Project Educate: Introduction + Defining Fan Art

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:iconbummy3: PE: Introduction & Defining Fan Art!:iconbummiesplz:



Welcome to our Project Educate Week! Fan Art's week will last from today December 5th 'til the 11th and in this week we will do our best to explain and clarify all the aspects regarding Fan Art that might be confusing to you. We will also be giving you a lot of interviews with Fan Artists all over deviantART and Art features for your pleasure and enjoyment!

You can see a list of events prepared for each day as well as the past events in ^rydi1689's journal



Without further ado, I consider Fan Art Project Educate Week…  OPEN!




:heart:



Everyone loves Fan Art but, what is it exactly? :confused:



Fan art includes those artworks that are based on or contain material such as characters, settings, concepts or universes in general that are copyrighted to someone else other than the artist creating said Fan artwork.

Fan art is a concept that varies a lot depending on the person referring to it, but this week our aim is to teach you what we consider to be Fan Art within our department. New generations are to come and this concept might evolve as they do and change to fit everyone's needs better, always with your feedback close at hand.

I think I should put this here for you all to read since I believe it's the most heart-warming definition of Fan Art you will ever read, and it's definitely true:

aunjuli -former Fan Art GM- said:

"Fan Art is a way to show appreciation for someone else's creation. It is a way to express your love for your favorite book that you grew up reading, or a way to draw your favorite video game character in a kick-ass new setting that goes well beyond the original creator's universe. You are passionate about Fan Art because you know it is one of the deepest ways to pay tribute to something that has inspired you.

The root of it all is love, gratitude, and the desire to create more than what was originally handed to you and that is what we all should be passionate about when we create fan art, fan fiction and when we are browsing deviantART's galleries stocked full of beautiful fanwork."

Don't you just feel the love and passion springing out of her words? :heart:


:heart:


There are a few points that we will be covering in the upcoming days but most of these will be explained here:

  • Fan Art vs. Official Art
  • Art of someone's OCs
  • Art of an OC based on a pre-existing universe (usually known as Fan OCs)
  • Art of Real people, including celebrities



_______________________________________________________________________

  • Art of Someone else's OCs :iconbummy2:

    • In my year as GM I've noticed that this is one of the parts about Fan Art that confuses people the most. Many deviants have come to me with the same question "Is my drawing of my friend's Original Characters Fan Art or is it Original art?" and the answer is pretty simple. Yes! If you draw your friend's characters, your artwork qualifies as Fan Art since you're making art of something that is copyrighted to someone else.  Easy, right? :love: A brown, warm feeling... by Atramina Floral Kohaku by omupied Commission: Izqui by annria2002

  • OCs based on pre-existing universes -aka Fan Characters- :iconbummy3:

    • At first sight this one might seem a bit confusing. An original character based on a pre-existing universe is nothing more than a character you've created to exist in the world of your favourite movie, tv show, manga, etc. A clear sample of this case are all the Naruto based Original Characters, they are original because they do not appear in the show, they were created by the artist from scratch, but they are based on the Naruto universe, they are ninjas or are related to them, they use the overall designs from the series and if you know the original story you will recognize these easily. Yes, these are also Fan Art! If you're using copyrighted elements in your artwork, such as the designs of the ninja techniques or clothing, their ranks and other specific terms from the original source, then your work belongs in Fan Art! :love: This also applies to sceneries and settings, if you place your Original Character in a copyrighted setting, such as Pandora from Avatar, or Soul Society from Bleach, that also makes your artwork Fan Art :aww:. :thumb188007721: Prize art: Yoichi Sincera by annria2002 Jemm-san's Bleach OC: Ghandi by Oshouki

  • Art of Real people and Celebrities

    • This one is another factor that people don't seem to be aware of when submitting their artworks, but we don't give it much importance because we believe it's best to leave it up to people's free will and interpretation. However, when we receive Daily Deviation suggestions we usually explain the deviant in question why we don't consider it to be Fan Art and therefore why we forward the suggestion to the correct GM. Still, we don't move the deviation from the Fan Art gallery because what we consider to be fan art and what they consider can be different and it's just a matter of interpretation. Art of real people is not considered to be Fan Art because real people, regardless of how famous they are, can't be copyrighted and therefore it wouldn't fit with the definition of Fan Art I gave you at the beginning of the article. As mentioned above, Fan Art is a concept that varies greatly depending on who's speaking, some consider that Fan Art is any artwork made by a fan of something, be it copyrighted or not. This is the reason why we don't move artworks of real people (including famous people) out of the Fan Art gallery. Your artworks featuring real people should be placed in the digital art, traditional art or any other main root that is not Fan Art depending on the media you used to create your artwork. A sample that I always use to enlighten this case is the Johnny Depp vs. Jack Sparrow one. Johnny –though he's a very famous person- can't be copyrighted, however, his role as Jack Sparrow can and is, in fact, copyrighted. Therefore I can't DD a work depicting Depp but I can DD a work depicting Jack, same face but a huge difference! :D Johnny Depp - Japan 2006 by shaman-art ; Harry Potter by MarkAndrewNeilson Daniel 2007 by jlneveloff

  • Fan Art vs. Official Art

    will be discussed on another day, including features and a possible interview with a great artist working on the game industry! Stay tuned!

    • This concludes the Introductory article to Project Educate's Fan Art week! You can learn more about Project Educate in projecteducate's profile :love:

    See you all in future articles!

