Fanart Searching Tips
So tired...so busy the last few days...but now I can rest. So I bring you:
Tips for Finding Fanart Sites (Particularly Japanese Ones)
Compiled over years of searching for fanart by request.
-Search Sites. The idea is to find large database sites (for example the Naruto site NaruSearch: http://narusearch.23kunet.com/cgi-local/tbookmarkp.cgi). Finding these will give you lots of links to fan-sites in one easy to access place. Some are arranged by characters/pairings/ect. If you, like me, cannot read Japanese, it can be hard to navigate these, but with a little clicking around you should find some good stuff. Webrings are good too, but not nearly as good as Search Sites. Note that even though I call them “Search Sites” does not mean that actual keyword searching works well on them. There’s that good old language barrier thingy that makes that usually not work out so well. Unfortunately, browsing is usually the best option.
-Links. With that in mind, whenever you find a fan-site for a fandom you like, make sure to check out the links section. Not only will it likely lead you to other fan-sites, but it can provide links to the database sites mentioned earlier and unions/webrings.
-Alternative Names. You’ll probably start looking for fanart through google image search. It’s a great place to start if you keep a few things in mind. Let’s say you were searching for fanart of D.Gray-man character Yu Kanda. Typing “Yu Kanda” into the search can glean you some results, yes. But you might have better luck with “神田 ユウ”i.e. his name in kanji. It just follows that you’ll find more results from Japanese sites this way. Also, keep in mind the name of the show in Japanese. For example, you could search for Full Metal Alchemist, but you could also search for “鋼の錬金術師,” (kanji) or “Hagane no Renkinjutsushi” (romanized Japanese). You can find these alternatives really easily with Wikipedia.
-Keywords. Good additional keywords to search for along with the show/character include: illust, .jp, cg and…oh crap. I used to have more of these. That’s all I can remember.
-Navigation notes. If you’re having trouble navigating a Japanese website, sometimes just paying attention to html links that appear at the bottom of your page when you hover over a link can help. Those’ll often be understandable and’ll give you an idea of where the hell you’re clicking. Fanart usually seems to be under “Illust” or “CG” but is sometimes a subcategory under “Main”. As far as I can tell “ss” is fanfiction.
-Secret. Sometimes I’ll see a strange section of a Japanese website labeled “Secret”. Perhaps you, yourself have come across this and wondered what the big secret is. I’ll tell you. The secret page is where they hide all the anime porn fanart intended for mature audiences. Should that be your thing (No one’s judging you, man!) you probably want to know how you get past this crazy page! Well, there are two categories of these pages that I have seen. In the first case scenario, there’ll be a password that you’ll need to figure out to type into a blacked out link. I assume that the text reveals some kind of riddle to figure out what the password is, or instructs you to e-mail the site owner for the password. In this case you’re screwed. I mean, you could try to translate the page with Word’s translators or babelfish, but you’ll probably still come out with incomprehensible gibberish. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that to work when I was doing searching by request (cuz I never, you know, looked for that stuff myself. Sure.). The second scenario is that there’ll be a link to where you want to go somewhere hidden within the page. Simply highlighting the entire page ought to give that away. If that doesn’t work you could always click on everything.
To conclude: Some stuff is hard to find. You may have to try a lot of these different things to get results. Try to get the most out of the sources that you do find. Check the links section! I cannot stress this enough. Some sites will have links on their welcoming pages too, this is especially the case when they link to Searches and Webrings/Unions
And, as a bonus, here are a few of the Search Sites/Webrings/Unions that I found when I checked out my old list of sources that still work, if anyone’s interested. These are old old OLD. I found them back when I was still doing searching requests, but a lot of them are still good, active sources.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Bleach Freaks
Pita-Ring
Rayearth Ring
Rayearth Union
Aerith Link
Final Fantasy Search
Gangan Search (Full Metal Alchemist)
Gundam Seed and Destiny Websearch
Harry Potter Search
Lord of the Rings Search
NaruSearch
Naruto
ONEPIECE ART WEB
One Piece Search
PokemonSearch
Rumic Search (Rumiko Takahashi Works)
Saiyuki Reload
Slayers Webring
Symphonia Love Search
Yu Yu Search
KaibaJonouchi Search
xxxHOLiC Listing
xxxHOLiC LiNK
Tips for Finding Fanart Sites (Particularly Japanese Ones)
Compiled over years of searching for fanart by request.
