[Illusion]

Originally Posted by Echo-chan713

In my view, tracing isn't stealing art AS LONG AS you credited the original artist. if you traced a piece of art and claimed it to be all your doing and originality then it's stealing.

I actually traced original arts from sailor moon back in 2005, and that's how I improved my art skills. however I never posted them on the internet and claiming that I did all the work. if somebody asked I would say that I traced it from this pic from a certain artist.

What echo said on top! Unless you are given a cease and desist by the creator of said art, it's okay to trace. But if you take a character and made that character in your own design it in your own style it is your art but with a different alteration to that character. (Meaning if you made a new awesome looking spider-man which is stylize and designed as an original look or appearance that art style and version of spider-man you made is yours even though Marvel owns the character and all rights to TV shows and all of that chiz.)

But tracing very opened in big media because a lot of big corporations love it when you trace their characters because odds are you will actually learn how to draw their characters by tracing, hence you most likely will create a ton of fan-art or even in the future work for them doing art for them. (Which is the story for a lot of people who work at Marvel, or even the person making that new Sonic Boom game.)
Tracing is just a technique in art to practice learning how to draw in general in my opinion, but it can easily be used selfishly for personal gain.