Plenty of beginning artists eyeball things, true. But you don't post tracings and studies as if they're your own work, and you certainly don't post them as standalone pieces.
I'm not sure how useful making edits is for study, though. I mean, copying a style, cool; doodling over someone else's work... ehhh. You certainly don't pull that in any other medium, and I find it difficult to believe that it really does much to improve someone's understanding of pixel art. I won't deny that I've copied drawings as studies before - in fact, I still do it occasionally - but I always have a goal in mind, you know? If I'm copying a comic panel I'll do it in simplified shapes and try and see why the artist set out the panel that way. Or I'll copy an established artist's drawings for a couple pages and then do an original drawing in their style, so that I can better understand why they've made the stylistic decisions that they have.
What, specifically, does editing help you improve? A lot of people who do edits seem to ignore the structure and colour usage and, well, basically anything useful from the original sprites, so I'm really not understanding how it's helpful, even as an exercise.
I'm perfectly prepared to eat crow on this if there's something I'm missing here, because as I've said a lot, pixel art is something that I'm pretty ignorant about - there's some stuff I've picked up that can be applied from conventional drawing, but there's a lot of stuff specific to pixel art that I don't know anything about at all.
I do agree that people can get a bit too vitriolic about this, but honestly, after the hundredth SephirothTH (he's a red sonic with more spikes original character plz don steel), I can imagine people's patience getting a little strained.
I don't like the idea of creating some sort of daycare for beginners. It seems to me that'd lead to some sheezyart-esque "OMG NO CRITS PLEEZ" mentality which is ultimately far more detrimental than some people swearing at you for being unoriginal.
I'm not sure how useful making edits is for study, though. I mean, copying a style, cool; doodling over someone else's work... ehhh. You certainly don't pull that in any other medium, and I find it difficult to believe that it really does much to improve someone's understanding of pixel art. I won't deny that I've copied drawings as studies before - in fact, I still do it occasionally - but I always have a goal in mind, you know? If I'm copying a comic panel I'll do it in simplified shapes and try and see why the artist set out the panel that way. Or I'll copy an established artist's drawings for a couple pages and then do an original drawing in their style, so that I can better understand why they've made the stylistic decisions that they have.
What, specifically, does editing help you improve? A lot of people who do edits seem to ignore the structure and colour usage and, well, basically anything useful from the original sprites, so I'm really not understanding how it's helpful, even as an exercise.
I'm perfectly prepared to eat crow on this if there's something I'm missing here, because as I've said a lot, pixel art is something that I'm pretty ignorant about - there's some stuff I've picked up that can be applied from conventional drawing, but there's a lot of stuff specific to pixel art that I don't know anything about at all.
I do agree that people can get a bit too vitriolic about this, but honestly, after the hundredth SephirothTH (he's a red sonic with more spikes original character plz don steel), I can imagine people's patience getting a little strained.
I don't like the idea of creating some sort of daycare for beginners. It seems to me that'd lead to some sheezyart-esque "OMG NO CRITS PLEEZ" mentality which is ultimately far more detrimental than some people swearing at you for being unoriginal.
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