AITA for not citing every single reference photo I use? (Was told its as bad as AI)
I think I need a reality check because im a little heated/salty at the moment. For context, I'm somewhat new in art communities. I started drawing traditionally a year ago and just recently started trying out digital.
I finished this Jinx fanart earlier this week and started sharing this timelapse that includes my whole trial and error kind of process. I've been getting some comments and messages about not crediting all the references I used (there were many for the first half of the timelapse).
I thought these were just typical social media ragebaiters, so I checked with a longtime/veteran art friend of mine but they also called me out and agreed. When I explained im not doing anything 1:1 and mainly checking shadows/lightings/specific poses he told me that not dropping links/credit to every photo or creator I referenced is ip theft. He said that taking bits and pieces from uncredited references is "as bad as AI" because im just taking credit for other people's work.
I would always credit if its a heavy reference or close to 1:1 but these are in my opinion very benign? Idk I'm lowkey insulted a little, am I wrong on this? I've never seen anyone put a fat bibliography in their social media captions for art...