Tracing Photos

[JustAnotherMe]

@Gear: LOL yeap!! That's what I meant. If it's about a non commercial things, I guess it's still really ok to trace the photos.

For me, I'm not tracing photos for the lines and shapes, but I kind of tracing some of the colors and shading. That way I could learn 'something' although it's not much as when you try to 'copy' the photos. But I'm so sure you could learn something even from just tracing it. At least, for me.
And it's just for my own hobby <3

[LateWhiteRabbit]

And my reasoning for using it is the same as J. Datie said. I'm not an artist. I'm not really inclined to try and learn how to draw. But the game needs art, and that's the best I'm able to do. I'm a writer and programmer first and foremost. VN's require art, though.

I can see how it would be seen as cheating, but my attempts at drawing are horrifying. It's the only way I can create character sprites that don't look like they were drawn by a six-year-old who doesn't even know what the word "proportions" means.

Then it's fine. Your original question was just whether or not tracing was frowned upon, and I answered that in my original post. If you aren't interested in developing your artistic skills or becoming an artist then it really doesn't matter. It works for you and what you are doing.

If you WERE interested in becoming better at art, it would be handicapping you, but if it is just a means to an end to express your writing (which you are primarily interested in) it isn't really a problem.

Ironically, because of my time as a rotoscope artist I've probably spent more hours tracing than drawing!

Rotoscoping is a form of spline based keyframe animation. In essence/normal English, it is a skillful form of digital tracing to isolate people and or objects within each plate. (Plates are the shots from within the edit.) Stereoscopic conversion takes the art of rotoscope to a new level of difficulty and higher standards. Every single frame of the film is touched by hand and "drawn" by a human to near perfection. The best way to describe this to someone moderately computer savvy would be: Take the pen tool from Photoshop or Adobe After Effects, stencil out every object within the scene and then perform that on a full movie. Time consuming and labor intensive.

And yeah, that includes wisps of hair and eyelashes. You really start to hate actors with messy or elaborate hairstyles.