The "No Copy" Excuse
by Wade/ex-Gods, ex-Nerve Axis

How can two small words have such dramatic influences on a piece of gfx? Time after time gfx competitions have been overflowing with supreme pixel perfection ranging from horned dragons, scantily clad women, photorealistic portraits or humorous characatures, each one with something in common.. they were all redrawn from an original source. However in the age of today it seems that the ability to pixel shade, proportionise and to colour doesn`t count for anything, to win a competition you simply need the words "No Copy" in the corner of your image.

Sceners such as Facet, Peachy, Titan and R.W.O who were once the leaders of the gfx trend no longer rate as high as they used to simply because they don`t draw from their mind. One should ask is this fair? Granted, it takes a lot more of an artistic mind to do this and we must respect those able to do it, but why are we constantly being told that these pics are not copied and that copying is lame. Since the beggining of the scene most artists have made non copied artwork in one form or other be it logos, diskmag interfaces or surrounding slideshow or musicdemo designs, but it was never pointed out.





I cannot help but feel that some (not all) lesser talented pixellers need to use the "No Copy" term to excuse bad/lazy pixelling skills, either that or as an ex- cuse to use a scanner. As we all know most of these original pictures are originally drawn on paper before being scanned in for use on computer so when viewing these pictures are we judging the artists computer or non computer skills? What place do pencil sketches have in the scene? The same place as ones talent to play football or to fix cars, so why do sceners insist on basing opinons on non scene work? We must also question how much of the artwork is inspired from other pictures or photos, surely the artist examines a few things to correct proportion and colour.Is it right then to claim it as a 100% original piece?

In terms of quality there is often a big difference between original and redrawn artwork. Observe the non copied pictures from Lazur, Pixie, and Geist and com- pare them to any of their copied images. Pixie`s slideshow was far from impressive when compared to the likes of 7 Seas and Artcore. There really are only a handful of imagination artists that live upto the high ranks of pixelling standards namely Tobias Janson, Ra, Prowler and Lazur, but on seeing their copied stuff it is obvious they are limiting their abilities.

In my experience drawing without reference is no more difficult than copying, but I will state that the end results were far inferior. I am not trying to enforce my opinions, but I simply believe pixel art should be judged on pixel skills alone.