Branching out from Ponies

I worked on a picture of Cyclops, and was reasonably pleased with it.  It's not original.  I just tried to reproduce someone else's work, but it was a fairly successful.

This led to an interested discussion on an art board though where someone urged me to create my own work instead of copying.  Now, this is something that annoys me about art types.  It's like they can't remember what it was like to be the guy who is learning.  When they learned, they almost certainly didn't start with original creations.  When you go to art class, they sit you in front of some wooden shapes and they say "Draw these".  Once you get the techniques down, then you move to original work.  I've never drawn a human before in my life.  How am I going to work on original stuff yet?  Well, sure I could, but it will be crap.  If I want something to display, I'm not going to be able to just whip something out the way I can with ponies now.

I explained that I started with copying ponies and then went to original work once I get a feeling down for the methods.  They kinda sorta agreed, but I could tell they still didn't like it.  I don't really understand this mentality.  I could if I was trying to sell the work as my own or something, but it's just practice and I clearly stated that this was not my original work and linked back to the artist.

I get the feeling that a lot of these people forget all the times that they needed to learn how a leg worked and opened up a picture of a guy running and drew it over and over.  

Still, even with that, that person had good points to make and is trying to help, so I appreciate that.