Stevens wrote:
Funny you should mention that -
https://hg101.kontek.net/tracing/tracing2.htmAlllllllll the way down at the bottom of the page there is an interesting story about Sega, Boris Vallejo, and the cover art for GA III.
Not the first time I've posted that link round' these parts. If you haven't read it yet the entire article is very much worth the time.
Some of the examples of so-called tracing in that article are a bit of a stretch. Like the author (I'm not sure if it was Etch-A-Sketch or derbooboo) assumed that because
Castlevania and
Simon's Quest promo illustrations were traced from other illustrations, then
Dracula's Curse promo art was also traced. But Tom Dubois's artwork for the game looks nothing like the Clyde Cadwell illustration they're comparing it to. Likewise,
Akumajō Densetsu promo art looks nothing at all like the
Return of the Jedi poster aside from the fact that they're both group shots of the main characters.
It's possible that the Japanese
Golden Axe III illustration might not to be a copy of Boris Vallejo's unused version, but rather a separate commission that was done at the same time with the same instructions given to another artist (I know the JP illustration was featured in a Sega artbook, I think VGdensetsu covered the artist at one point). They never bothered to ask Vallejo to see if this was the case.