Talk:Fanart - Fanlore

I removed the "sophistication" and the "uncommon painterly sensibility" because they sounded condescending towards other fandoms, and in the latter case I have no idea what "painterly sensibility" was even supposed to mean, when applied to the vids and multimedia fanfics given as examples. Maybe it could be included again in a rephrased way that explains more about these artworks? --ratcreature 18:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, a painterly sensibility is one where you don't mind attending to the formal features of the art rather than to the subject of the art; i.e. its the opposite of "transparency", where you see the subject but not the brushstrokes/medium. --Speranza 18:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Just to add, too, that a painterly sensibility IS really uncommon, almost odd, in fandom; we like our art (and our prose) transparent by and large (i.e. we want to see the BSO, not the artist or the artists's style.)--Speranza 18:25, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Huh. I don't think it is a well-known term among fanartists themselves. Maybe among multimedia people? I just was pointed to this entry from Glockgal's LJ, and the phrasing was seen as putting artists in other fandoms down besides sounding ridiculous, and none of the fanartists commenting knew what to make of it, except feeling offended and condescended to. --ratcreature 18:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in, but: while such a thing may be uncommon in, say, live-action television fandoms, fanart is an extremely large category. I think that's what made that specific piece of commentary a bit surprising, on a general page such as this one. (It came off as setting the quality of SGA fanart up against that of most or all other fandoms.) Maybe such specific discussion of the quality of fanart in SGA is more suited to the show's own page. (Having looked over, I think it works very well there.)--reflectedeve 18:37, 1 October 2008

Well, it sounds more like she's just complaining about the fact that only two--now three--fandoms are even represented, which is fair enough. The solution to her difficult is of course for her to come and add to the stub. Vis a vis mocking my formal language--sorry for taking fanart seriously. Painterly is a common art history term (as a two second google will show) though I'm not married to its use in this entry. But I'm sure all sorts of people are going to point and laugh at anyone taking fan arts seriously. *shrug*--Speranza 18:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate that fanart is taken seriously, but many fans and fanartists don't know art history terms, and it is not obvious that it is a technical term with a special meaning, so you read it like the regular meaning of the parts. That's what I did when reading the entry, I thought it meant that they painted stuff as part of vids and that that was somehow very special, even though in other fandoms people draw and paint too.--ratcreature 18:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

reflectedeve--thanks, that's helpful; I can totally make it among live-action media fandoms, yes. I'm not at all talking about comics, anime, etc.--Speranza 18:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Painterly sensibilities may be uncommon in what *you* know of fanart, but I assure you that attention to the process, detail, technique, and symbolism within the art is not something particular to SGA fanartists. Sweeping statements about fandom are bound to be challenged.Maggie 18:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, Maggie; I think the claim is a lot more specific now.--Speranza 19:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Major Change
I just did a major overhaul on the whole page. A lot of it, especially in the history section, was based on what I've seen in the fanart communities over the years and what I know from talking to my dad about fanart in the 60's and 70's. I'll try and find some citations over the next few weeks. Please feel free to yell at me about lack of citations (or better mark something you really want cited).

I also went ahead an divided the fanart into types and gave a brief description of each, biased toward what I know best (and hopefully someone else can flesh out the others). As each type of fanart tends to cross over into all fandoms I thought defining those made more sense than talking about fanart in a specific fandom. In fact, I removed all mentions of specific fandoms unless I was using them merely as an example. My reasoning on this is that having been in the anime, multiple sci-fi and fantays fandomes, and a celebrity fandom, I don't think any one fandom as any more diverse or special than another and therefore couldn't justify singeling any out, except as examples. I certainly wouldn't have said SGA was more diverse than BSG or Star Trek, and listing the art styles and preference of each fandom would make a huge entry.

If some fandom were notable for its fanart being almost entirely non representational abstraction, or performance art, or kabuki, THAT I think would warrant mentioning as it is utterly outside the norm. But that wasn't the case.

I added the various controversies because I thought they were interesting. I was debating adding fanartist of note, but no one who was cross genre came to mind and I didn't want everyone to start listing their favorite fanartist there, as again, that would get huge, but if anyone can think of someone who is well known in I guess maybe three or five or so fandoms, maybe we cold list them. Another good bit might be fanartists who went pro, like Wendy Pini and Colleen Doran.

Anyway, I hope I didn't gooober something up too badly. If so I apologize and I'm sure someone will fix it ^^ - ani_bester 21:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This is awesome! I went in and fixed errors in the video section, and broke out different kinds of video--I hope people will add more (and also add to the fan film part.)--Speranza 04:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This overhaul is absolutely brilliant. I'm so filled with joy at this, and at the discussion page I must admit - looks like things got a bit heated but also very well sorted out. I heart this wiki.

