>>19We see them everywhere. On fan-made YouTube videos with people's fan-characters, on Photobucket, DeviantART, even in a kid's coloring book. So the question is: why are recolored characters bad? Well all that will be explained, we will see if it's true artistic talent/creativity and the consequences recolors cause, as well as the overall reputation of how people look at recolors.
So now, is recoloring a true artistic skill? Well let's see: when one recolors, you take someone's art of a character, you add either minor or major adjustments to your liking and then voila! A recolored character! The answer to that is a big fat NO. Recoloring is something ANYONE can do. Truly making a piece of art from scratch is something only skilled artists can produce seeing not everyone is as artistic as others. You see, a true artist would make his/her own work without the aid of another artist's work to color over. A true artist takes hours or much longer to produce art - something that recoloring takes less than maybe what? 15 minutes to color over. Which brings me into the next topic: the consequences of recoloring.
The consequences of recoloring. At least on DeviantART the people running the website take some measures to explain recoloring (whither it's a screenshot or some kind of other image on the Internet) is not appropriate. From, What Happens When You Submit Infringing Works to deviantART?
"When we become aware that a deviantART submission infringes upon the copyrights of another artist, creative person or company, we will immediately delete it. This is a legal requirement which we fulfill immediately; you will not receive an advanced warning and you will not be given an opportunity to 'fix it'. Any copyright owner following the procedures in this Copyright Policy can require deviantART to remove his or her copyrighted content." As you can see, recolors aren't allowed on the website, yet many people continue to recolor whither they know or not that recoloring isn't allowed on a website meant for artists. For those of you who do in fact recolor, you should be aware what will happen if you continue to post up recolored pictures. "If you are found to repeatedly post infringing content your account will be suspended and serious offenders will have their account banned and deactivated. If you are found deliberately misrepresenting the copyrighted work of another as your own your account will be immediately banned and deactivated." Perhaps it's just some people who don't know (or stubborn) that recoloring is bad will be banned as a consequence. But that's not just all. Did you know that recoloring can do more than just get you banned from DeviantART? From, If you take my work down am I protected from a lawsuit?
"No. Even if deviantART takes an infringing work down, if you put it up on deviantART you may still be responsible for very significant damages if the copyright owner decides to sue you." So yes recoloring can do a lot more than merely ban one person or get their recolored pictures taken down. Oh yes, the owner of a work someone recolored over has the right to sue the person who recolored his/her work. It's possible in America, and yes the American laws also apply to DeviantART (American-made website) in case you didn't know. Go look at FAQ #250. As you can see it's no wonder DeviantART is against the idea of people recoloring, they aren't the only ones against recoloring.