Another good reason for tracing is when you need specific information, regarding what it is that you are drawing. When Alex Ross paints a Batman poster, he needs to know more than just light and shadow; he needs to know how the light will interact with batman's skin, costume, gadgets and background. It's an argues task that pays off huge! Filmation used it for, pretty much, all their cartoons. Bashki used it, to an amazing extent. My problem is, when it becomes the *only* tool used. When it stops being a guide and starts being the leader.
THIS! Tracing is only bad if the person takes full credit (if it was traced over art such as a drawing or animation) and/or if they profit off it (case that happened to me some time ago). Sort of a re-color but more elaborate I would say.
Agreed. Also happened to me. I've recommended people to trace for study, but I find it disrespectful towards an original artist and clients (including the commissioner of the original) when traced art is sold or promoted without proper credits.
@@andyc.9895 What if an animator traced from another animator? I recently found a animator on youtube (that I wont state their channel name) that recently got a ton of views over a au animation that directly traced a few scenes off of another animator that has alot of subs
@@purpledshadow I think it should be called out unless it's proven that it wasn't traced over the animation. But if it's pretty evident that it was traced, than it should be called out or at least told to the person who it was traced from
@@andyc.9895 I made a video on it most likely being traced w/ comparison towards both animations and the youtuber commented (but I did not really get what they were tryna say so this is what I think they meant to say) saying that they sometimes use references and that in theory you can find fault in anything everywhere
for years i've "told" myself that i should not trace, that i should learn how to draw everything from reference even tho i had no idea how etc, then ultimately quitted art altogether many time because of that (not just that but was playing a big part) then recently i started tracing (breaking down the image) and boy it made a whole world of a difference for me to learn... my lineart and lines in general a much more confident, when i do a reference study of something similar to something i traced before it end up look much better than when i didn't trace and randomly "studied" without understanding shit and so on. i have no clue why for so long i thought that i should not trace, i don't recall anyone telling me it's bad or anything but my guess is that my ego was the actual problem. i told and convinced myself that unless it was painful it would not be true learning or something or that i would not own my skill... where in reality that's litteraly how most of us learned how to write in the first place, we learned how to properly write the letters down by tracing them t'ill we didn't needed that to write said letters
Yes many do (professionals.) It's ok to trace things and convert it into your own work. (Aka making real changes not a copy paste) I watched a guy trace a girl's hair who was running to get the motion right on his body structure design pose. I've watched people trace a real life room display to put their characters on. And now with new tools you can use in art program's to make a 3D model in basic form to trace. *tracing is partially done because sometimes our brains 🧠 can't wrap around the idea of what we want to draw.* I've also done the warm up method. It really does help a lot for muscle memory.
To practice drawing, I would trace a drawing every da and then try to redraw it from memory at night for about 100 days. I feel off when my phones pen broke.
Nothing wrong with that. I did that with pokemon growing up as a child. Eventually I was able to draw them myself and moved onto to things like yu gi oh cards. It's really good for muscle memory.
Tysm for this video. I’m currently working for a big RUclips channel that wants me to do an animation/animatic type of video for a song on a tight deadline. I was looking for ways to speed up my process and I ended up getting a few free 3D models from Sketchfab to trace over, I was starting to worry that this is a bad thing but at the same time I don’t have to time to redraw one and the same object in different angles over and over again if there’s free 3D models that fit perfect with my scenes. I usually don’t really trace like that so I was having a whole inner debate about if it’s morally correct to use those free 3D models in my art/animation lol, a lot of people told me it’s ok but I still feel like it’s a bit of a controversial thing to do especially if it’s not your own 3D models. I feel better about using those techniques now though after watching your video :3
Rotoscoping is hell haha. I've had a few projects where I needed to rotoscope and I've learned I never want to do it again. Very rarely do you use any of your brain and it becomes very monotonous work.
I've rotoscoped for a hobby animation(for like, Avatar style martial arts), and I've learned that if I just only rotoscoped certain frames and fill select in-betweeners myself, I get a better results. Using full0on rotoscoping is just painful lol!!!
