Ok, this is my view on the topic...
First of all... the guy cant draw... i don't care if i am offensive because i'm an art snob and i know what i like... and bitmap tracing is right up there in the category titled "shit you don't do"...
if you look at other art by the same guy you can CLEARLY see that he is not able to apply lines in the same fashion as the traced pictures, i tried to acquire the original picture for the first one but he did not deliver... that was a week ago... he had a chance back then to clear it all up... defending a losing battle is just going to make things worse...
Now, as XWarrior61 pointed out... there are areas where the lines are so sharp that the color doesn't go all the way to the end... flood fill you say? nope, it is the work of a computer, doing art in flash for a couple of years teaches you how computers do things art wise... there are a few more points on the same picture where the background image is showing through... if this was painstakingly done by hand over the course of 3 hours or what ever he said, there is no way you would cock up that many times...
HOWEVER
i have the same thing goes with the other picture... i believe he had touched up the image afterwards if he did bitmap trace, the glasses and eyes are too clean, and the logo on the shirt has been put on afterwards, and the logos on the neck band are removed. i have been messing around in flashmx's bitmap trace but i cant seem to get the right balance/contrast to make the lines the same, its something i haven't really used before other to break pictures down and play with them in flash, now im 100% that has been bitmap traced or something somehow and then followed up with some touch up work to improve the picture?....
however these are my thoughts...
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