Since I've become a member here, I've seen plenty of members trample on artistic integrity and ethics by submitting pieces to the gallery that have been blatantly traced/copied from other people's artwork, yet go complete uncredited until someone else digs up the original and calls them out on what basically amounts to art theft.

While I can appreciate the benefits of reproducing another artists work as a technical exercise, I have to admit that I find it disappointing that many of these pieces are allowed to remain in the gallery, with a simple admin edit for credit, even when the submitting artist has made no effort to atone for their duplicitous behavior, or in some cases, continue to outright deny that they have erred at all.

Providing credit for making use of someone else's work s even provided in the rules for submitting to the gallery, rules which are quite brief and very easy to understand.

In cases where it appears that there has been a deliberate effort to mislead the community about the origins and originality of the piece, I'd really like to see firmer action taken - at least by removing the piece from the gallery. Any further internal disciplinary actions such as banning or warning aren't really my business, and I don't know what sort of system PJ uses or if these measures are already being taken in cases of this nature, but I certainly wouldn't object to people who do this being banned/warned.

I really feel that such an easy tolerance of this type of behavior, and the lax consequences of simply having your reference links edited in by an admin really diminishes the quality and integrity of this community, and it also diminishes the efforts of artists who do take the time to create original work and those who are honest about their reference material when it is used.

I think we have a really wonderful community here - one of the better art communities that I have been a part of, and I'd love to see us set a higher visible standard for artistic ethics. I think that is something that all artists can et behind, regardless of experience or skill or talent.

Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear opinions on this from both PJ staff and users.

I find it sad that such a blatant copy like this l can remain as number one in the weekly showcase.
I have my doubts that that is even pixel art.
Everything is to a tee, including the tiniest minuscule detail.
I have the feeling all he's done is color reduced the original painting and then changed the colors.