Fanart - Fanlore

Synonyms:
See also:	Art Show, Fan Comic, Icon (Image), Manip, Challenge/Fanart_Challenges
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Contents 1 General 2 History of Fanart 3 Types of Fanart 3.1 Drawings and Paintings 3.2 Photo Manipulations 3.3 Crafts, Textiles, and Metal Smithing 3.4 Photography 3.5 Fashion 3.6 Videos 3.7 Fan comics 4 Controversy 4.1 Fandom Controversy 4.2 Artistic Controversy 4.3 Legal Controversy 5 Notable fanart shows/auctions 6 Related Links 7 References

General

Previously a fanartist was considered anyone who drew for a genre because they were a fan of the genre rather than being professionally employed to create art for the genre. In the earlier fandom years artists like Wendy (Fletcher) Pini, who produced amateur original fantasy art for fanzines, would be deemed a "fanartist" because she produced art for a genre she was a fan of. While a fanartist could make fanart for any genre, generally the most common were the science fiction and fantasy genres.

However, the modern usage of the word "fanart" has changed to mean anyone who produces amateur art for a specific TV show, movie, book, or other media event not owned or created by the artist. Original genre art is generally no longer considered "fanart."

Technically, the term "fanart" encompasses art every medium just as the word "art" does, including but not limited to drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, photo manipulation, videos, crafts, and textiles, metal smithing, and fashion. Within this broad media types, fanart has also created types of art specific almost specific to itself, such as icons.

Colloquially, fanart most commonly refers to the art for a series that is drawn or painted either traditionally or digitally. However, colloquial use can also be dependent on the fandom. For example, in a fandom where photo manipulation is the dominant form of art, "fanart" for the fandom often implies "photo manipulation" not traditional art. Some fandoms also refuse to consider icons or banners as "fanart."

History of Fanart

In the USA and other Western countries fanart in the modern sense of the word dates to at least the 60's and 70's, if not earlier. It was especially prevalent in the Star Trek and Star Wars fandoms. Other TV shows, such as Starsky & Hutch, The Professionals, Battlestar Galactica, MacGyver, and other 80's and early 90's TV series (and some movies) had a noticeable fanart presence. Fanart was also created for highly popular books like The Lord of the Rings.

Fanart was part of zines, traded on its own, auctioned at conventions, or sold through the mail. In zine fandom, fanart was often used as cover illustrations for fanzines and as story illustrations.

The cost of printing art, especially fanart that was not simple b/w lineart had a significant part in rising zine costs as printing technologies evolved and fans appreciated better art reproduction and color covers in zines^[1]. Some zine publishers were especially adept at art reproduction, for example the Star Trek zine Interphase from the 1970s is often mentioned for the high printing quality:

In a counter trend, some fans felt that fanart was not worth the high costs of fanzines, and this led to no-frills zines without art, such as published by Almost Foolproof Press or Oblique Publications.

There is said to have been a prevalent notion that fanart should be in a "realistic" illustrative style. (It is however, worth noting that there was also comic book based fanart that was not held to such restrictions, as well as book based fanart. There also has been room for cartoon art in tv fandoms, such as Leah Rosenthal's cartoons in Blake's 7, Highlander, Stargate: SG-1 and others.)

The demands of portrait drawing might have discouraged some artists but others excelled and were in high demand. Popular fanartists often had a distinct style that made their work easily recognizable. Gayle F's work for example has been described as very stylized yet lush, moving easily between simple portraiture and elaborate and sometimes explicit story illustration. Suzan Lovett's art, on the other hand, is not only very realistic, it's also often an elaborate composition of different elements in the stories the artwork is illustrating. Illustrating a fanzine can mean that there are several pages with illustrations by the same artist. For example, when Lovett illustrated the Professionals novel All the Queen's Men, that included a color cover and six pages of illustrations in comic-book style, with multiple panels and text picking out key themes, the story Wine Dark Nexus has seven black and white illustrations, and for Harlequin Airs Lovett created four color images (including the cover) and twenty-one black and white illustrations.

When fandom moved online, it was mostly fanfiction that developed an online presence. Some fans who enjoyed the zine illustration tradition feel that the internet led to a decline in fanart:

The split between fanart and fanfiction that occurred when western, live-action media fandoms, moved to the net gave some fans, who first encountered these fandoms online, the impression that in the English speaking world fanart lagged behind fanfiction in general, although it was only true for online media fandom where fanart was not as prevalent as fanfiction.