-Search Sites. The idea is to find large database sites (for example the Naruto site NaruSearch: http://narusearch.23kunet.com/cgi-local/tbookmarkp.cgi). Finding these will give you lots of links to fan-sites in one easy to access place. Some are arranged by characters/pairings/ect. If you, like me, cannot read Japanese, it can be hard to navigate these, but with a little clicking around you should find some good stuff. Webrings are good too, but not nearly as good as Search Sites. Note that even though I call them “Search Sites” does not mean that actual keyword searching works well on them. There’s that good old language barrier thingy that makes that usually not work out so well. Unfortunately, browsing is usually the best option.
-Links. With that in mind, whenever you find a fan-site for a fandom you like, make sure to check out the links section. Not only will it likely lead you to other fan-sites, but it can provide links to the database sites mentioned earlier and unions/webrings.
-Alternative Names. You’ll probably start looking for fanart through google image search. It’s a great place to start if you keep a few things in mind. Let’s say you were searching for fanart of D.Gray-man character Yu Kanda. Typing “Yu Kanda” into the search can glean you some results, yes. But you might have better luck with “神田 ユウ”i.e. his name in kanji. It just follows that you’ll find more results from Japanese sites this way. Also, keep in mind the name of the show in Japanese. For example, you could search for Full Metal Alchemist, but you could also search for “鋼の錬金術師,” (kanji) or “Hagane no Renkinjutsushi” (romanized Japanese). You can find these alternatives really easily with Wikipedia.
-Keywords. Good additional keywords to search for along with the show/character include: illust, .jp, cg and…oh crap. I used to have more of these. That’s all I can remember.
-Navigation notes. If you’re having trouble navigating a Japanese website, sometimes just paying attention to html links that appear at the bottom of your page when you hover over a link can help. Those’ll often be understandable and’ll give you an idea of where the hell you’re clicking. Fanart usually seems to be under “Illust” or “CG” but is sometimes a subcategory under “Main”. As far as I can tell “ss” is fanfiction.
-Secret. Sometimes I’ll see a strange section of a Japanese website labeled “Secret”. Perhaps you, yourself have come across this and wondered what the big secret is. I’ll tell you. The secret page is where they hide all the anime porn fanart intended for mature audiences. Should that be your thing (No one’s judging you, man!) you probably want to know how you get past this crazy page! Well, there are two categories of these pages that I have seen. In the first case scenario, there’ll be a password that you’ll need to figure out to type into a blacked out link. I assume that the text reveals some kind of riddle to figure out what the password is, or instructs you to e-mail the site owner for the password. In this case you’re screwed. I mean, you could try to translate the page with Word’s translators or babelfish, but you’ll probably still come out with incomprehensible gibberish. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that to work when I was doing searching by request (cuz I never, you know, looked for that stuff myself. Sure.). The second scenario is that there’ll be a link to where you want to go somewhere hidden within the page. Simply highlighting the entire page ought to give that away. If that doesn’t work you could always click on everything.
To conclude: Some stuff is hard to find. You may have to try a lot of these different things to get results. Try to get the most out of the sources that you do find. Check the links section! I cannot stress this enough. Some sites will have links on their welcoming pages too, this is especially the case when they link to Searches and Webrings/Unions
And, as a bonus, here are a few of the Search Sites/Webrings/Unions that I found when I checked out my old list of sources that still work, if anyone’s interested. These are old old OLD. I found them back when I was still doing searching requests, but a lot of them are still good, active sources.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Bleach Freaks
Pita-Ring
Rayearth Ring
Rayearth Union
Aerith Link
Final Fantasy Search
Gangan Search (Full Metal Alchemist)
Gundam Seed and Destiny Websearch
Harry Potter Search
Lord of the Rings Search
NaruSearch
Naruto
ONEPIECE ART WEB
One Piece Search
PokemonSearch
Rumic Search (Rumiko Takahashi Works)
Saiyuki Reload
Slayers Webring
Symphonia Love Search
Yu Yu Search
KaibaJonouchi Search
xxxHOLiC Listing
xxxHOLiC LiNK