My 2 Cents #5: Plagiarism Is Just Plain STUPID

Not to beat a dead horse, but things like what I'm hearing with the Rob Granito fiasco really get me steamed.

I'd heard bits of talk in the past, and even seen some of his work on DeviantART once or twice, but it wasn't until recently that I heard about Granito's prolific plagiarism practices. Which isn't a huge thing, sadly- you see it every day. It's a sad fact, but it is a fact- hell, one of my own designs was plagiarized on DeviantART. There's simply nothing I could do about it, sadly. But no, it wasn't the art theft that got me worked up. It was Granito's attempt to blatantly build up his reputation by claiming to have had a working relationship with the late Dwayne McDuffie that had me gritting my teeth as I read this article on AOL Comics Alliance ( http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/28/rob-granito-scam-artist/ ). 

But! Aside from his obvious attempt to capitalize on McDuffie's passing, I can't completely hold "tracing" against Granito. Oh sure, I can hold the whole profitting from it part against him, and I do, but tracing is a very legitimate practice in artwork.

If you're a STUDENT.

I trace. I trace A LOT. Because I find that, often when I have trouble figuring out how to draw a part of the anatomy, or the position of an arm or a leg in a certain pose, if I trace a figure or another artist's work that emulates that pose on another piece of paper, it helps me figure out how I myself should draw it. Tracing is a wonderful learning tool and is extremely useful for problem solving. In truth, much of the time I do more tracing than actual drawing. But I never, NEVER, claim traced work as my own.

Granito shows that he has at least some rudimentary skill in art. If he didn't, he wouldn't have been getting away with it for so long. What this prolific plagiarist as prooved is that he has no idea how to be original. More often than not, I'd guess he doesn't do his own stuff because he can't THINK of stuff to call his own. His brain lacks the creative structure to supply him with original ideas, so he takes from other artists (Bill Watterson, Ty Templeton, etc) to fullfill his artistic pipe dream. And I can feel him there- I have a hard time finding my own style, and a lot of the tracing that I do is an attempt to find a style I'm comfortable with by obvserving how other artists have approached the same problems. But when he tried to pass it off as his own stuff, he crossed a serious line. Luckily, as I've stated repeatedly in the past, the art community is extremely tight-knit, and to wrong a few of us is to bring all of us down on your head.

My 2 Cents #4: Freedom of Faith

Recently, a video on YouTube was shared with me in which a girl praises God for the destruction in Japan, saying that it was the Lord sending atheists a wake-up call. You can imagine that I was appalled by this girl's blatant and outright disregard for human life, purely because she disagreed with their spiritual beliefs. While I was later informed that this video may have been part of some elaborate hoax on the girl's part in order to get attention (no official word yet on whether or not this is true), the sad fact is, there are indeed people in the world who think this way. Of course, most generally, this stereotype falls on the Muslims, due to their seemingly fanatical jihads, which often cause the deaths of dozens- even hundreds- of innocent people.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the Christians, who are stereotyped as being the first to condemn people for any common sin that they themselves have likely committed. Now, anybody who's ever met more than one believer in the Christian faith can tell you that this stereotype doesn't apply to all Christians- or even most of them, for that matter. But there are individuals out there, unfortunately. Just as in every religion, each person believes something a little different, and as horrifyingly vile or completely absurd as it may seem to you, the fact is that it makes total sense to them, and they're only doing what they believe is write.

That being said: NOTHING will EVER justify the spilling of innocent blood in any way, shape, or form. In the law of both Man and God, killing an innocent will bring you nothing but punishment, not reward.

I understand that many believers of other faiths believe that in taking the life of a so-called "infidel", it will put them on the fast track to Heaven. Well, while I try to be as understanding of other people's point of views as I can, the fact is that you could never convince me that it was okay to kill somebody else unless it was the only way to keep them from killing somebody else. And trying to tell me that thousands of innocent people who either died or lost their homes completely deserved it simply because they had different beliefs than you will achieve nothing but to convince me that you're a monster. That's just how it is.

Intolerance is a severe reality- intolerance of Race, Gender, Religion, Social Status, and who knows how many other varieties. And the sad reality of it is that this is never going to change. Sure, the world may develop greater or lesser levels of understanding as time goes on, but there will always be at least one person out there who will simply hate somebody for being different. But if there's anything that makes me feel better at this, it's that there will always be people out there that will hope and pray that I'm wrong.