There's a terrifying situation about the Artfight scandal. As usual, I could sum it up with few words: kids (and badly grown adults) speaking from the place of ignorance and not accepting adults or people who are more in the know to correct them.
They use rotoscoping or camera lucida to defend their argument that yes, tracing is good! Well nope, rotoscoping is a technique that's exclusive to ANIMATION, still used nowadays (see: Mappa's Chainsawman) to achieve hyper realistic, fluid movement. Camera lucida, instead, is a tracing method that's been controversial since its heyday. Wonder why...
Others completely confuse referencing with tracing. Yes, you are supposed to use references to draw. Several at once. But you don't draw OVER them. You keep them on the side and eyeball that shit.
Others still, start crying that tracing is a good teaching tool; yes it is. But using it systematically isn't really a good thing.
"But we wouldn't have fun doing everything without tracing!" Hey, you're discovering that inktober, Artfight and similar things are torturous because they're simulations of the workload you would have as a professional, good morning...
"But professionals do it!" Yes, because being a professional FUCKING SUCKS BROS, you don't know half of it. You have to work through such a huge volume of stuff you *WILL* trace, copy, steal, use ai, sell your mother, all to churn out whatever your boss demands of you. Do you really like that pipeline?!
Drawings (hobbyist) should take time and inspiration, not be churned out like it's a factory to ride the social media algorithm, the Artfight/inktober rhythm or whatever. Do you really enjoy being soulless trendhoppers just for likes? AI also gets a lot of likes, you know, because most people don't really care about anything...
You should draw for yourselves.
