We had a situation recently with an eroge developer commissioning artwork for his upcoming platformer. The below artwork is ours, it was based upon the one above it. Since some of our artists actually have gone, or currently go to art school, we get top level information on what the practices of professionals are. And since we also review eroge, we see the raw industry reality.
And the reality is, professionals use traced art in commercial work.
I found this excellent article about this. But even this person, who is very much in favor of tracing, acknowledges that tracing divides opinions. It’s very close to plagiarism, which is basically stealing.
The raw reality of the world often clashes with our ideals. As a general rule, if you’re lowballing, like this developer certainly was, you’re getting corner-cutting in the work. Never expect $200 worth of work for less than $200.
That said, our art service works on consent. It has been an oversight not having a policy of disclosure when artists plan to use the tracing technique as one of the methods to keep within budget constraints. This policy is now official.