Classic example, Vermeer. Used a camera obscura to project the model and scene to paint. Drawing is traced from the projection. Then he paints. And they're considered masterpieces. Bc drawing wasnt done freehand it's cheating? No. And now they're considered masterpieces. Using a tool to create a desired result. And this tool, the camera obscura, created a unique look. See milk pouring out of his famous milkmaid's pitcher. Depiction of movement and light no one could have imagined at the (pre photography) time.
Glad to see someone bring up Vermeer. I wonder if he had lived later if he would have been a photographer, or at least done photography in addition to painting
Tracing shouldn't be controversial but it is. Are you tracing to get attention or to study art and improve your skills? Ultimately, the intent is what it comes down to, I feel.
If you have a REAL project for which you are being paid REAL money and you need to do it within a REAL time frame, you'd be a goddamn fool NOT to trace.
Would love to see a video about blind contour drawing and the best way to get value from the practice. I remember drawing without looking at the screen for fun a few times, but I didn't realize people actually did it to practice.
It has its uses as if makes you much more aware of the proportions and travel distances instinctively. To add to that, there's a lot of "happy accidents" that can occurs where you unintentionally make something really cool. That being said, I find single-contour line drawing a bit more interesting and useful than blind single-contour line drawing because you can see what you are drawing but are simply limited to one line.
My final in a 2D animation class I'm taking is making an emotion change animation. I chose to do a character without a mouth, so a lot of that motion is communicated by complex body language at a strange perspective from below the character. I was a bit worried that I'll get docked out portfolio review, since the essence of the motion was traced from reference footage I shot myself, but after watching this I'm more confident that my professors will see the value in the choice
Commercial artists meet deadlines. Tracing helps meets that end, we have a shot list of things to complete in a very short time to a very tight budget. It’s not a landscape or portrait painting for pleasure. Are those tracings tweaked and adapted yes, it’s a bases to create work to a tight brief.
13:40 It's not that one can't trace, but I only trace if I'm doing (like you mentioned) studies of a model that I'm going to be drawing consistently. For my actual work that I'm getting paid to do, I'm not going to trace because it only slows down my storyboarding process and I feel as if basic rules of staging, layout, and composition can more than make up for not knowing the fine specifics of a certain scene/prop. Storyboarding, for me, should be intuitive and natural and sort of like a "flow state" where you just draw everything that needs to happen immediately and having to trace breaks that rhythm and flow of consciousness. The more time you are spending on the details the more you are losing the point of the scene and losing the flow of the scene. To add to that, tracing can limit the scope of your scene because you are focusing more on making things work within the bounds of a traced image instead of what should actually be happening in the scene. However, this is for storyboarding, so I know this doesn't apply to all forms of art. For me and what I've done so far in storyboarding, it just feels like a waste of time. Edit: Just to clarify, I know Live-action storyboarding can have a lot of tracing, especially commercial work. The difference with that is usually the client wants it to be traced because they want there to be no confusion as to what the product is or what not. To add to that, sometimes they just want their reference images to be traced because the reference images were "approved" so all they need is a storyboarded version of what has been greenlit. Storyboard work for ads is a completely different beast.
I can’t help but feel there are a lot of parallels between the topic of tracing and AI art. I sort of feel like, with all the drama about it, the space may be to hot to safely state a lot of opinions one way or the other, but I would love to hear any thoughts you have on that. Also, your work is amazing
I don't really trace off I just start right away I go right in, I dive right in I really don't care how it looks like it's just that I'm lazy but I don't really like trace off people you need to respect me and other people who doesn't like tracing please like this video.
Technical methods of copying are as old as art. The ancient Egyptians used grids to achieve their consistently-shaped figures. Later on, the Hockney-Falco thesis has it that all the realism in painting from the Renaissance on came from developments in optics using mirrors and camera obscura to trace the projected light; while the early instances of this are disputed, it definitely became the case by the 1600's that artists were regularly doing this to make sketches that capture the exact shapes of their subjects. Modern tracing methods with digital layers, lightboxes and projectors are just more accurate ways of doing the same. It's very hard to capture the look of something like a horse in motion without having those technical tools available; 2D animation was the high tech imagery of the early 20th century because it built off of film reference, even if the final result wasn't rotoscoped. The reason not to trace at the beginning is with the goal of practicing your observation of proportions; switching to a grid or holding your sketchbook up to sight-size a reference gives you enough proportional information to correct your errors, but not so much that you're just mindlessly following the line, so it's like "target practice" for your line drawing. Once you have a level of development that lets you eyeball a complex line and make a very similar mark, you're properly able to understand the shapes you're making, so it doesn't matter a lot if you traced them.
