Current poll: Why do you doll?

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ETA: To everyone who said that tracing is okay in other forms of art, may I please direct your attention to the fuss being made over the traced winning entry in a dA contest and all the anger that's showing all over the community? (;

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Got your attention, didn't I? And it didn't feel so nice. (;

I have to admit, I'm pretty horrified with the results of my most recent poll. I'm mostly horrified because the people who voted for irresponsible choices declined to answer. This seems telling to me.

Anyway, here's a breakdown.

"40 deviants said I'll only use a traced base if they have the original artist's permission."

These people -- well, I can respect them. I can understand the opinion even if I disagree with it personally.

Morally, they're correct. It's morally and legally acceptable to create a traced base, if you have the original artist's permission. However, I still think this is destructive to the community. Making a traced base is not art: it is practice.

It is lazy, and yes I know it pisses people off when I say this, I just don't care. (; ~Pyrochan-dolls just wrote a great tutorial on how to make a GOOD base, and wrote a journal entry discussing why making traced bases is bad....and I'm just going to add another issue.

If traced bases get attention, get features, get used more than non-traced, why should anyone ever make another non-traced base again? If someone lazy, who just traces and tosses on crappy color, not even editing the lines, gets the same attention and respect as someone who draws a whole base from scratch, why should anyone waste their time?

"29 deviants said I'll never use any traced base, because I think tracing bases is wrong."

My heroes, really. Encouraging creativity in the community.

"20 deviants said I'll only use bases traced from photos, not any other artist's work."

This bothers me. These people seem to be saying that photographers don't deserve the same artistic rights as other artists -- that they don't deserve respect for setting up their shot, for posing their models, for doing the lighting.

If you were one of these people, I'd love to hear a defense of this belief. Lemme know why these copyrights don't deserve to be respected. (;

"18 deviants said I use them anyway -- I'm not the one who did the tracing!"

THIS is the result that disgusted me the most. A good 14% of the people who replied to this poll shrugged off all moral responsibility. This is behavior deserving of a child who hasn't learned about stealing, not an adult who supposedly considers him or herself an artist.

If this were another kind of theft, this would be called "being an accessory". It can be punished almost as harshly as actually perpetrating the crime, and yet these people decided not to giggle and say 'oh, I didn't steal, so it's not my problem!'

I'd like to hear from these people, too. What would you do if your friend stole enough candy from a candy store to leave the owner out a good fifty to a hundred bucks? Would you giggle and say 'oh, I didn't steal, so it's not my problem!' and then share the candy with your friend? Or would you be shocked and horrified and refuse to eat it, perhaps even turn her in?

Yeah. I thought so.

"13 deviants said I refuse to use them and tell everyone that they're traced."

This is what I do. I tell everyone I know, when they're using a traced base -- because so many people don't know, or can't recognize them. If I see a friend working on a traced base, I almost always say "You know that's traced, right?" and most of my friends go "damnit!" and immediately delete the doll.

Of course, I also just don't think these people deserve the respect and acclaim that they get. I tell on FDers, too. I tell EVERYONE about all the FDers I know, all my personal experiences, and all of what I've learned through the grapevine. If we can't take better punitive measures, then the only way to deal with these people is by ruining their reputations, and taking away the popularity that was their main goal.

"13 deviants said I'll only use bases traced from photos or popular animes, not any other artist's work."

So, basically, in short, dollers don't respect other artists. They don't respect themselves. You can't care about your own work and take it seriously if you don't take OTHER peoples' work seriously, and if you don't respect their rights.

How can we ask for respect as a group, if we don't give it as a group? When about fifty percent of dollers don't care about copyright, and are willing to trace another artist's work and steal the credit all for themselves?

~Pyrochan-dolls wrote a much nicer entry than this one, but I have this angry fire in the pit of my stomach that I have to get out -- because this shit is ruining me. It's personal. I can't get respect if dollers as a whole don't. And that's just not fair.

Now. Prove me wrong. Do you respect yourself through respecting others? Do you take responsibility for your actions and act as an adult? Do you have the integrity to stand by your beliefs, or do you cheat when no one's looking?

Are you a tracer?