"Cheating" as an Artist

Years ago, when I did my first animation and posted it online, looking for attention like always, there was one comment that made me defensive, annoyed, and eventually, thoughtful.

I had no idea about animation timing or any of the little rules at the time; I just wanted to do animation. I'd managed to find a tutorial online about creating animation using a whiteboard and free software.

It was a little one minute joke thing called "Hair in a Can".

Anyway, the comment that struck me a little odd was this: "If you drew this on paper, it's pretty good!"

My initial reaction (which is fairly close to my reaction now) was "who cares if I did it on paper? What difference does that make?"

I guess the commenter was gauging my level of artistic skill. To me, that's irrelevant (a convenient point of view, maybe, for a lazy artist).

To me, the only thing that matters is "was it entertaining? Funny, or scary, or touching or whatever? Could you understand what was happening?"

I heard the great comic artist Neal Adams in an interview where he talked about the idea of "cheating" in artwork. He doesn't see using photo references, copypasting as anything but tools to increase his output. To get a job at Archie comics, he even traced some Dan Decarlo art. I'm told that a lot of comic artists trace photos to create their pages.

There are a lot of webcomics that use copypasted or simplified styles or stick figures or whatever. Some of them work and some don't (for me personally, I mean). All that matters to me is whether I enjoy them.

What do you think? Does it matter how a comic is created? Is it "cheating" to cut corners like this?

Have a good Thursday, Ducks!

-Banes