Toniko, maybe it's just wishful thinking of my part, but are there that many people that don't know of the good uses of tracing that you mentioned? I think most of the discourse regarding tracing falls into critiquing plagiarism like you mentioned. Again, maybe it's just me being biased, but I see lot more confusion regarding the use of reference than people accusing professionals of "being lazy".
Do you think AI would replace 2d animation artist in the near future? For roles like storyboarding and what not. I am planning my career and it’s not looking certain, I have no idea who to ask, I live in a third world country and I don’t have any artists around me.
in the future? sure what jobs not being replaced but not in the near future no it just cant take prompts specific enough to storyboard atm it doesnt really keep continuity between images
"There is no original thought." But you can sure as hell make some crazy combinations
bruh out of my 7 years in the industry, tracing has saved my ass so much times in meeting my deadlines and saving me time
Well said, bruh-bro-dude.
Another good reason for tracing is when you need specific information, regarding what it is that you are drawing.
When Alex Ross paints a Batman poster, he needs to know more than just light and shadow; he needs to know how the light will interact with batman's skin, costume, gadgets and background.
It's an argues task that pays off huge!
Filmation used it for, pretty much, all their cartoons.
Bashki used it, to an amazing extent.
My problem is, when it becomes the *only* tool used.
When it stops being a guide and starts being the leader.
i believe some disney movies had rotoscoped vehicles
@@Frongo They did more than just vehicles.
For instance, Snow white used rotoscope for all the dancing scenes.
Stigmatization of a practice only limits potential of art and artists.
Never draw what you can copy, never copy what you can trace, never trace what you can cut out and paste up. - Wallace Wood
So with AI, artist are now obsolete. Thak you
@@banjiromasati4907 Thak you (Edited)
0
00
THIS! Tracing is only bad if the person takes full credit (if it was traced over art such as a drawing or animation) and/or if they profit off it (case that happened to me some time ago). Sort of a re-color but more elaborate I would say.
Agreed. Also happened to me.
I've recommended people to trace for study, but I find it disrespectful towards an original artist and clients (including the commissioner of the original) when traced art is sold or promoted without proper credits.
@@naervern2107 it's incredibly disrespectful and it would be considered stealing/theft
@@andyc.9895 What if an animator traced from another animator? I recently found a animator on youtube (that I wont state their channel name) that recently got a ton of views over a au animation that directly traced a few scenes off of another animator that has alot of subs
@@purpledshadow I think it should be called out unless it's proven that it wasn't traced over the animation.
But if it's pretty evident that it was traced, than it should be called out or at least told to the person who it was traced from
@@andyc.9895 I made a video on it most likely being traced w/ comparison towards both animations and the youtuber commented (but I did not really get what they were tryna say so this is what I think they meant to say) saying that they sometimes use references and that in theory you can find fault in anything everywhere
for years i've "told" myself that i should not trace, that i should learn how to draw everything from reference even tho i had no idea how etc, then ultimately quitted art altogether many time because of that (not just that but was playing a big part)
then recently i started tracing (breaking down the image) and boy it made a whole world of a difference for me to learn... my lineart and lines in general a much more confident, when i do a reference study of something similar to something i traced before it end up look much better than when i didn't trace and randomly "studied" without understanding shit and so on.
i have no clue why for so long i thought that i should not trace, i don't recall anyone telling me it's bad or anything but my guess is that my ego was the actual problem. i told and convinced myself that unless it was painful it would not be true learning or something or that i would not own my skill... where in reality that's litteraly how most of us learned how to write in the first place, we learned how to properly write the letters down by tracing them t'ill we didn't needed that to write said letters
Thank you so much for covering this very touchy subject!
Yes many do (professionals.) It's ok to trace things and convert it into your own work. (Aka making real changes not a copy paste) I watched a guy trace a girl's hair who was running to get the motion right on his body structure design pose. I've watched people trace a real life room display to put their characters on. And now with new tools you can use in art program's to make a 3D model in basic form to trace.
