No, I said that you traced a Derpy custom that had OtakuSquirrel’s hairsculpt. OtakuSquirrel never made a Derpy doll, in fact he’s still in the process of sculpting one. I decided to actually look for the artist who made the Derpy doll I was referring to which was, as you said, PrettyKitty.
For those of you who don’t know, I said “I like how it’s basically traced a picture of a derpy custom with Otaku Squirrel’s hair sculpt. V classy” on this drawing here when I was doing my daily Tumblr spree. The Derpy custom I was referring to was Pretty Kitty’s custom found here.
Personally for me, there’s a difference between using a reference from an image and applying your own artistic spin on it. What you did here was blatantly tracing an image without crediting or asking permission from the original artist. And that is not okay.
Since my friend Beth had photoshop I asked her to do a transparent overlay of one of PrettyKitty’s images on your ‘artwork’ and basically there is no discernible difference.
And here is a side by side comparison of the two:
And if you’re not fully convinced this is not a blatant trace, have a fun gif:
This annoys me on many levels because while tracing does have it’s place in the art community, I consider it theft when you use another’s work as the basis for your tracing without at least crediting the person. And at the moment of this writing, the post with your artwork on it doesn’t even make a mention of PrettyKitty.
This is not using something as a reference. This is stealing, plain and simple. If you used the original photo as a basis for Derpy’s pose or hairstyle while adding your own elements to Derpy, I would have been fine with. But you traced the image, down to it’s very shading, eye position and cutie mark. While that takes a level of effort I would hardly call it original or saying the original photo was a reference.
So yes. I don’t believe I was at all inaccurate for saying you traced an image. In your submission there was no mention of PrettyKitty or Otaku Squirrel, both artists whom contributed to the original work.
My original comment may have not been clear and I admit I was in a rush when I reblogged it so I hope I made myself clear this time what I meant.
Next time, use your own photos to trace and not someone else’s.
Art theft is bad mmmkay? Lying about it is even worse :I I remember having a friend who constantly traced and lied about it. It really broke trust.
