gidgit, I would consider that more of a "tool" than tracing. You aren't following curves that someone else has made. Not exactly freehand, but hey, I wouldn't call it cheating. If I were drawing it myself, I would never worry about the circles being perfectly round (my work is never about perfection [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ).

I may have been misled in my interpretation of the attitudes in the Xara forum. After all, I haven't really frequented it in the last 6 months or so. I have always been a lurker there, and some of the work is fantastic, but I just used to get an air of "if it ain't Xara, we don't wanna see it". Gary's example scares me a bit though: if he cannot use his own freakin' creations in his own work, that borders on censorship.

I will continue to create as I always have: ideas from my own mind, undoubtedly influenced by countless images I've seen, but my own in that I haven't used anyone else's work in any way in my images. (Not true: I've been known to borrow a texture or two--don't tell!)

Brett