*tracing is partially done because sometimes our brains 🧠 can't wrap around the idea of what we want to draw.*
I've also done the warm up method. It really does help a lot for muscle memory.
When i want to learn to draw a character on model tracing is either the first or second thing i do. Before breaking it into easy to build 3d shapes
Your thumbnails make the world better
To practice drawing, I would trace a drawing every da and then try to redraw it from memory at night for about 100 days. I feel off when my phones pen broke.
Nothing wrong with that. I did that with pokemon growing up as a child. Eventually I was able to draw them myself and moved onto to things like yu gi oh cards. It's really good for muscle memory.
Great creature design too
Thanks for going into this taboo
Funny I'm getting into Rotoscoping this month and you come up with this video 5 days ago. Appreciate it. More people need to hear it
Tysm for this video. I’m currently working for a big RUclips channel that wants me to do an animation/animatic type of video for a song on a tight deadline. I was looking for ways to speed up my process and I ended up getting a few free 3D models from Sketchfab to trace over, I was starting to worry that this is a bad thing but at the same time I don’t have to time to redraw one and the same object in different angles over and over again if there’s free 3D models that fit perfect with my scenes. I usually don’t really trace like that so I was having a whole inner debate about if it’s morally correct to use those free 3D models in my art/animation lol, a lot of people told me it’s ok but I still feel like it’s a bit of a controversial thing to do especially if it’s not your own 3D models. I feel better about using those techniques now though after watching your video :3
Rotoscoping is hell haha. I've had a few projects where I needed to rotoscope and I've learned I never want to do it again. Very rarely do you use any of your brain and it becomes very monotonous work.
I've rotoscoped for a hobby animation(for like, Avatar style martial arts), and I've learned that if I just only rotoscoped certain frames and fill select in-betweeners myself, I get a better results. Using full0on rotoscoping is just painful lol!!!
Classic example, Vermeer. Used a camera obscura to project the model and scene to paint. Drawing is traced from the projection. Then he paints. And they're considered masterpieces. Bc drawing wasnt done freehand it's cheating? No. And now they're considered masterpieces. Using a tool to create a desired result. And this tool, the camera obscura, created a unique look. See milk pouring out of his famous milkmaid's pitcher. Depiction of movement and light no one could have imagined at the (pre photography) time.
Glad to see someone bring up Vermeer. I wonder if he had lived later if he would have been a photographer, or at least done photography in addition to painting
Tracing shouldn't be controversial but it is. Are you tracing to get attention or to study art and improve your skills? Ultimately, the intent is what it comes down to, I feel.
If you have a REAL project for which you are being paid REAL money and you need to do it within a REAL time frame, you'd be a goddamn fool NOT to trace.
Would love to see a video about blind contour drawing and the best way to get value from the practice. I remember drawing without looking at the screen for fun a few times, but I didn't realize people actually did it to practice.
It has its uses as if makes you much more aware of the proportions and travel distances instinctively. To add to that, there's a lot of "happy accidents" that can occurs where you unintentionally make something really cool.
That being said, I find single-contour line drawing a bit more interesting and useful than blind single-contour line drawing because you can see what you are drawing but are simply limited to one line.
My final in a 2D animation class I'm taking is making an emotion change animation. I chose to do a character without a mouth, so a lot of that motion is communicated by complex body language at a strange perspective from below the character. I was a bit worried that I'll get docked out portfolio review, since the essence of the motion was traced from reference footage I shot myself, but after watching this I'm more confident that my professors will see the value in the choice
13:11 Thank you! People underestimate how powerful blind drawing is. Really fun at parties, too.
people who say things like that have CLEARLY never worked under a deadline before.
Tracing is no different a tool than using a calculator. I don’t see people mocking others for not doing math in their heads.
Thank you.
Commercial artists meet deadlines. Tracing helps meets that end, we have a shot list of things to complete in a very short time to a very tight budget. It’s not a landscape or portrait painting for pleasure. Are those tracings tweaked and adapted yes, it’s a bases to create work to a tight brief.
Every illustrator (and fine artist) who works realistically traces or projects photo reference. Saying otherwise marks you as an amateur.
Thank you
Another amazing video. Learned a lot like usual.
