You don't need to draw realism in order to gain from using reference photos. They simply help with proper anatomy, proportions and poses~With copying I don't mean the characters looking similar, but whether it's used for light referencing or heavy. This explains it a bit better than I can with words: Tracing and referencing I'm perfectly fine with people using my work as a reference and tool in creating their own art, I just prefer people don't copy the entire pose "line for line" so to speak, especially on commissions such as this one ^^