but it's not what I want to be remembered for. I don't want someone to come to my table at a con and remember me because I drew an awesome Sesshoumaru. I want someone to come to my table begging for the next installment of one of my original comic books.

------------------------ Recomendations-------------

Ok; so let's start from the beginning:

Copying, as an artist, is the practice of taking someone elses work and drawing all of the elements within in order to train your brain into understanding what it actually takes to execute a composition.

For example: Pose referencing, color referencing, composition layout, honing a technique, anatomical execution, page layout, element origanizing, etc.

However, eventually you will need to break away from copying and draw your own original material. And when I say original I mean: take all of your reference material, all of your books, hide them from yourself, sit down in front of that sheet of paper and apply what you have learned.

Borrowing:
It's ok to borrow a reference from another artist. Believe me, some poses are insane to draw, but try not to draw them exactly how are friend Nick Simmons did. All he did was add a few panels to a page, but the overall layout was exactly the same and THAT'S why the collective red flag went up.

--------Personal examples------------

**Feel free to reference to yourself at any point but for purposes of this blog I'll attack myself.**

In the year of 2004, back when I was in the Navy, I decided to resurrect my wants and desires for illustrative media. My passion is animation; period. I love it; I love watching something colorful and artistic light up the screen; I love all of the elements that can be used to create a story that you can't get in live action. I love that the world of animation is so vast and the possibilities are endless.

Below is my progression and how I applied everything that I learned from the time that I began posting my work on the internet back in 2003-present. You'll notice that after referencing, the art began to evolve into it's own thing and I can proudly say I've coined my own quirks. Nobody draws quite like me and I think everyone will enjoy that same level of satisfaction when they reach it.

**note:
I've actually been drawing since I was 13 but i didn't start actually applying anything until I got out of my familie's house.


-----History-----

Here is how copying can help you and not hinder you:

Back in 2004, I was a horrible artist. I couldn't draw, and everything I did draw was on the level of a third grader. So, I decided to go to school.




"Wedding; dated appoxe 2003-2004.



Back in those days I loved "Suikoden 2" and "The Legend Of Zelda" as well as "Slayers" anime series; these are what I started with as a youngin'.

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I began to gradually morph having become a big fan of Inuyasha:



"Original character based on Inuyasha designs" 2005


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It still wasn't working and I got stuck in Inuyasha for about 1 solid year until I started reading Manga. I was very closed minded and very confrontational with my work.





After I had a serious pep talk and began to convince myself I could do more, I stopped copying Rumiko Takahashi and stopped modeling my work after hers. it was at this point that i learned I will never be Rumiko Takahashi so I started doing more research on other artists and tried to ween myself out of her style.

So. I started reading a lot of Yuu Watase and eventually began to gobble up anything she wrote; here is an example of that switch:





"Zelda OOT Fanart, 2007"

And another, more evolved peice:





"Fallen kiriban piece 2007"


And then I started working on my own styles and exploring other artists I got even better:




"Mortal Kombat OC 2008"

This is the end of the Yuu Watase switch and began to reference more from different artists while adjusting according my own character aesthetics; here is Sesshoumaru at the end of that switch:




"Sesshoumaru Kiriban 2008"


My own switch toward the end of 2008:





In 2009 the artists I began to study were: Ite Ogure (action), Kosuke Fujishima (female dynamics), Kaori Ozaki (Male dynamics), And of course, Yuu Watase (effects and execution)



"WoW Death Knight: Jan. 2009"

And over the course of 2009 I hit compositions something fierce, as well as action poses; my goal is to draw in my audience this passed year:



"Sesshoumaru-Sama May 2009"

**I used the pose from the third movie to make it more identifiable. I also did this for fun, but the style is inevitably mine. I just took a character and drew him a different way. (Slapping myself for the Mickey Mouse comment ^^; )

Later in 2009 I began to utilize photography a lot more:



"Galactic Bad guys: Goa'Uld" End of May 2009

Later that year, I slammed compositions again and adding details which I started to refer to some of my favorite American comic books. Mostly "Thor" "Ages of Thunder" and "V for Vendetta".

I don't have anything uploaded from July 2009-November 2009; No scanner :[

Ok; so then I started working on page layouts and illustrations:



"Thor DJ Style: December 2009"

And that brings us to now.

You can see how referring to different artists and using the different resources out there can help you improve but I will never stress enough to rely more on your abilities. You can't rely on one artist to carry your progression through out your development; you've got to break away and try walking on your own legs once in a while; if you don't YOU WILL **NOT** LEARN!




"From the Beginning: A cosmic love story" Feb 2010

The above picture is an example of where YOU can be. I studied my ass off, drew every single day, messed up thousands of times, threw things, hit walls, cried, stopped eating, sacrificed time, but kept doing it. On and On and On and ON AND ON!!

You have to keep going!

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!!

Get advice and take it, apply it.

Read tutorials, draw; DRAW!!

The bulk of my personal success, and I'm sure others will concur, is we drew ALL THE TIME!




--------------------Closing

So, is it ok to copy?

Yes. As long as, when you publish or present your work, you show us what you've learned. As a senior artist to some of my younger manga-ka counterparts, I want to see you improve upon your original ideas.

Did I say "Don't draw your favorite characters from Bleach?"

No.

But I do want to see how YOU would draw those characters if you didn't know anything about that story.

Exercise:

For those reading this I want you to try the following: Get on the interweb and find yourself a Stageplay. Read that Stageplay, pick a character and based upon what you read about that character, Draw them. Draw your interpretation, how you feel about them, how they feel, their environments, their colors, etc.

Learn to become your art; become apart of your own universe.


Go get em' guys!

~Djwaglmuffin



Links:
Djwaglmuffin's Deviantart

The Artist's Hosiptal on DA

The Drawing Board

Manga Tutorials

Manga University on DA

Deb Aoki's "Manga" on About.com

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Twitter peeps:

Deb Aoki

Yuri Con

Wintermuted

Djwaglmuffin

Jeph artist extraordinaire!

Mark Crilley