Talk:Fanart

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2008 revisions

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)

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)

2009

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)

We probably should move at least part of the manip section to its own page since there's already an empty Manip article.--Aethel 01:24, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I tinkered with the descriptive language for manips a bit. I don't know what I am doing as far as wiki editing goes, so I hope I didn't muck anything up! I also don't know if attributions for things in quotations are needed (and I wasn't sure how to do it in any case), but the two quoted lines are from the previous version of the page. Betrue 22:14, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry, you're fine! :) You can reword whatever you want in the page itself to make it more accurate or reflect more of a plural point of view; you only need to include cites/attributions when you're quoting external things. --Arduinna 07:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. Huge relief! *grins* Betrue 03:24, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Should there be images on this page?

I've been thinking that with the many fanzine covers in different styles we now have uploaded maybe some examples could be included as thumbnails on this page as well, but I am unsure which to choose. I mean, I don't just want to pick some that I find prettiest. Maybe thereare some that are more objectively significant? Like say some fanzine cover that caused controversy or was the first to do something (like what was that cover with a naked Spock again that caused some kerfuffle in the 70s? I came across that in some article here recently), or the examples zines that were early to do full color covers or something like that. Or maybe some example for every style mentioned. Does anyone else have suggestions whhat could be picked? I just think it would be nice if this article had maybe five or six thumbnails at least of differently looking fanart, and not only text.--Ratcreature 10:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I just added an example for manips. IMO it would be best to just go ahead an add examples you think are fitting. There needs to be a lot more about fanart in zines here though. The way it is now, the article seems a bit dismissive of all the art that was published in zines and of the artists who were well known for it. --Doro 13:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I know reproducing fanart at a high resolution/size etc is generally not on, but for this page I am finding the tiny pictures frustrating. They are not going to be very helpful in representing different types of art if they are too small to see much difference between them. I can not make out what that Skywalker 5 pic is even *of*. Can we use better quality images on this page? Or maybe there are some relevant artists who would give permission, or who put out work under CC licenses or something?--MegR 21:57, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I picked that Skywalker zine as example because it was a b/w cover that gives even in the tiny form a good impression of looking like an SF zine cover. At first I thought to put the cover image of First Time 6 there, because that is also b/w and is a larger image in better quality, but then that would have been another ST cover, and I thought it would be bad to make this too ST heavy, and the Interphase one illustrates that quote. I'm not attached to this one, I just browsed around a bit. If you have a better one in mind just replace it.--Ratcreature 22:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

image placements

FWIW, putting them inside the quotation box looks crappy to me. The text ends up squeezed very narrow at first at my monitor/screen size, but worse, the pictures don't actually relate directly to the quotes in this case, but to the paragraph above taking about Gayle and Lovett's styles. I find this disorienting.--Ratcreature 01:01, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

It looks fine to me, but I've moved them back. I still wish floating left would work because then I could place the images in the text right where they belong. :( --Doro 01:21, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, it's not ideal. Is there a reason why "thumb" does not work together with "left"? Maybe if the images were moved to the start of the paragraph? For me in the preview of that choice the images then still display on the right of course, but they don't overlap with the wrong bit of text anymore but are placed a bit higher.--Ratcreature 01:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I love the fact you guys are working on this image thing. Thank you. Mrs. Potato Head 01:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I have no idea why it doesn't work. According to the Wikipedia:Picture tutorial it should work, but "thumb|left" doesn't look like it's supposed to, it looks like "thumb|none". :( Moving the images higher doesn't work with my resolution because they then stack up with the Interphase image. I suppose we could move them higher and add a break after the Interphase cover... I found something else that actually managed to move the image to the left and has floating text, but I'm not really happy with the way it looks. --Doro 03:28, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
This does not actually make the image appear on the left side in my browser or floating. It is still on the right, just on its own, with a huge bit of whitespace on its left, then the paragraph follows with the other image to its right.--Ratcreature 08:14, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I see it floating on the left with Mozilla, Safari and Internet Explorer. :/ I'll move it back. *sigh* --Doro 12:19, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
For me it did not float left in Firefox (an older version), though looking at it in Konqueror it did.--Ratcreature 12:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

2010

new section in types?

