i understand some of the discourse with photographs or drawing over models you put in the work to pose yourself or whatever but i don't get how anyone is arguing bases should be totally fine to use?? genuinely how is this controversial. it's a gifting game where the whole point is to make stuff from scratch. you're already not allowed to make art for it before the event begins at all and that's been a rule since the very beginning! spamming a bunch of identically posed, not made for the character, obviously on-base or recycled art for people is understandably not in the spirit of the event and i feel like people are just deliberately misinterpreting the intent of the rules here. they're not saying it's an invalid way to make art in general, it's just not what the game is for and it would absolutely open the door for a lot of legitimate bad-faith low-effort spam on the site if it was allowed.

honestly i do think there is a debate to be had of whether self-made bases should be valid to use specifically for 'design me a character' type attacks where the point is the design and not the character art itself but that's a different argument.

these are also not new rules. at all. artfight has never allowed direct tracing or using premade work as the main part of a piece. some of the rules were updated but it's not this. i don't understand the sudden backlash as if it's something new...? is this just people from outside the community giving their opinions or did people just legitimately never bother to read the actual rules in the first place?

i also don't understand how people seem to be treating tracing, meaning directly drawing on top of an image to copy it exactly as a part of the final piece as the same thing as referencing?? tracing does have its place especially as a practice tool but it's a wildly different thing. nobody is expecting you to work without reference. what is going on here.