This impression is especially strong when contrasted to Asia, notably Japan. Many Asian countries had a highly visible fanart culture, most notably in the form of small fan comics called doujinshi. In some western media fandoms fanart comics were produced as well, yet these tended to be amateur original works and not fanart in the modern sense of the word. While doujinshi can be more traditional fanfiction type fanzines, they can also be, and often were, fanart driven. Many doujinshi were short, often comical, fan comic books based on popular cartoon and TV series in Japan. Anime series of the 80's and 90's that had a considerable doujinshi following in Japan included Samurai Troopers, Saint Seiya, Sailor Moon, Fushigi Yuugi, and others. Doujinshi was also produced for western television shows such as Star Trek: The Next Generation and The A-Team. Often the characters were drawn in a more "Traditional" manga style and there was little attempt made toward the more portrait realism seen in western fanart for these series.

In the early and mid 90's Japanese cartoon increased in popularity in the USA and fanart began to be created for these shows. These fandoms did not have an expectation of a 'realistic' portrayal of characters, which may help explain why fanart began to be not only drawn more often, but drawn by younger fandom members, especially teens and pre-teens. This is not to say the teenagers had not previously drawn fanart, but there was a noticeable increase in fanartist numbers in this age bracket.

At the same time, the rise of the internet made it easier to distribute fanart for other members of fandom to see and appreciate, thus making fanart more visible and more likely to be tried by someone else. Another area where fanart noticeably increased in popularity was in the Harry Potter fandom. Again this was a fandom in which portrait-like realism was not expected, and another fandom that profited from the use of the internet. Aside from anime fanartists, Harry Potter is often considered to be one of the most fanart driven fandoms.

The first time anime fandom and western media fandom met was in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which was the fandom that swallowed all of (media slash) fandom before Harry Potter became big, and the TPM fanart documents this meeting of different styles and traditions. With the rise of Harry Potter fandom and fanartists moving from the anime and Harry Potter fandoms into other fandoms, fanart became increasingly visible again in both older and newer TV, movie, and book fandoms. Also, giving these "live action" characters a more 'cartoon' look became more accepted among fans.

Currently, fanart is a highly visible and popular part of many fandoms across the genres. It is still most noticeable in anime and Harry Potter fandoms. However, it is also seen in a diverse range of fandoms including Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica, House MD, Law and Order SVU, Star Wars, The Matrix, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Marvel comics, and other popular TV series, books, comics, and movies.

Recently, newer online posting formats such as Big Bangs show a return to the old zine tradition of collaboration between artists and writers.

Types of Fanart

Drawings and Paintings

Fanart that has been drawn or painted is broken down further into two groups. Traditional art, meaning the art was primarily drawn or painted with material such as paint, markers, color pencil or other physical media, and digital art, meaning the art was primarily created using one of the many computer art programs such as Open Canvas, Photoshop or Painter.

This is the oldest form of fanart, pre-dating the modern use of the word, and stretching back to at least the fanzine and fan publications of the 1930's. Initially most fanart of this type was black and white due to the limitations of publishing fan publications, but with the advent of cheaper color printing methods and cheaper distribution methods, notably the internet, color illustrations and paintings are now seen more often than black and white illustrations.

Fanart of this type is most often illustrative. Rarely does fanart branch into non-representational abstraction, surrealism^[5], impressionism, or other modern art styles. However, cartooning is a common form of abstraction and in recent years, cartooning has become more accepted in previously photo realistic dominated fandoms, such as those relating to TV shows like Star Trek.

Generally, traditional and digital drawings and paintings tend to dominate the various anime fandoms as well as novel based fandoms, most notably Harry Potter.

Photo Manipulations

Photo manipulation refers to any image that has been digitally manipulated (through combining images, warping, recoloring, repositioning, resizing, etc.) in order to achieve the artist's desired effect in a new end product. The fandom term for this art is usually photomanips or simply manips. This artistic medium also includes icons (small images digitally manipulated and used for blogs such as Livejournal), banners (often seen as decorations for blogs and other online spaces), and computer wallpapers. Icons and banners tend to be almost exclusive to the arena of fanart, while wallpapers may still be either original- or fanart-based.