I think it's worth, considering the length of the page, moving the information on different art forms to subpages - for example, Fanart/Photo Manipulations or Fanart/Forms/Photo Manipulations. Or even creating separate pages entirely for some of these - Manips, I think, could certainly carry their own page - there is, after all, entire categories for Visual Art, Video and so forth on the wiki, and it would be simple to link to other pages under a "for articles on different art forms, see the links below" heading.

I think most types of fanart should get their own pages, not subpages, as they've got a solid enough presence on their own. I think of subpages as entirely included in the main page concept, and when a topic has its own broad following, it gets a main page. (Which is why slash is a main page, not a subpage of Fan Fiction.) Each art style also has a non-fannish existence, which will overlap into the fannish ones, and those uses/terms/standards/whatever aren't part of "fanart" as a category. --Elfwreck 16:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I would think photomanips, icons, cosplay, and doujinshi certainly all need their own page because they can be very fan specific. Funny enough though, I can't think of any way that fans use painting and drawing that is different from how it is used by non-fanart illustrators. Certainly, though, a page of expansion couldn't hurt that category either, I just don't seeing it needing as much explanation as say "photo manipulation" in terms of how it differs between fan use and non fan use. Can anyone else think of some illustration terms or uses that are almost totally fannish? I'm seriously blanking out. --ani_bester 9:19, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

(I see that "Manip" redirects to here and I would like to change that - I believe Manip should have its own glossary page as it is a vernacular term that would be useful to define.)

My only other request is for dates! I love the explanation/recap of the history of fanart, but including the years in brackets here and there would be an excellent way of giving it more historical/cultural context.

Oh! And I'm taking the stub notice off this page. It's well and truly un-stubbed :)

Thanks again! --Hope 10:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

On redirects: One thing on redirects, I was thinking that this as the main fanart page should have a summery of what each art type is but that each ar ttype should have its own page so it can be expanded on to include information specific to that type. For example, I love Speranza's additions to the video section, but I think that kind of sub division might be more suited to an independent page on fan videos, rather than on this page, which is just introducing and defining the overall media fanartists use. I can collapse those into paragraphs if you like, but I'm always biased to a more listed format like that on webpages. For me it's easier to quickly process the information presented.

On the Terminology: Does anyone know how to fix the coding on manips? I'm still a bit shakey on all the specialized coding.

On dates: I'll have to research some specific dates and such. I've got two books on the history of the fandom, but they tend to be only on the sci-fi fandom and only up through the 70's, so I tried to keep things general and speculative until I could track down some hard data, which has been hard. One of the reasons I know fanart is second to fanfiction is because almost all my fan books exclude fanart! That's also why I kept one of the back history so speculative. I can make claims but backing them with anything outside of fannish debate is hard.

This is hugely exciting. I've always wanted to have an excuse to do a write up like that for fanart and I'm eager to see how it changes and evolves, esepcially once the sub pages take off! ani_bester 07:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

What is wrong with the coding? Do you mean the internal links? They are like that because the pages don't exit yet. Or do you wanted to link elsewhere?--RatCreature 15:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that every art form ought to have a specific page also; my plea is for examples--not of artists (who should have THEIR own pages :)) but of FORMS, because I feel like part of the problem we had in this convo--and that fandom has--is of not knowing what another person/fandom means by art. When I was talking about realistic portraits in older TV fandoms, I mean stuff like the much imitated Jean Kluge, which looks nothing like the line drawings in HP, etc. Or Multimedia--trailers aren't credits aren't multimedia fanfiction aren't vids aren't visual animation, etc, though of course these lines are shifting and blurring all the time. What is a wallpaper? an icon? a banner? etc.--Speranza 17:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Way confused here. What do you mean by forms? You mean media types or do you mean styles? If styles, I really think that's better mentioned in either the page specific to the media or the page specific to the fandom. I don'tthink it fits on the fanart overview page because, I've never seen as major difference in how the term fanart is seen across fandoms, except what I referenced in the write up where "fanart" in some fandoms includes or excludes different types (Ie: Hp fandom tends to not think of photomanips as fanart as much as the BSG fandom does).

I don't think you example of Jean Kluge makes much sense either as I can immediately think of two HP fanartists who have a similar styles, Leela Starsky and LMRourke, and certainly there is no issue of that being or not being fanart any more than my very cartooned style had an issue being considered fanart in the BSG 1978 fandom (whose fanart type is predominantly 3d renderings of space ships). In both cases the less usual fanart style is still seen as fanart, so I don't see why we'd need to make a special mention on this page. I can completely see why you might want to talk about a dominant fanart style in a fandom's page or perhaps reference dominant artistic styles in a page on Painting and Drawing. But it seems overly picky to go into that on an overview page because I've never seen a painting or drawing rejected as fanart just because a more realistic Jean Kluge style is preferred in one fandom or another. Also if you want to argue academic art, Illustration accepts both Jean Kluge styler realism and my style cartoon, and academic art would usually reject both, so again, I don't see a need for a differentiation on this particular page.

