Thirty Days of Fanart Meme: Day 1
I've seen this meme around on my network, most recently from penknife, and because I don't write fanfic I adapted the questions for fanart. Some of the phrasing is a bit awkward, because due to all the different kinds of fanart I didn't just want to replace "write" with "draw".
1 - How did you first get into creating fanart, and what was the first fandom you made art for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?
This depends a bit on how narrow you see what's "fanart". I've been in (non-superhero) comic fandom and drew comics as a kid, but those were more or less original, i.e. I did not use existing characters or copied comics except for style.
Even then I was much better at worldbuilding than plot, so for my first real comic project (that was back in fourth or fifth grade), I wanted to do a comic about these fluffy creatures I imagined (called Wuschels, kind of like tribbles, but with eyes, noses, feet and antenna and not as fertile), but what I ended up with was a sort of background treatise with illustrations detailing how they lived and their society and biology and such. I only managed two pages of an actual comic, then ran out of plot, and strangely enough did another illustrated thing about their version of football. IDEK. I mean, I've never been a sports fan, this just shows how pervasive football is. I did share these with my family and subjected my long suffering best friend to my efforts as well. I was never one much for drawer projects. I still have the drawings and texts from that project in a binder, but I lost the ones I made from yarn. From then on I drew comics all through high school. Some of them are posted on my website.
It took me much longer to try creating fanart in a narrow sense. The first media fandoms I got into online weren't good places for fanart. My first major online fandom was The Sentinel in the late 90s, and there was very little fanart online, and mostly just collage type photomanips that often weren't all that good. Zines were expensive, so I only ever ordered a couple, and even those often did not have any illustrations, and the few that did were all aiming for a very photo-realist style. I know now that even at the time there had been other fanart styles around for tv fandoms, but I didn't know that then. I thought to be accepted as fanart in live action fandoms art had to try for photorealism. So at that time I didn't even realize that anyone might be interested in the kind of fanart I could do.
Eventually there was a Sentinel fanfic for which I couldn't resist drawing an illustration, but the result was really quite bad. I was too embarrassed to attach my internet identity to that, and incidentally was also for a story I did not want to admit to have liked under my regular pseud either. These days I'm much less embarrassed about my kinks, and the author managed to push all my buttons really well, despite that the story was an unfinished WIP, not even spellchecked and OOC. But I still wanted to give the author the drawing her story had inspired (like I said above, I never saw much sense to produce for a drawer rather than public, not even if it's somewhat cringeworthy, I mean it still took time and effort after all), so that led to the only time I ever created a sockpuppet account in fandom. So I actually posted my first piece of fanart as a sockpuppet. I guess it is similar to venturing forth into anon kink memes first these days. Luckily afaik the yahoogroup where I posted the picture in the file section has vanished by now, so I don't think it is even on the internet anymore... Which is really better for everyone. I don't recall even the author responding with anything after getting the art.
The first fanart I posted properly was after I got drawn into DC fandom. I was inspired by
cereta's story Secrets, and unlike the live action fandoms I was in, it seemed less daunting to draw comic characters than to have to try for a realist style, and Cereta and some others on my flist were encouraging me to try, so I took the plunge. Also at that point LJ was replacing mailing lists as platform, so not only seemed comic fandom easier to draw for and more receptive and open to art than the live action fandoms I knew previously, posting it was also easier.
Thirty Days of Fanfiction Fanart Meme
2 - Name the fandoms you've made fanart for, and how much you've created in that fandom, and if you still create in it.
3 - For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to draw/paint/depict/...?
4 - Do you have a "muse" character, that inspires you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the art isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
5 -If you have ever had a character try to push their way into your art, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?
6 - When you create fanart, do you prefer male or female characters?
7 - Have you ever had a piece of fanart change your opinion of a character?
8 - Do you design OCs? And if so, are they a kind of self-insert/portrait, e.g. a portrait of a non-canon character you play in an fandom-based RPG or a fursona?
9 - Pairings - For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to depict in your art?
10 - Pairings - Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and made art for a pairing you liked, but found you couldn't draw/paint/..., or a pairing you didn't like, and found you could?
11 - Genre - do you prefer certain genres when you're making art? What kind of art do you tend to make most?
12 - Have you ever attempted an "imitation" of an artwork (e.g. a famous painting) but adapted to a fandom?
13 - Are you inspired more by canon or by other fanworks when you create art? Has creating art for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
14 - Ratings - how high are you comfortable with going, and is your comfort zone different for showing sex than for violence/gore? Have you ever gone higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the art you're making is G-rated instead?
15 - Warnings - Do you put warnings on your art, and if yes, what do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for?
16 - Headers - Do you post your art with a header describing it, a preview thumbnail, or both? If you use previews, do you crop to an intriguing part, or minimize the whole image?
17 - Titles - Do you give titles to your art? How do you come up with them, if you use them?
18 - Where do you get the most inspiration for your art (aka "bunnies") from?
19 - When you have bunnies, do you sit down and start making art right away, or do you write/sketch down the idea for further use?
20 - Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?
21 - Series/sets - Have you ever created series of connected artworks, and if so, why?
22 - Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you've thought about doing? And if not, why not?
23 - When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? DeviantArt? Just an archive? Your own personal site?
24 - Betaing - Do you use art betas? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
25 - Music - Do you listen to music while you create fanart? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" for art? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?
26 - What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a piece of fanart?
27 - Where is your favorite place to create art, and do you use traditional media, or digital ones, or both?
