Base Work Approval

To start things off, let’s define what is even considered base art and why it has a relatively bad reputation. When we talk about the kind of base art that is frowned upon and not allowed in many organized fandoms like these wikis, **we talk about the creation and/or use of** **traced bases** as the basis for your art. Bases created by yourself (or that you obtained the rights to use) that were not traced, are fine and do not have to be approved.

  Digression  Many see tracing as a form of art theft or at the very least consider it as lazy and something skilled artists should and would never do. But both of these arguments are flawed.
There are many artists deemed great by historians, that actually took a piece from another fellow artist and “finished” it themselves or have used other means of optics to trace from. And we are talking Names like Thomas Eakins, Johannes Vermeer and even Leonardo Da Vinci, to name only a few.

BUT we must acknowledge two other things here as well. Firstly: Copyright didn’t really exist back then. But even nowadays tracing still happens a lot in the professional industry, beyond Disney tracing and reusing their own work. Secondly and most importantly though: These artists were skilled in their profession already. You would not have recognized the base they have started with in their end-product because they have added enough of their own skill for the original to disappear behind their own work entirely.

This also ties in well with the art theft argument. If the work you have put in exceeds what you started with, it is your work. In the day and age of copyright you should, however, acknowledge that you have used another artist’s work to get you started. And if an artist tells you in one way or another, NOT to use their art like that, you should, obviously, also respect their wishes.

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If you are still learning art, we **STRONGLY** encourage you **NOT to make base art**. There is not much learned from tracing, and even less from drawing onto a base. If you can, as suggested in the create-a-monster tutorial, you should reference original pieces instead, because that is how you learn more about the art style. Plus, **original artwork NEVER has to be approved**, either! So, we suggest getting out of your comfort zone and try to create something without a traced base as starting point.

But if you still would want to create traced base art anyway, note that your piece would have to go through a **quality check** and has to be **approved** by us. In order to get your piece approved, you might want to see if you can check the following boxes confidently.

1.   **Use official artwork to trace. Don’t trace other people’s fan work!**

2.   **Your own work must be visible and exceed the original!**

If you simply trace everything up to the last strand of hair and just add some minor details like a tail, ears or wings and use different colors, you simply haven’t done enough. You basically just replicated the original, which is NOT the Idea here. You are supposed to only use the bare (naked and bald, maybe even faceless) base and add elements like attire and hairdo yourself. Recolors will not be approved!

3.   **The overall quality of the end-product must be consistent!**

This concerns you, if you decided to draw onto a traced base that was not made by you. There should not be a disconnect between the base and your work. Basically, the piece should end up looking like one person made it. So, if your additions vary too greatly from the base you were using (e. g. line weight and quality, clarity of what you are trying to add (e. g. NO “blobs of color”, define what you are adding either with clear linework or shading)) it will not be approved!

4.   **Be transparent about your base use!**

Don't try to pass it as “referenced” when it wasn't. It is super easy to figure out if it was.

5.   **Please respect the Admin team's decisions!**

As has been discussed HERE, we are aware that this process is of a rather subjective nature, but the alternative would be going back to no base art allowed, period. We try to be as objective as possible on a case by case basis and will also always try to tell you why exactly your Art wasn't approved, so that you know on what to improve. If this is too tedious for you, again, consider moving away from traced bases and create something original. Original pieces do not have to get approved, no matter their "quality".

If you finished your traced / base art, please **upload it into this page’s comment section**, so we can have a look  and see if it's compliant to our rules. Only upload it to your page if it is approved, or you might risk getting a strike.

If your work has been approved a couple of times consistently, you might be told that you don’t have to get your stuff approved anymore and are free to upload it directly, provided you continue to deliver the same quality work. However, this pass can and will be revoked if there are too many issues with your artwork uploaded after the pass.

You can also ask any question you still may have in the comment section, or head over to our discord and directly ask us there!