Am I just confused on the point you are making? --ani_bester 9:34, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I'm not being clear; I'm not at all talking about *excluding*, I'm talking about broadly documenting the great diversity of fanart. What one person/fandom thinks of as fanart can be very limited if that fandom's art is limited (or if the fan's experience is limited), so I thought this page could be a showcase for all the many different types of art people make in different forms, media and styles. The trick, IMO, is to document different kinds of things in broad categories that have some meaning without, like, having to note the style of every individual artist. The thing is--I am a HUGE fan of fanart, but a lot of people still go, "fanart, EWWWW," because they're thinking of--well, god knows. Terrible representational drawings, or "My hed is pasted on yay" or photographs put through filters to be fake pencil drawings. And fanart is *so much more than that*, so I wanted to get some examples of major styles, movements, genres, media, etc onto the page if possible.--Speranza 18:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

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Format & Structure

Hey, poking my head in from a purely reader-prespective -- I included sub-headings for the art types etc. May be a bit too fragmented due to that now, I don't know. I understand the page will still be edited, but for the time being, I wondered about 'Fan Comics' being filed under Fanart Types -- since it's not a type or technique, like the others? Aren't fan comics strictly included in Drawing/Painting? Not to hate on fan comics, here, what I mean is a more structured distinction along the lines of technique vs. medium (Drawing is a technique, comic (paper) or comic (web) is the medium?) I have no clue about fan art (56k until recently can do that to you, heh), but maybe this noob questions are minimally helpful? ^^; --Lian 23:56, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Comics are a different art form from paintings and drawings. Many people make for example fan comics from cropped and arranged screencaps combined with text, they are not always drawn. And even if drawn, the emphasis is different from a single drawing. I think the boundaries can be fluent, because you can for example have silent single page comics that tell a story, but that are very similar to a collage drawing, but on the whole it's two different things. --RatCreature 04:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

yes, no problem, I understand that. But the whole section seems to me as a potpourri of techniques and media and genres, if you will. So to my uninitiated eye was looking for a more structured apporach (media // techniques // etc.). I may be wrong, but then, it would be great if a clarification could be added, like the one you gave me? It would help the clueless people a lot :) --Lian 18:49, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't get what you want from a reorganisation. That section to me just looks like a list of common fannish artforms. I mean, the organization is not unusual or anything. If you go to the wikipedia entry of "Visual arts" the subsections in that entry over there are "Drawing", "Painting", "Printmaking", "Photography", "Filmmaking", "Computer art" and "Sculpture" for example. There isn't much of fannish printmaking or sculpture (though I guess you could argue about doll making an models and such) so no sections for that yet, photo art in fandom is mostly photomanips so they are listed as that, and films are usually called videos. So it's pretty much like other people list arts in overviews. Traditionally comics are often not counted among art, but comic fans usually see it as one, and since this wiki is based on fan perspective it's inclusion in the list of arts is logical. And fashion/costume making is generally not seen as visual art, but I think having a section for costumes within the fanart overview makes sense too. --RatCreature 19:22, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

relative prestige of fan art and fanfic

15 years ago, the top fan artists would sell art for $200 -- $400 a piece at con auctions, at the same time that fan writers were told, don't even think about making money on this, and fan editor/publishers were chided for 'making a profit off of fandom'. So I think it was, at least, a little more complicated that you're making it sound. Or not.--Sherrold 06:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

this would be interesting to add I think. There seems to have been a downward shift in prices as well as the attitudes about selling. admittedly I have no clue about the old or of current offline auctions, but I've seen online prices for commissions of full pictures even from popular artists for under $50, sometimes even less than $30, and lots of criticism for fanartists doing commissions at all (though there are different opinions about this). And of course online most fanart is free just like fanfic is. Or perhaps there are just wide gaps between different parts of fandom?

Maybe the controversy section about commissions should be expanded with the basic pro/con commissions arguments? I don't think I could summarize these well, because I've mostly seen (and agree with) the argument that there isn't really a fundamental difference between fanart and other fanworks (as all can be customized and sold as objects, I mean fanfic writers could do commissions and write to spec just as well as artist, and it is frequently done for charity fund raising), so either all can be sold or none, and the other position that fanart was special somehow never made sense to me. I've tried to find links to posts discussing this to point to in the article, but only found this poll about payment with discussion in the comments: http://miriam-heddy.livejournal.com/279982.html But surely there is more meta covering this. --RatCreature 07:54, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I second more expansion on the controversy page, in fact, I think all three subsections need expansion. Aside from as you said, and overly simplified over view of the "can fanart be sold debate" I'm sure there were other legal instances. In fact off the top of my head I know the Pini's take a very hard stance on ElfQuest fanart, as does the lady who wrote the Pern book. I think more sources and information of the type ratcreature found would be great to link and such. --ani_bester 07:54, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

move the manip section to its own page?.

This is such a long page, maybe move the manip content to its own page? -- 18:32, 11 October 2008 (UTC)