28 - Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether a shared art project, or illustrations for story, or having a writer work on a piece based on your art?
29 - What is your current project or projects?
30 - Do you have a favorite piece of fanart you've created? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!
1 - How did you first get into creating fanart, and what was the first fandom you made art for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?
This depends a bit on how narrow you see what's "fanart". I've been in (non-superhero) comic fandom and drew comics as a kid, but those were more or less original, i.e. I did not use existing characters or copied comics except for style.
Even then I was much better at worldbuilding than plot, so for my first real comic project (that was back in fourth or fifth grade), I wanted to do a comic about these fluffy creatures I imagined (called Wuschels, kind of like tribbles, but with eyes, noses, feet and antenna and not as fertile), but what I ended up with was a sort of background treatise with illustrations detailing how they lived and their society and biology and such. I only managed two pages of an actual comic, then ran out of plot, and strangely enough did another illustrated thing about their version of football. IDEK. I mean, I've never been a sports fan, this just shows how pervasive football is. I did share these with my family and subjected my long suffering best friend to my efforts as well. I was never one much for drawer projects. I still have the drawings and texts from that project in a binder, but I lost the ones I made from yarn. From then on I drew comics all through high school. Some of them are posted on my website.
It took me much longer to try creating fanart in a narrow sense. The first media fandoms I got into online weren't good places for fanart. My first major online fandom was The Sentinel in the late 90s, and there was very little fanart online, and mostly just collage type photomanips that often weren't all that good. Zines were expensive, so I only ever ordered a couple, and even those often did not have any illustrations, and the few that did were all aiming for a very photo-realist style. I know now that even at the time there had been other fanart styles around for tv fandoms, but I didn't know that then. I thought to be accepted as fanart in live action fandoms art had to try for photorealism. So at that time I didn't even realize that anyone might be interested in the kind of fanart I could do.
Eventually there was a Sentinel fanfic for which I couldn't resist drawing an illustration, but the result was really quite bad. I was too embarrassed to attach my internet identity to that, and incidentally was also for a story I did not want to admit to have liked under my regular pseud either. These days I'm much less embarrassed about my kinks, and the author managed to push all my buttons really well, despite that the story was an unfinished WIP, not even spellchecked and OOC. But I still wanted to give the author the drawing her story had inspired (like I said above, I never saw much sense to produce for a drawer rather than public, not even if it's somewhat cringeworthy, I mean it still took time and effort after all), so that led to the only time I ever created a sockpuppet account in fandom. So I actually posted my first piece of fanart as a sockpuppet. I guess it is similar to venturing forth into anon kink memes first these days. Luckily afaik the yahoogroup where I posted the picture in the file section has vanished by now, so I don't think it is even on the internet anymore... Which is really better for everyone. I don't recall even the author responding with anything after getting the art.
The first fanart I posted properly was after I got drawn into DC fandom. I was inspired by
cereta's story Secrets, and unlike the live action fandoms I was in, it seemed less daunting to draw comic characters than to have to try for a realist style, and Cereta and some others on my flist were encouraging me to try, so I took the plunge. Also at that point LJ was replacing mailing lists as platform, so not only seemed comic fandom easier to draw for and more receptive and open to art than the live action fandoms I knew previously, posting it was also easier.
Thirty Days of Fanfiction Fanart Meme
2 - Name the fandoms you've made fanart for, and how much you've created in that fandom, and if you still create in it.
3 - For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to draw/paint/depict/...?
4 - Do you have a "muse" character, that inspires you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the art isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
5 -If you have ever had a character try to push their way into your art, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?
6 - When you create fanart, do you prefer male or female characters?
7 - Have you ever had a piece of fanart change your opinion of a character?
8 - Do you design OCs? And if so, are they a kind of self-insert/portrait, e.g. a portrait of a non-canon character you play in an fandom-based RPG or a fursona?
9 - Pairings - For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to depict in your art?
10 - Pairings - Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and made art for a pairing you liked, but found you couldn't draw/paint/..., or a pairing you didn't like, and found you could?
11 - Genre - do you prefer certain genres when you're making art? What kind of art do you tend to make most?
12 - Have you ever attempted an "imitation" of an artwork (e.g. a famous painting) but adapted to a fandom?
13 - Are you inspired more by canon or by other fanworks when you create art? Has creating art for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
14 - Ratings - how high are you comfortable with going, and is your comfort zone different for showing sex than for violence/gore? Have you ever gone higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the art you're making is G-rated instead?
15 - Warnings - Do you put warnings on your art, and if yes, what do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for?
16 - Headers - Do you post your art with a header describing it, a preview thumbnail, or both? If you use previews, do you crop to an intriguing part, or minimize the whole image?
17 - Titles - Do you give titles to your art? How do you come up with them, if you use them?
18 - Where do you get the most inspiration for your art (aka "bunnies") from?
19 - When you have bunnies, do you sit down and start making art right away, or do you write/sketch down the idea for further use?
20 - Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?
21 - Series/sets - Have you ever created series of connected artworks, and if so, why?
22 - Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you've thought about doing? And if not, why not?
23 - When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? DeviantArt? Just an archive? Your own personal site?
24 - Betaing - Do you use art betas? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
25 - Music - Do you listen to music while you create fanart? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" for art? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?
26 - What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a piece of fanart?
27 - Where is your favorite place to create art, and do you use traditional media, or digital ones, or both?
28 - Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether a shared art project, or illustrations for story, or having a writer work on a piece based on your art?
29 - What is your current project or projects?
30 - Do you have a favorite piece of fanart you've created? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!