after entering a bunch of zines with ship specifications, it occurred to me that technical fanart, i.e. stuff like 3D rendering of spaceships should maybe get its own section? I mean, it is not drawing or painting as such, nor it photomanipulation. It's a very common genre in all SF shows, Star Trek, Star Wars, B5...I mean fanart like on the Wolf 359 site that is mostly art that is created by constructing a 3D wiremesh based on Starship blueprints and such and then render that in 3D programs into a picture. The wiremeshes are also sometimes shared.--RatCreature 12:14, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Should icons be a separate category? They can be based on either drawing or painting or photomanips, but they're also kind of an art form in themselves, by the time you've cropped and added text and edited it. Cesy 10:17, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

icons already have their own page though, which I think makes sense for the social and communication aspects: Icon (Image).--RatCreature 10:31, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I love fandom so much: fanarchitecture! --Anenko 08:22, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

wondering how to tie this in

I've recently posted a poll [1] asking people which styles of fanart they like in live-action fandoms, asking them to rate from 0="don't like the style at all" to 5="like this style very much" (always provided the artist is skilled at their chosen style), and so far about 40 people have responded, and the results are quite interesting because they indicate that among drawn fanart people for example like very realistic art based on screencap references (such as portraits or drawn collages of canon scenes) least, less than realistic illustrations of imaginary scenes, stylized art, cartoony art and manga-style art. And while not definite b/c of the standard deviations there is a trend that people like realistic but stylized art (I gave realistic comics and art nouveau as examples) slightly more than even very realistic art showing fully imaginary scenes.

And maybe my sample is not representative (though I hope there will be more responses yet as some people have linked the poll), but so far there is no indication at all that the fannish audience is averse to less realistic fanart in live action fandom. In fact it seems that you have better chances to have your art widely liked if you do a cartoon than if you do a character portrait painting from a screen cap.--RatCreature 12:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

costumes/fashion thought

I can see the connection between fanart and fan costumes, but like vidding, I think it deserves its own article. There's an article for cosplay, but it sounds like we need a page to cover the topic of fan fashions more generally: costumes for conventions, (costumes in LARPing?), the non-costume dress code at conventions, convention T-shirts, other fan-made clothing that can be/is worn anywhere, accessories, tattoos??, etc.--æthel 22:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I think it needs its own article, too, with a link to it on the fanart page, as its not so much art (though often artistic) but more of an activity. Perhaps Fannish Clothing? --Mrs. Potato Head 23:08, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

mysterious sentence

Could someone clarify what is meant by this: fanart has also created types of art specific almost specific to itself, such as icons. ? icons being specific to themselves doesn't mean anything. Icons are their own genre/format? icons are used in a specific context for a specific purpose? --æthel 19:45, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


fan crafts

Do we have an article that focuses more on homemade fan crafts (rather than art)? I'm thinking pillows, ear rings, painted plates, this swell Spock beer stein I just saw... --Mrs. Potato Head 21:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

We don't have a general page for Fancraft yet. There are a few specialized pages like Fannish Dolls and Model Building.--æthel 21:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to add a link to this page, someone who has made a "dollhouse" of the Sentinel loft. Any thoughts as to where? --Mrs. Potato Head 01:02, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

2011

need a rough date

I think it would be helpful to add a rough date of when photo manipulations began to that section. Anyone want to take a stab at it? --Mrs. Potato Head 14:45, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I saw them in Harry Potter fandom in about 2007 or so, but I doubt that was the earliest. Cesy 20:13, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
2007? The Theban Band were famous for their manips in the late 1990s and they weren't the first, just the best. ;) --Doro 21:59, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
I'd say it was ~1995 before the web was in a state where people actually did much of anything with photos and art on it. That's around the time programs like Photoshop started actually having decent features too. I have no idea what people were doing pre-web or pre-internet, but I'd say mid to late 90's is a fair bet for online photomanips being widely seen/known. Franzeska 19:14, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Zine Art

I think the sections about Artistic Expression and Practicality and A Fan Art Dry Period should go to the Zine Art page; they are too zine art centric to fit on the general Fanart page. --Doro 16:33, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, A Fan Art Dry Period is completely zine-centric, but zines represented much of the higher visibility fan art prior to computers, and I see it as talking more about a time period than a medium. Actually, it would fit better on a section or page that talked more about trends in art in more of a timeline sort of way. Artistic Expression and Practicality could be talking about any sort of art, zine or otherwise, but the two examples there so far are from zines. --Mrs. Potato Head 18:28, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

We made the zine art page so that the general fanart page won't be dominated by all the zine info and anecdotes but somehow half the page is once again about zine art. Can we move that stuff to the Zine Art page?

