We should eat icecream

@Princess♥Cadance
Aww where did you go :(

For the record, I contacted the original artist shortly after this was posted and he did not request a takedown

Ehh, we’ll see what happens. As it is when you look at the deviant art upload comments he claims that he’s credited anearbyanimal on the tumblr upload, though looking at that it says that doesn’t say it was traced/referenced, it says specifically that it was “inspired” by the original picture.
 
I don’t really know how to feel about it. The original artist is recognized there, but isn’t really accurate here as at the very least this was very heavily referenced.
 
I can’t really say anything besides that besides that I would hope that he’s a bit more clear about it in the future.
 
They also said specifically that deviantart didn’t let them save their description and that’s their explanation for the total lack of credit on there, but I would think if that was the case the uploaded could simply comment on the deviation directly and as that would be the first comment it would be just as good. That is unless I’m misunderstanding how deviantart works.

@The Frowning Pony  
Hm, I would have preferred at least waiting until he made some kind of public apology and a promise to be better going forward, but hopefully things work out. If they don’t work out… then the tag should be made permanent.

@Background Pony #986C  
Pretty much as I said; for anyone regular on the booru, it was a “loud enough” message that a lot of this guy’s stuff is suspect. From what I’ve been told, he was made aware of the tag, and am hoping anything that may come in the future is either original or at least properly credited.

@The Frowning Pony  
Any particular reason for reverting the tag?

Posting for public record and stuff, resetting the tag. Hopefully for the two weeks the message went through that no, tracing or “very heavy referencing” without credit is not OK.

@I Was Never Here 
can confirm, I used to trace a bunch. Seriously, look at my art from ~4 years ago. The important thing is to realize you fucked up and learn to draw correctly.

@The Frowning Pony 

 
>Checks tags 
>Sees tracer:lennonblack
 

 
I know it’s quite a serious matter, but damn. Thanks for taking it seriously.
 
@Princess♥Cadance 
Don’t feel too bad though, we all make mistakes and we all put our foots in our own mouths from time to time. It doesn’t taste good, but you get over it eventually. I would say be glad for the quick primer. I won’t personally hold it against you or the site or the moderation team.

Thank you all for clarifying this matter!

@Background Pony #29B5 
Of course not all the lines match, not even people doing show vectors can manage that and they’re intentionally showing off they’re good at tracing the show; it’s not like kids cheating on coursework with wikipedia copy-paste the entire article, they switch it up a little.
 
The tag has a fairly long history of people pointing out near 1-1 pose and expression reproductions, plus a whole lot of “heavy referencing”. Even if all he’d been doing is “getting heavily inspired”, that’s the sort of thing you make sure to mention and credit, which is certainly not happening. I figured it would have been enough to just let the community self-police on this sort of thing, mention who’s tracing who and tag it; I didn’t expect someone with a mod-ticker blissfully unaware of it all to stick their foot in it up to the knee so I may well put a huge warning label on the tag and go back to ruining my liver.

@Background Pony #29B5
 
It’s just a loose trace. Maybe he thought it would be less noticeable that way.

@Background Pony #29B5 
Common things tracers do to try and make it less obvious are move, rotate and/or skew certain parts(Some even go so far as to stick parts together from multiple images to make a sort of frankenstein-trace). 
I had to slightly move the eyes and skew the nose, after which Pinkie’s face is pretty much 1:1.
 
Its rare that close references line up as much as this one does, but I can’t even give the benefit of the doubt, because lennonblack has traced other things in the past.
 
A giveaway can often simply be the fact the image is flipped, as that’s also a very common thing they do to try and make it seem less familiar, it doesn’t work though, so I don’t know why they bother.

@zippysqrl  
@Post-it  
@The Frowning Pony
 
Not going to argue about your decision.  
But I looked at that proof of a trace provided by zippysqrl, and a lot of lines don’t match at all.
 
Yes, obviously that picture was used as a reference to draw a new one, but it could have been done just by drawing it, while looking at that picture.  
Just like people can draw ponies, looking at different screenshots from the show, when they have trouble coming up with the ideas for poses and expressions.
 
So, I’m not sure that it could be 100% proved it was a trace. Using someone else’s picture as a base for the idea and as a reference, to draw it isn’t the same thing as putting it in the editor and simply tracing all lines above the original picture.  
Or is it considered the same bad?

@Jisher  
@zippysqrl  
@I Was Never Here  
@Toksyuryel  
@Post-it
 
Princess♥Cadance’ mod duties rarely involve art / artists and she’d been off the site for the past half year, so no, she wasn’t aware of the past 7 months of misc. tracing drama, and no, her opinion or attitude on the matter doesn’t reflect mine or that of the majority of staff’s, and I apologize on behalf of the site for this.
 
sigh

@Princess♥Cadance 
@Princess♥Cadance 
Imagine you write a paper on some new set of algorithms. 
Imagine a guy takes your paper, changes the font and examples, and presents it at a conference. 
Imagine when someone points out that it’s actually not an original paper and almost entirely copied, one of the conference moderators tells that someone “why do you care”. 
And now as a further exercise imagine being the conference organizer of a programming summit with a moderator that’s pretty much publicly stated “we don’t care about plagiary”.
 
fucks sake, not one fucking day
 
 
Changed the artist tag and implications.

@Princess♥Cadance
 
You don’t care because:
 

@I Was Never Here 
@Princess♥Cadance 
I didn’t even notice until you pointed it out that they were a moderator. Extremely poor form, you represent Derpibooru when you wear that tag and you do it a disservice saying things like that. I expect to see consequences for this, failing a retraction and apology.

@Princess♥Cadance 
As zippy said/pointed out, this [explicit] ring a bell?

@Princess♥Cadance 
Ok, at risk of getting rule 0’ed, I have to ask. How is it that a moderator on an art sharing site doesn’t understand how people might get a bit miffed about one artist tracing from a source without giving credit to the original artist?
 
Not even gonna BGP for this, consider your position here.

@Princess♥Cadance 
As a genuine counter question, why do you care about him caring though?

@Princess♥Cadance  
Gee, human morals, maybe?  
You must have missed every discussion about traces ever if you seriously have to ask that.