Stealing | 7 Habits of a Good Artist |  Based on Blender Foundation Speech by Andrew Price (video series can be viewed on youtube.com)

Habit 3 – Get good at stealing

Andrew says that we build on the stuff we have learned from others.  Find your idols, copy the stuff you love and put them into a file.

He says, “If you steal from one person you are plagiarizing but if you are stealing ideas from 100 people you are not doing plagiarism.”

When I was first learning to cartoon for the bible stories, I had very little background knowledge to draw from.  I had enjoyed the Saturday morning cartoons I watched on television as a child and I drew inspiration from them.  I also started to look at the cartoon section of our local newspaper and even advertising flyers that came in my daily mail.  My eyes were suddenly open to all the cartoons that were around me.

I started to recognize that there are certain styles of cartoons that I like and I started to try to copy them.  My limited drawing experience required me to rely on reference material.  I would cut out from the newspaper all of the cartoons with unusual facial expressions and make files of various things I felt I might need to use as inspiration.  Now of course with the internet, you have it all at your fingertips.

 

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