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

[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.

The decision I had to make was more about what to do when someone wants to submit a fic/art combo, as to how I determine whether or not it fits the minimum requirements. Basically what I decided was that (A) both pieces have to be by the assigned participant, or any collabs have to be cleared with me as the mod in advance; and (B) EITHER the artwork OR the fic has to meet the minimum requirements for the fest -- ie, length for fic or quality for artwork, as well as the sexytimes requirement, since it is a smutfest.

Basically, if there are 2 pieces, they do not both have to meet the requirements -- so a nice, finished piece of art (my rule is no sketches or drawbles) could be accompanied by a little ficlet of a few hundred words which is well under the 1,000 word requirement -- one year someone did a great piece of artwork and just included two lines of dialogue beneath it. A fic could be accompanied by a quick sketch, or (as someone did last year) a full-length story that fit the smut requirement was submitted with a piece of artwork that was completely G-rated (a facial portrait), and that worked fine.

For comic-strip artwork, it hasn't been a problem at all, but I would want to make sure it was a finished piece, not a bunch of rough sketches. Not being an artist myself, it's been tough to make requirements for art in the fest, but that's what I decided was equivalent to the fic requirement for 1,000 words and grammar/spelling checks, etc.