Clipped Art

I have been doing some reading recently of comments on how some cartoonists are using clipart images of their characters to produce a cartoon. This seems to attract a lot of attention as many would say that the cartoon would lack a sense of originality. Well, I think you'll find that most of the best known comic strips around either have a team of artists working on it, which would mean there is a model sheet all must go by to create the same appearance to characters ie. like Garfield, or it is a single person doing a bit of cut and paste in Photoshop. Personally I think that it is ok to reuse some images but not frequently. What a lot of people don't appreciate is the time consumed to produce a cartoon. Some deadlines are so short the only way is to piece together something from already archived material. It really isn't about taste but merely being able to produce on time. Some of us don't have the luxury of being able to write weeks ahead and make the time available to complete all by hand. I personally have had to reuse some old artwork just to change the appearance of the strip as a last moment effort for editorial reasons. So I can't say I'm not one of those who do it. And I don't blame anyone for doing it either.