As with painting and drawing, photo manipulation fanart tends to be more illustrative than abstract, with emphases put on creating realistic blends of diverse photo elements.

This is a newer form of fanart that has become more prevalent with the availability of computer graphics programs that allow artists to manipulate photos in many ways; such as cutting out characters from the background of one image and adding them to another, changing light and color of certain image elements, resizing entire areas, or creating an entirely new scene with elements extracted from a multitude of other images. Because the beginning manipper tends to start with easy-to-learn cut and paste techniques, their fanart may be easily recognized as manipulations, and can be unintentionally comical or even grotesque. This has lead to a backlash against this fanart media from some fanart circles, similar in nature to the backlash against photography that occurred in artistic circles. Detractors often point to the simple techniques used by beginning manippers as evidence that manips are "simply cut-and-paste collages" or "simple recolorings of pre-existing photos" and, therefore, should not be considered art.

Whether manips, icons, wallpapers, or graphics should be considered "fanart" continues to be debated among fans.^{[6] [7]} At this time, there is no common consensus and some art archives, notably the Harry Potter Archive Artistic Alley allow fanart of this type to be posted. On the other hand, the art archive deviantArt, for copyright reasons, has taken an official stance against such art, unless it can be proven that there is no copyright conflict.

Previously, photo manipulation was the prevalent art form in online movie and TV Show fandoms ^[8], though drawing, painting, and multimedia are starting to be shared online as well.

Crafts, Textiles, and Metal Smithing

Needs Info

Photography

Photography is not commonly used as fanart in and of itself. In order to be fanart, the photograph is usually related to either Photo manipulation or fandom specific costumes and is therefore more apart of those categories than fanart media in its own right. However, many fanartists find photographs and photography to be a valuable art tool.

Fashion

Creating costumes based on TV Shows, movies and cartoons is often termed "Cosplay" among fandom members. This form of fashion fanart tends to be especially prevalent among both anime- and sci-fi fandoms.

Usually costumes are made to be worn at fandom specific conventions. Of the various fanart types, this is one of the least controversial when bought and sold. Typically, a studio will issue a Cease and Desist if a person is selling an unauthorized replica that is felt to be too exact.

Videos

There are many different kinds of fan videos.

• Vids are short videos composed of scenes taken from a movie or TV show and set to music. Vidding started in 1975, but really took off as an art form in the early 1980s with the rise of the home VCR. Fan videos were often shown as part of themed conventions; the other way to get vids was to send away in the mail for videocassettes. Vids were made with VCRs through the 1990s and into the 2000s, but recently advances in computer technology have resulted in an explosion of vids. Distribution has gotten easier as well; password-protected download sites have given way to more open modes of file distribution, and streaming sites like youtube and imeem are popular. Vids are less common among book-based fandoms; however, occasionally a fan vid will put fanart to music.

• Anime Music Videos, are similar in format to vids, but evolved as a separate tradition. AMV footage is most often taken from anime or game cut-scenes, but may be constructed with stills or fanart.

• Machinima videos are rendered in real-time by game engines.

• Fan films are videos in which the artist is actually creating footage to tell a story; in certain fandoms, notably the Star Trek ToS fandom, actual fan-made TV episodes have been produced and put online.

• Multimedia art is now becoming popular; examples include credit sequences, trailers^[9], animated visual art ^[10], and multimedia-enriched fan fiction (fan fiction that integrates words, pictures, music, and video)^[11].

Of all the fanart forms, fan videos, especially the ones composed of video clips set to music, have met with the most resistance from copyright holders. Viacom especially has taken exception to this fanart form, and as a result, streaming sites have taken vids down for violating copyright. However, not all media companies have taken this stance; e.g. the makers of Forever Knight included vids on their DVD release as bonus materials.

Fan comics

Fan comics have typically been more prevalent in Asia (as doujinshi) than in the USA; however, they are increasing in popularity each year. Typically a fan comic run is a limited run, often with only around 50 issues produced. This is to help avoid copyright conflict with the owner of the material the fan comic is based upon.

In live action fandoms fan comics are not always drawn, but are sometimes photo comics made from rearranged and cropped screencaps combined with text and speech balloons. These are usually published on the web, not as print comics. The same is often true for drawn fan comics in these fandoms, although they can have the same format and layout as print comics.^[12] Online comics in live action fandoms often tell their story on a single page and parodies rarely need more than one panel.^[13] Some live action fandoms have produced online comic strips that ran for several years.^[14]

Counter-intuitively, fan comics are not noticeably more common in comics fandom, with the exception of pornographic het and femslash, produced by and for heterosexual male fans.

