[hmstx]

In an interesting twist of fate, one of the master copyists featured prominently in the Scener section of that site has come back in the last few years to win graphics competitions again with both

- directly ripping newer, lesser known artists instead of the classic Vallejo/Sorayama from the 90s. https://ibb.co/GpDVf2r

- switching to midjourney from ~2023 to now, so the sources are near untraceable (this was also supposedly leaked).

It still takes some talent to do a good looking copy, but it's not the same talent - and very dishonest when such literal use of reference is not credited.

In fact it's been an issue in the 16bit demoscene with graphics (standalone and in demos) suddenly getting more plentiful, with subjects constructed and lit a lot better, etc. and people being called out for suspicious works (and usually getting away with it, "because the whole point was to support our insane image compression code with a ton of images" etc.)