In the world of art, you have to acknowledge that in this day and age, you are constantly being influenced by others and originality is pretty much dead. The closest you can come to it is by trying to be as diverse as possible in what traits you pull from your influences.

And with that we come to the issue of "this art style is published, mainstream and known by the masses, so it's okay to copy it exactly" syndrome. You see it all the time where there's an artist that uses an art style from a popular TV series [etc] with ZERO variation.

Now, if you caught an artist doing this to another non-published, non-mainstream artist, all hell would break loose. It is NOT okay to rip off other "low-level" artists. But for some reason everyone accepts the virtual tracing of things like Sonic the Hedgehog.

I see galleries, all the time on here, of people who ONLY draw in the exact style of Sonic the Hedgehog. Not a style influenced by Sonic, but entirely copied. How are you even supposed to advance as an artist if you limit yourself to someone else's style? Fan art is one thing, but when it's the only thing you draw ever, it's ridiculous. Why do people think it's okay to just blatantly rip off art just because it's mainstream? Why is it the only thing they ever draw?