Yuletart: What is fanart?

[glockgal]

FANART MUSING
It's interesting to see the sign-ups at yuletart as well as the questions us Mods get from participants and potential participants. Questions that are unique to a fanart fest, I think. Like

Comments

[tripperfunster]

I get to make similar tough calls as a mod for Hump_day.

It's a fine line between 'It's not really art' and 'it's really not the art we're looking for.'

Personally, I have nothing against manips, but I don't really care for them. I wish they had their own heading, because I'm often disappointed when I click on a link for 'art' and it's a manip instead.

Manips and vids are hard to do, and take some skill (to be done well, that is) but when I click on a link that says ART i expect something that is DRAWN not manipulated or edited.

I would never be so crass as to say it's not ART (in the broad sense of the term) but to me, it's not ART in the small, literal sense of being hand drawn.

[glockgal]

It's a fine line between 'It's not really art' and 'it's really not the art we're looking for.'

That is one of the calls I do not look forward too at all! One case we sent got art that looked more like someone used a Photoshop filter on a photo and it was like...'hmmmmmm.'

I wish they had their own heading, because I'm often disappointed when I click on a link for 'art' and it's a manip instead.

YEEEAAAAAH. I agree, like. I've seen some fandom newsletters divide between 'graphics' and 'fanart' but photomanips do tend to slip inbetween those definitions!

[solookup]

I think of course if it's a community for ARTS then yes, it should be some sort of art that could be in galleries and such.

In other areas:

I know that people rather receive art to pair up for their fic, but there aren't a lot of people around that can draw well with a pencil/tablet. Or at least my standard of art is something that actually resembles human beings rather than weird drawings looked like done by kindergartners. So yeah I rather have people do manips, etc.

Also with something like rpf_big_bang, there are people who are writing who still haven't been paired up with artists. I think those would love ANY sort of art - pen or manips.

[glockgal]

So yeah I rather have people do manips, etc.

Indeed, which I think is HIGHLY dependant on the fandom. Some fandoms (generally the media-based ones, for obvious reasons) tend to have a larger or more incorporated manip/graphics fanartist group, where as other fandoms (comics, books) have a larger drawing-fanartist group.

I guess that ties into decisions Mods have to make for fests that have fic AND art, like. I know some Mods in certain fandoms (like HP) specify the type of fanart they'll accept, and generally it's hand-drawn fanart and/or vids. But if there was a fest like that in RPF (ie, a gift exchange as opposed to a Big Bang), I guess ficcers might prefer photo manips as gifts rather than gamble receiving a hand-drawn art gift of their beloved characters?

[flyingcarpet]

Oooh, interesting. I love thinking about these kinds of issues in fests. In smutty_claus I've had people submit fic + art combos and comic strip-type artwork, which are both awesome. But I did have to decide how I wanted to interpret those in relation to the rules, since like you said my rules were set up very much for fic OR artwork, not for both.

I know that someone did write an epic poem for merry-smutmas one year! So I put in my rules that any sort of alternative formats of fic still had to be 1,000 words long. :)

[glockgal]

Yes!! I think it's interesting too. Since yuletart is pan-fandom, it brings up some questions because I know that in some fandoms hand-drawn art is the majority of fanart produced, whereas in other fandoms manips/graphics are the majority! We don't want to make some fandom's fanartists feel excluded; but then - I'm sure there are graphics gift exchanges out in the LJsphere already!

But I did have to decide how I wanted to interpret those in relation to the rules, since like you said my rules were set up very much for fic OR artwork, not for both.

Oh for sure! What decisions did you make on that? I'd assume sequential art errs more on the art side?

OMG I think I remember that epic poem!! I guess it totally makes sense that yeah - as long as the word count is complied with, then it's all good!

[flyingcarpet]

It wasn't really about whether something counted as art or not... although I know other mods in the HP fandom (which mostly has hand-drawn artwork, as I'm sure you know) have had to make distinctions about whether or not to allow manips

(Here via metafandom)

[rivenwanderer]

What's funny is that in Myst (the computer game) fandom, some of the most interesting (to me) fanart is 3D graphics--the canon features world creation (done by the main characters) very prominently. So fanart consisting of rendered and realtime 3D worlds is a really natural outgrowth of that. This makes it bizarre for me to read about 3D graphics being considered a "murky area", but I can see how that could be the case for fandoms with a different focus. (Non-terrifyingrobot human characters are a lot harder to get right than surreal weird landscapes, for example.)

Re: (Here via metafandom)

[glockgal]

Oooh yeah see - this is totally very much indicative of how the definition of 'fanart' varies from fandom to fandom, depending on what fandom it is. Fanfic is essentially consistent in its inherent definition, but depending on the fandom, sometimes it's mostly graphics, sometimes it's mostly handdrawn and so forth.

*hee* And yeah - the majority of fandoms offered in yuletart tend to be character-heavy; meaning the participants want to see their fave characters depicted. XD So by 'murky', here's an example: if a 3D modeler wants to model/texture/rig/pose FF7's Cloud and submit a rendered image of it for Yuletart - that would be awesome! But if they took a template character off of (for example) Poser and then it was just piecemeal assembly rather than creation, I think us Mods might have to make a judgement call in that. I guess it boils down to case-by-case basis!

[ladyelleth]

(Here via metafandom)

An interesting discussion, and yes, I can see why you would have to make restrictions on some art forms... that said, I'm curious why (besides 'these are not the droids art forms you're looking for' which is perfectly acceptable in itself but not a reason) you decided to disallow things like manips and 3D renders. Different source material, quality issues, something else? I'm curious, but then I'm also one of the strange people who would sort manipping in your crafts section...

[glockgal]

Hmmm, I guess it really was our group decision as the Mods of the fest. We all came from fandoms that were more accustomed to the definition of 'fanart' being (in general) hand-drawn art. As technology grew of course that definition grew since as I mentioned things like vidding could be construed as fanart, but yeah. The umbrella grew bigger. :D

Generally, the crafts we've received have been hand-made. Knitted dolls, clay polymer sculpted dolls, hand sewn dolls, paper crafts, cookies, etc. We felt that these sorts of crafts are different from digital textures/environment/bodies/head hunting over the internet and assembling viably in a photo-editing program?