About

Fan Art is artwork that is based on a character or object from a well known media subject, that was created by someone other than the creator of said media subject. It comes in a large variety of designs and styles, many which are listed below.

Pre-Internet History

Fan art grew popular between the 60's and the 70's, at the time where Star Trek and Star Wars Fandoms started to grow. Due to this, fans became interested in what the characters would do/look like in different scenarios. Thus the creation of, "Fan Art". Since then, fan art has risen drastically.

Online

The fan art online grew with the creation of deviantART , where artists from around the world can submit any piece of art they made.

Reception

Fan Art has been acclaimed by many, many individuals. Due to the topic being loved and praised by millions of others, the topic grew, and became increasingly popular.

Impact

Fan Art has made a huge impact on the way people look at movies, games, etc, by exploring the worlds of the various medias, in a way that the creator of the various medias couldn't have.

Fandom

Inside in every fandom, fan art are heavy presented, in fact its because of them that the fandom exist, since 50% of the fandom consist of fan art, and vice-versa.

Sub memes / types

Anime / Manga

Anime / Manga revolves around giving any form of character an anime style, the form of art has grown drastically since its origin in Japan. This form of art is also often combined with Rule 63 and Rule 34. This form of art itself has a variety of sub-forms.

Antropomorphism

Anthropomorphism revolves around designing non-human characters as if they were a person, and gives them the characteristics that the original has. This form of art also popular with websites , such as Facebook, Twitter, and more, with appearances and personalities that reflect what the site is like (for instance, Facebook would be a social person, Wikipedia would be a nerdy-smart person, etc.)

Rule 63

Rule 63 revolves around flipping the gender of someone or something specific, often giving them an anime-like appearance. The characters are often designed to show some form of sexual activity, similar to rule 34. This has caused confusion around some characters, such as, "Birdo".

Rule 34

Rule 34 revolves around pornographic fan art depicting sexual encounters, rape, and other gruesome images. This has seen modest spread since its inception in October 2004. The reception to this kind of fan art is mainly negative, but to some, it is a fetish.

Alternate Universe

Alternate Universe are stories in which the author deliberately alters the original origins of the story, thus creating an entirely new world with the original characters. for example, you can take a simple character such as Finn from Adventure Time and put him inside the Death star. This type of Fan Art is usually well praised.

Untoons

Untoons are where cartoon characters are designed to be lifelike, as if they were realistic.

Grimdark

Grimdark is where characters are modified and edited to show a dark and negative appearance. Usually these kind of fan art are created after some fan fictions or creepypastas, such as Slenderman.

Shipping

Shipping represents a love between two characters in any series that doesn't exist in the actual series itself. This sometimes includes a Rule 34 theme to it.

Anticipatory Fan Art

Pre-release fan art is where characters of yet to be released films and TV shows are explored in fan art.

Disney

The Disney animated film Moana, which will star a Polynesian protagonist, is set to be released sometime in 2018, but artists began creating fan art for the film as early as 2013.^[1]

Pokemon

On May 18th, a screenshot of the PokeBeach article was shared on 4chan’s /vp/^[2] (Pokémon), where a poster pointed out the name Espurr was already being used for a fan-made Fakémon created by members of the Bulbagarden Oekaki forum in November 2012. Posters initially believed that the existence of Espurr as a Fakémon was proof that the rumor about Espurr in X and Y would be false.^[4] However, this was disputed on the GameFAQs^[8]boards, where posters found other examples of official Pokémon whose names had been used previously by fans. Throughout the month of May, dozens of posts about Espurr were made on /vp/^[6], as some artists on deviantART^[7]began drawing their interpretations of what the Pokémon would look like (shown below).

Smugleaf, a new character introduced in Pokemon Black, was also included in fan art before Black's release.

Nintendo

The Wii Fit Trainer was included in fan art after the announcement that she'll be include in Super Smash Brothers.

Reactionary Fan Art

Reactionary fan art is when fan artists correct social justice wrongs they perceive in the original works, especially sexism, racism, and homophobia.

Some reactionary fan art is done without complaint about the original, purely as a creative exercise for the artist. The Supernatural and Doctor Who fandoms often create gender or race swapped art pieces. Deviant Art has over 24,000 entries for gender bending, while the GenderBender Lovers group on Deviant Art^[2] has over 600 members as of January 2014. Popular Tumblr blogs focused on race and gender swapped fan art include fuckyeahswapped,^[3] fuckyeahgenderswapped,^[4] and therule63^[5].

Disney

Fan artist who criticized Frozen's all white cast created fan art of the characters as people of color, and artists who believed The Hunger Games should have cast someone with dark skin as Katniss created fan art that depicted her as person of color.

Marvel Comics

One notable examples of reactionary fan art against sexism is The Hawkeye Inatiative, a call to highlight the way female characters are over-sexualized in comic books by drawing male characters in the same poses. Artist Kevin Bolt created a parody of The Avengers movie poster with all the male characters striking an ass-out pose similar to the one Black Widow struck called "Avengers Booty Ass-emble."^[6]

Search Interest

External References