Controversy

Fandom Controversy

Often fanart is seen for sale online and at conventions. Usually this does not cause any problems; however, sometimes there is a question as to why fanartists can sell fanart but fanfiction authors cannot sell fanfiction.

Whether a fanart sale is accepted within a fandom usually depends on the question if the artist is acting within the bounds of acceptable fan behavior, or violating them. What is deemed "acceptable" can vary from fandom to fandom. ^[15]

Artistic Controversy

In the artistic community, fanart is often not seen as a legitimate form of artistic expression. This has lead some fanartist to feel resentful of the art world.

The argument against fanart made by some artists, as well as from some other fans, is that the artwork is derivative and not original. Therefore, it does not show as much individuality and artist sensibilities as original artwork would.

The counter claim by fanartists is that fanart often contains an original expression and original idea by the artist even if the specific subject matter is not original and is no more derivative than, for example, artwork based on the Bible, on mythology, or historical events and people. They claim the negative bias is based more on the subject of their art than any artistic principles.

Legal Controversy

Fanart is not often the subject of legal controversy; however, it can be considered a form of copyright infringement, especially when sold. A copyright owner will often overlook small, one-time shows such as conventions. However, in 2006, Otakon attempted to ban fanart from the Artist Alley^[16], which was the first major convention move against the selling of fanart.

Another highly visible incident of a company moving against a fanartist involved a Japanese doujinshi artist whose adult Pokémon doujinshi prompted Nintendo to take legal action against her. ^[17]

Such legal cases are still the exception rather than the rule; however, they serve as a reminder that the fanart is not the legal property of the fanartist.

Still, more policing of fanart tends to be done by the fandom itself than by the property owners themselves.

Notable fanart shows/auctions

Most fan conventions will have fanart shows and auctions. Notable ones include:
Escapade
A-kon
Anime Expo
DragonCon
The HPEGF Harry Potter Conventions

Related Links

• Yuletart (external link)
• Deviantart (external link))
• Sheezyart (external link)
• Artisticalley (external link)

References

1. ↑ citation needed. (I could swear I have read a quote from a zine publisher saying this just a few days ago in this wiki in another article talking about prdouction costs, but now I can't find it again.)
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Nancy Kippax. ARS GRATIA ARTIS:: The Lost Art of Illoing. 20 July 2008 (accessed 12 Dec 2009)
3. ↑ LJC. A 'zine! A 'zine! My kingdom for a 'zine! (accessed 12 Dec 2009)
4. ↑ K.S. Langley. The Times They are a' Changing 06/19/03 (accessed 27 Dec 2009)
5. ↑ Example for a surrealist Snape/Harry piece by Froggie NSFW (accessed 12 Dec 2009)
6. ↑ Glockgal. The WHAT IS FANART Poll. Posted 28 May 2007. (Accessed 3 October 2008)
7. ↑ Beet. Fan art and Manipping. Posted 4 June 2007. (Accessed 3 October 2008)
8. ↑ Media fandom has a long history of art shows at conventions that pre-dates the internet.
9. ↑ Grrrindhouse, by Danegen
10. ↑ Distance, Long by Bingeling and Dogeared, and The Tree by Newkidfan
11. ↑ Missed The Saturday Dance by Zoetrope
12. ↑ Chrome-Magnon. Artwork by Astrid, story by Shannon Fisher. This X-Files example from the 90's is a 30-page online comic book. (Accessed October 13 2008).
13. ↑ Example: Stargate SG-1 Cartoons by Leah Rosenthal. (Accessed October 13 2008)
14. ↑ The Xena fan comic Battle On! by Jeanette Atwood ran from 1997 to 2000 and Little Xena and Little Gabrielle by Lucia Nobrega ran from 1999 to 2006. (Accessed 13 October 2008)
15. ↑ An example for a post with a poll about the different opinions and some discussion of these positions in the comments is here: Miriam Heddy. Show Me The Money (a poll). Posted 23 July 2008. (Accessed 3 October 2008)
16. ↑ Otakon Enforces Copyright at Artists' Alley
17. ↑ Regulating the Fringe: Waisetsu (Obscenity) Rules Doujinshi?