Okay with me. --Mrs. Potato Head 14:15, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
An alternative: we could move most historical info to a dedicated History of Fanart page and make both Fanart and Zine Art focus on the types and styles of art with less historical emphasis. --æþel 19:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
I did some bold editing; I hope it's an improvement. I moved "Artistic Expression and Practicality" to the zine art page. I also went ahead and created a new History of Fanart page -- copy & paste job on the History section here. I then cut the section down here quite a bit, but it could probably be pruned further. Some zine-exclusive historical bits that didn't seem to fit on the History of Fanart page are now on the "Notes on the History of Zine Art" in the Zine Art page. --æþel 21:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Shortening the article

I think a lot of the detail about individual artforms could be moved to pages about those mediums/styles/practices and many of the other sections could also be summaries linking to more specific articles. The page is kind of overwhelming. Franzeska 17:11, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Cite Typo

There is a mix-up in a cite, possibly in the Homestruck part, that messes up the references below. --Mrs. Potato Head (talk) 18:13, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. I see all 53 refs and the text seems to be there. Am getting a bit screen-tired, so perhaps I am missing it. I do see some weird stray code - . --MeeDee (talk) 18:54, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
Fixed it. Someone has inserted a paragraph code <:p> in the Homestruck cite. --MeeDee (talk) 18:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

break out new page

I think the Sharing Fanart section is long enough to be its own page.--æþel (talk) 18:57, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

clarification

The "Traditionally, there have been many more comments for fanfiction than for fanart, something that many fanartists find frustrating." section imo needs some clarification. What fandoms, platforms(!), times are we talking about? I'm assuming this is about art in fic fandom or fic-centric fandom spaces but universally I wouldn't agree at all, not even for all LJ fandoms. There's no consideration for other forms of feedback than typed comments either, like gradings, hits, likes, claps and the like. I would probably also move this subsection down, I'm not quite sure why it's the first one. Also "illustration, drawing, illo" are not synonyms for fanart, I've never seen people use those words as synonymous with fanart even when they are aware that many fanarts are a subset of illustration and thus use also that as a term for their works.

Caput mortuum, I moved the feedback section down and divided it into pre and post internet. If you, or others, have a better idea for that section, please edit, expand, and/or add clarifications, as they are always most welcome. That also goes for any other wording on the page. :) --MPH (talk) 14:07, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I'll try to that that! My problem is mostly that I lack knowledge of the POV that is portrayed here but I'll try to write around that somehow. I think I'll try to tie the issue to a description of different popular platforms people post to. (also apologies, I just read up on how to sign ;) Caput mortuum (talk) 15:26, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I've run into something similar (on other pages). What I do is create a section for the POV I am most familiar with and then leave the other POV as alternative text (rather than editing or removing the POV that I disagree with). In this case, I like your idea of breaking things out by looking at the various forms of platforms and types of fan art to see if there are differences in the amount of feedback. The following is meant to help illustrate the idea of using the compare/contrast method. Of course feel free to use your own approach and wording. The key to PPOV (Plural POV) is to work your POV into the page without erasing the other POVs. And finally, finding actual quotes or links to discussions where people discuss the feedback of fan art vs feedback for fan fic would be helpful. Even better, to find discussions where fan artists on LJ are saying X, but fan artists on tumblr say something different.
Ex: "Traditionally, there have been many more comments for fanfiction than for fanart, something that many fanartists find frustrating" could be "Traditionally, there have been many more comments for fanfiction than for fanart, something that many fanartists find frustrating. However, the type of comments as well as the relative number of comments fan art receives varies across types of fanart, platforms used to disseminate fanart and of course, whether the fanart was created before or after Internet era."
In the post Internet/Fanart Posted Online section you could write: "For example, when fanart is posted to xxxxx (community/location), then comments on fanart exceed the comments on fanfic......However, when fanart is posted to YYYY, comments are reversed...... Also, some types of fanart [examples] tend to receive more feedback than some types of fanfic [long fic/short fic/WIPs]. The difficulty in comparing and contrasting the feedback fan art receives to the amount of feedback that fan fiction receives is further complicated by......In areas where the majority of fan to fan connectivity is through images (ex: tumblr or .....) fan art naturally receives the majority of commentary. And finally, the perception of the relative number of comments is hampered by the lack of fandom familiarity with alternative platforms and other fandom communities. A member of the Deviantart fandom community may expect [more/less/different] types of commentary than a member of the AO3 community,a platform that is more dominated by fan fiction. And because members of these communities may not have enough familiarity with other communities, their perceptions of the amount and type of feedback may be seen as universal truths where in fact, those perceptions may differ from community to community. [insert examples].
I think phrases like "drawing" or "illo" etc were more typically used by pre-Internet fandom/fan artists - now with more technological options, the phrasing may have changed. This could be something you can also break out and explore if you have experience with one or the other.--MeeDee (talk) 18:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
In the Pre-Internet days, speaking from personal experience, it was absolutely the truth that fan fic gathered more comments than fan art. As we've been going through the old letterzines and summarizing the discussions, we've been finding it frustrating to see how little fan art discussion there was. I suspect it was because access to fan art was limited - some fanzines would reprint and sell zines without the fan art to keep the costs down - this meant that later readers never got to see the art. Or if multiple print runs were commissioned, the photocopies degraded the viewability of the art while the text remained unchanged. And last, while most people had some form of literary discussion exposure through school (book reports!!!), discussing art was not the norm. And what feedback the fan artist received was disappointingly limited. "Nice" or "Hot" or "They looked like they do in the TV show". In depth discussions of fan art were rare. So I can understand why fan artists of the 70s-early 2000s felt shortchanged when it came to feedback. Ex: "Note: Some of the art may not be present in the second edition. From the artist, Bernice: "I had little to no feedback on the art from that zine so I'm not putting it into future issues. I think it's just a waste of paper to most folks." (X-files zine Exposure). --MeeDee (talk) 18:44, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, that definitely helps me place the controversy, the focus on zine fandom should imo be made more explicit. I'm currently working on a section that introduces important online fanart communities that will probably go to the history of fanart article, as a basis for dicussion of feedback.