© 2010 - 2024 rydi1689
Comments74
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RoanNna's avatar
RoanNna
Thank you for the great article, just one edit: ¨Copyright is secured automatically when the work is cre­ated.¨ source . That means that every drawing ¨made from photo¨ (except the stock ones or when author says that his work is ¨public domain¨) is made from a copyrighted material, which means, according to your definition, that this is a fan art. 

In addition, ideally every content creator or person who draws from a photo should ask an authors permission... ideally. Because this is a form of REPRODUCTION and any work can´t be reproduced without the author´s notice. But in the era of internet it is almost impossible to find all the copies of your uploaded images, and the person who did them, also if the fanart is considered as a form of ¨free promotion¨ of original art, then the copyrights´ owners in most cases just allow all these to happen (until you don´t earn money on your FAN ART (here I´m talking about the ¨drawings from photos¨ too) everything is OK link.). But, this doesn´t meat that a photo of Johnny Depp is not copyrighted. 

So, there is a problem. If a drawing of Johnny Depp (here I´m talking about, again, using a particular PHOTO as a reference, not about drawing him from life (ha-ha, I wish I could) or creating completely NEW image of him, using a lot of different references which are not recognizable at the final image (for example, ¨50 Shades of Grey¨ started as a fan fiction of the ¨Twilight¨ saga)) is not a fan art, according to your classification, so why does a drawing from a photo of him in a COSTUME is a fan art? 

On the other hand:
Ideas aren't copyrighted [commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Com…]
There is no copyright in an idea, in this case the combination of a bullwhip and hat. The fact that most viewers will recognise the allusion to the fictional character Indiana Jones does not matter.
The title above is a gross oversimplification, but generally there is no copyright in an abstract idea or concept as such. Copyright is not a monopoly right that protects each and every type of creative content, even at the highest conceptual level; it simply restricts copying of the specific realization that the author has used, in words, images or sound. US courts distinguish between an uncopyrightable "idea" and a copyrightable "expression". Thus, in order to establish a copyright violation the copyright owner has to be able to point to some original and creative specific realization (or expression) that has been copied, either directly or indirectly, exactly or inexactly, and either with or without additional artistic embellishments. The specific realization is typically some graphic work such as an illustration in a book, or a visual representation in a movie or computer game.
The difficulty, of course, is to decide what level of generalization is considered to be a non-copyrightable abstract idea, and what a copyrightable specific realization. The courts have much trouble with this, and there is no “bright line” rule that provides an easy answer.
Where the specific realization is an illustration or a depiction of a creative graphic element within a movie, comic book, computer game or the like, copyright will typically be infringed if the fan art drawing has copied that original creative element.
Literary copyright
The legal situation can get much more complicated where the fan art drawing is a representation based solely on the descriptive text of a literary work such as a novel. Although the novel's author will have literary copyright in the actual words used, the US courts, in particular, have been rather reluctant to uphold broad copyright protection for characters within the novel. Although literary characters are clearly creative, they are often seen by the courts as being no more than abstract ideas that are too generic to attract independent copyright protection.
US case law is not consistent, but it is clear that "the less developed the characters the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for making them too indistinct". In order to warrant copyright protection, a literary character must be both "specifically described" and "distinctively delineated" (or "fully developed"). Other cases have granted protection only to a character within a work who constitutes the “story being told” The courts have refused protection for characters that are of no more than a particular "character type". Similarly, the courts will not grant protection where the material copied is standard or common to the particular subject or topic. Thus, a stereotypical fictional character, unless one copied the exact word portrait of that character, is not likely to be copyright protected. For example, it is unlikely that a court would uphold infringement of the text of a mystery novel based on the fact that both the original character and the alleged copy smoked a cigar and spoke with a New York accent. It is likely that the court would hold both of these characteristics to be standard or common to the mystery genre. The courts in England have been even more reluctant to accept character copyrights based on literary works, and the general view is that English law does not recognise the concept of copyright in literary fictional characters at all. In practice literary copyright is not in any event typically of great importance, since most fan art is based on characters that are known in graphic form from spin-offs such as movies, comic books or computer games. Where a novel has become popular enough to generate commercial spin-offs, it is the graphic representations that are more likely to have been copied than the original literary description. 
I´ve read upper here a great conversation about ¨does drawing\painting based on text is a fan art or illustration¨. And my citation shows that ¨drawing based on text (regardless of copyrighted or not) can be illustration¨ and all your rights for the DRAWING\PAINTING belongs not to the author of text, but to the author of creation. Great example of what I´m talking about could be a well known character Hermione Granger. I suppose that 99% of people here would say that drawing Hermione would be a fanart, but this is not completely true, if your art is based on EXISTING VISUAL INTERPRETATION like movies, comic books, existing illustration to HP books, only in this case that will be a FAN ART. If your drawing COMPLETELY DIFFERS from any VISUAL MEDIA, this is an illustration. Mrs J. K. Rolling doesn´t have a copyright protection on description of Hermione, this is just an idea of girl with ¨bushy brown hair and brown eyes¨. A lot of drawings of brown haired girl may be an illustration to the HP books (and illustrator own a copyright and may earn money) and only PART of them are actual fanart images.  

To sum up, your definition of the FAN ART as ¨those artworks that are based on or contain material such as characters, settings, concepts or universes in general that are copyrighted to someone else¨ is generally acceptable, but needs improvement.

PS Maybe the time to create a new category on dA for ¨Copy from photo\drawing\painting\blah-blah-blah¨ has come??? Because there are a lot of those copies everywhere, one call them fanarts, other - studies, but lets finally face it - they are just copies of somebody´s intellectual property (unless this is a work done in hyper realism style).