A very sad tending I’ve seen going on mostly around deviantart and furrafinity (but more likely several other places as well) is that several people prefer to pay and commission tracers rather than real artists.

What is a tracer? Basically someone who instead of drawing from scratch like everyone who dares to call himself “artist” is supposed to do, prefers basically to pin-point redraw on top of a drawing someone else did.

An example of a typical trace would be this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25792020/Traced-Artwork.jpg
Why people do this, there are many reasons, some actually just do it for fun, because they’re aware they can’t draw but just want to pass the time or create some artwork for a fic or story, these people would have no problems admitting they traced and would even share a link to the original, sadly, these are a minority, most of the tracers would do as possible to convince people they actually did such pics from scratch, you can call them a very sad case of low self-esteem and a desperate need for attention, but in the end, pretty harmless. Sadly, there is an even much worse and even dangerous variant of tracers out there, those who charge and sell their traced pictures.

Why people do this, and even more, why would people actually PAY for this, it escapes me, but it’s really sad and it worries me seriously. Making artwork is a long process that can take even days, anatomy, proportions, angles, every single detail takes it’s sweet time, calculation, balancing, studying, corrections and re-doing in order to make a decent picture. These people are basically making a form of piracy in artwork as they’re making and selling their pictures at the expense of someone else’s work in regards to all previously mentioned, it’s something to really feel angry about.

I still don’t understand why someone would actually pay and support with full acknowledge a tracer who charges at times even more than a regular artists who draws from 0 (I don’t know about you but if it was my money, I would prefer something original than something basically ripped off from somewhere else), not to mention the ego that comes these so called “artists” who’re not just convinced they’re right in what they’re doing, but also would call “immature child” anyone who confronts them with the obvious.

What do I want to do here? I don’t want for people to post links to tracers who sell their stuff (I don’t think they even deserve the bad publicity) in order to insult them, what I want to do is to create conscience, the conscience that paying to a tracer is basically denying the support to the real artists who works hard in their stuff who honestly deserves the money 100 times more than a tracer, there is no talent in tracing, trace scan be done in less than 2 hours, a solid artwork can take even days.

Please people, if you want to commission any form of artwork, a picture, an animation or a comic, do ALL the artists community a favor and commission REAL artists, don’t commission tracers.

Yours truly; an independent artist; Evil Rick.

PD: I fully allow both this image and massage to be shared and re-uploaded by anyone in any form of social media related to artwork, let’s spread the word!