Caput mortuum (talk) 09:34, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to your edits and information/commentary about online fanart communities. It's much needed, and will give a much more balanced focus. Thank you for working on this page, Caput mortuum. --MPH (talk) 12:26, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

General Fan Things for Sale?

I don't know where to put information about fannish "swag" for sale. These are things that aren't strictly created as "art" but created to sell (profit margin is unknown). Examples would be tote bags, coffee cups, key chains, tote bags, stationary, t-shirts... some of these things have things have their own pages, but I wish there was a single page they could all be linked to, and that things like "tote bags," could be included on. The page could also link to Fandom and Profit as a discussion point. Any suggestions for a page name or other ideas? --MPH (talk) 18:55, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like Fancraft or Fannish Clothing. Also potentially Convention Gift Bag.--aethel (talk) 22:28, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

2017

Graphics

There needs to be a graphics section that includes icons, banners, wallpapers, collage, gifs and whatever these Tumblr photosets are ("Tumblr edits"?). The problem is that what could be a graphics page is redirected to collage. Those were not synonymous terms in my neck of woods when forum graphics and LJ icon communities were big, as "graphics" was an umbrella term that also included collages and the rest of the aforementioned fanworks. I don't know what fandoms used those two terms interchangeably (it seems like an older fandom thing?) but the shift in meaning in the 2000s should be noted. Baycitybomber (talk) 08:19, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I've never heard "graphics" to describe icons and such, but maybe others have? I think we need a different word for those things, but I don't know which one. Also since "graphic/s" could also mean "graphic novel" and "graphic" could mean "explicit," then there should be a redirect for that page. Until we come up with a different word for the art part, it could be part of the redirect. --MPH (talk) 11:55, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
A few examples:

And this is really just the tip of the iceberg, there are hundreds of communities like these. Baycitybomber (talk) 13:10, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

We clearly need a "graphics" section then! I'm not sure what to call it/how to disambiguate it? (Graphics (LiveJournal fanworks)?) Perhaps others do? --MPH (talk) 13:34, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
After much digging, I finally found what Wikipedia calls these: web graphics. I'd definitely go with web graphics since these types of fanworks aren't limited to LJ (e.g. the so-called "signatures" like this the Wiki article mentions were popular on forums but not on LJ, yet they were still categorized under the "graphics" umbrella term). Plus it's a nice, clear, and inclusive term. Baycitybomber (talk) 13:20, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Sounds good. I put Web Graphics on the "graphics" page. It can be a page of its own that collects all the things. Then on the fanart page, there can be short description and a link to Web Graphics. How's that sound for a start? We can always tweak it later. --MPH (talk) 19:33, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Sounds awesome, thank you! I'll start working on it soon. Baycitybomber (talk) 06:39, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
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