Speaking of "celebs" trying to pawn off another persons work as their own, click the link to see side by side comparison of "his art" and the shutterstock photo "painted" over. I'm stunned that the eBay listing hasn't been pulled down because of this very thing.

FYI, his "painting" is a joke. It sucks. I'm gonna laugh when the last bidder gets stuck with it thinking someone else will bid after him/her to save them from their financial obligation. It's true, there's a sucker born every minute.

I don't even know who he is

Of course you know who he is. Trayvon Martin ring a bell?

I figured it out.

thanks I see you already posted who he was...but I hadn't seen it until my post went up

I know of a few artist that have been ripped by fans for tracing, but I wasn't aware Greg was in that same class with regards to tracing  p o r n . But then again, I really haven't followed anything he has done in years.

I noticed that the first time I saw a Greg Land book.. and that was ten years and change ago.  It also introduced me to a problem that I"ve been having since: almost-recognition of likenesses.  I dig caricatures and so on, but it totally throws me when I can ALMOST recognize someone but not quite.  Like, I'm pretty sure the main character in Sojourn is Rebecca Romijn but I can't tell for the life of me who her sidekick is.  I hate that.  Ultimates has a little of that going on as well.  And while stylized, I could identify almost everyone in J Scott Campbell's Wildsiderz except for Michelle Trachtenberg's character (although the likenesses in that series were part of the point: the whole thing was a sort-of take-off of big budget movies, you're SUPPOSED to identify the characters as actors, it's part of the fun).

Oh, and more on Shia and his other rip-offs.

Totally agreed.  I dig when Campbell does likenesses, and those are definitely a great tool for comic book artists because without them, a lot of the faces end up looking the same (I know I'm guilty of that!) .  So no issue with that.  But the Greg Land stuff seems so scattershot and inconsistent, famous people are minor characters for ONE frame.  In Wildsiderz, the teacher actually LOOKS LIKE the character actor who would play a teacher in that movie!

What I like about that, and what I picked up well before even hearing about the book, is the idea boiling the likeness down so that it can be recreated on the fly without a specific reference image.  That's how I was trying to work before, basically turn the real thing into an "animation" model.  This is why my ink drawings in the last couple of years have gotten thicker and blacker, I start with the thinnest Micron pen size I can get and then go over and over with thicker ones until I get something stark and simple.

And I was thinking the same about locations as well.  One of my big influences was Masakazu Katsura, who did these great mangas with ridiculously detailed photoreferenced backgrounds, they looked like big screen movies on the page-- which means that given the time that he made them, he must have been ripping off a BUNCH of photos.  But damn, the result.  It really gives you that you are there feel.  Nowadays with digital cameras, you can take your own reference all over the place (I still do even though I don't draw locations much anymore)... and what I like to do (or try to do) is combine locations together, I have crummy collages in Photoshop of similar but different locales smushed up next to each other so I can get a place that's LIKE a real location, but different and that I can't directly copy.  Basically, trying to design my workflow to make that sort of thing impossible.

I mean, this is all academic at this point since I couldn't even tell you the last proper comic book page I drew, but this impulse is still pretty strong inside me.