13:40 It's not that one can't trace, but I only trace if I'm doing (like you mentioned) studies of a model that I'm going to be drawing consistently. For my actual work that I'm getting paid to do, I'm not going to trace because it only slows down my storyboarding process and I feel as if basic rules of staging, layout, and composition can more than make up for not knowing the fine specifics of a certain scene/prop.
Storyboarding, for me, should be intuitive and natural and sort of like a "flow state" where you just draw everything that needs to happen immediately and having to trace breaks that rhythm and flow of consciousness. The more time you are spending on the details the more you are losing the point of the scene and losing the flow of the scene. To add to that, tracing can limit the scope of your scene because you are focusing more on making things work within the bounds of a traced image instead of what should actually be happening in the scene.
However, this is for storyboarding, so I know this doesn't apply to all forms of art. For me and what I've done so far in storyboarding, it just feels like a waste of time.
Edit: Just to clarify, I know Live-action storyboarding can have a lot of tracing, especially commercial work. The difference with that is usually the client wants it to be traced because they want there to be no confusion as to what the product is or what not. To add to that, sometimes they just want their reference images to be traced because the reference images were "approved" so all they need is a storyboarded version of what has been greenlit. Storyboard work for ads is a completely different beast.
I can’t help but feel there are a lot of parallels between the topic of tracing and AI art. I sort of feel like, with all the drama about it, the space may be to hot to safely state a lot of opinions one way or the other, but I would love to hear any thoughts you have on that. Also, your work is amazing
I don't really trace off I just start right away I go right in, I dive right in I really don't care how it looks like it's just that I'm lazy but I don't really like trace off people you need to respect me and other people who doesn't like tracing please like this video.
NIcely done video.
Technical methods of copying are as old as art. The ancient Egyptians used grids to achieve their consistently-shaped figures. Later on, the Hockney-Falco thesis has it that all the realism in painting from the Renaissance on came from developments in optics using mirrors and camera obscura to trace the projected light; while the early instances of this are disputed, it definitely became the case by the 1600's that artists were regularly doing this to make sketches that capture the exact shapes of their subjects. Modern tracing methods with digital layers, lightboxes and projectors are just more accurate ways of doing the same. It's very hard to capture the look of something like a horse in motion without having those technical tools available; 2D animation was the high tech imagery of the early 20th century because it built off of film reference, even if the final result wasn't rotoscoped.
The reason not to trace at the beginning is with the goal of practicing your observation of proportions; switching to a grid or holding your sketchbook up to sight-size a reference gives you enough proportional information to correct your errors, but not so much that you're just mindlessly following the line, so it's like "target practice" for your line drawing. Once you have a level of development that lets you eyeball a complex line and make a very similar mark, you're properly able to understand the shapes you're making, so it doesn't matter a lot if you traced them.
Toniko, maybe it's just wishful thinking of my part, but are there that many people that don't know of the good uses of tracing that you mentioned? I think most of the discourse regarding tracing falls into critiquing plagiarism like you mentioned.
Again, maybe it's just me being biased, but I see lot more confusion regarding the use of reference than people accusing professionals of "being lazy".
😊😊
I only trace hands--
Wasn't Disney old cartoon do had something the same, recycle frame is used.
is creative in other form of art
Is it okay to trace footage if say you are learning how the form of a character moves?
impressivem, very nice. lets see Paul Allen trace.
Take a photo
Trace it
Profit! (because you can't steal from yourself)
🧠
Do you think AI would replace 2d animation artist in the near future? For roles like storyboarding and what not. I am planning my career and it’s not looking certain, I have no idea who to ask, I live in a third world country and I don’t have any artists around me.
in the future? sure what jobs not being replaced
but not in the near future no
it just cant take prompts specific enough to storyboard atm
it doesnt really keep continuity between images
[Maybe tracing was originally used to define the 35 animation styles, but now people plagerize because references cost money.]
Hi I just wanted to ask, what are your brush settings for drawing on Photoshop?
Don't know if it's intentional, but your thumbnail looks "copied" from a previous video!
yes, everybody traces!
I just hate when people have no fundamentals trace, do the no face thing! And then get paid commissions??? How to people make money doing no face??
it seems that tracing is not bad, as long as it is YOU who traces, and as long as it is not a drawing specifically yours
😊😊