Fan art

• 1. Introduction

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  Fan art is artwork created by fans of a work of fiction or celebrity, depicting events, characters, or other aspects of that work. It is not commissioned, created, or endorsed by the original creators. American TV producer Bryan Konietzko described the change he witnessed firsthand. Back during his work on Avatar between 2005 and 2008, the typical fan artwork that arrived was, in his words, a charming, childish crayon drawing stuffed in an envelope. Then something changed. By the time he was working on Korra between 2012 and 2014, he could take a skewed screenshot on his phone, post it, and within a short time someone had un-skewed it, cropped it, separated the character levels, cloned the background, animated the characters blinking and talking, and turned the whole thing into a GIF he could view on the very phone he used to take the original picture. The questions worth sitting with are: who makes fan art, what do they do with it, and what does the law say about it?

• 2. Forms and Reach

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  Traditional paintings, drawings, and digital art are only the beginning of what fan artists produce. Sculptures, video art, livestreams, web banners, avatars, graphic designs, web-based animations, photo collages, and posters all fall under the fan art umbrella. The broad availability of digital image processing, the internet, and text-to-image generators has greatly expanded both the scope and the potential reach of what fans can create and share. Fan art can represent pre-existing characters placed in new contexts, or it can keep those characters faithfully within the tone of the original work. Some fan art goes further than homage. Rule 34, the idea that everything is represented in internet pornography, commonly takes the form of erotic fan art. Fan art can also function as cultural commentary, placing established characters in situations that would never appear in official canon, allowing fans to explore alternate meanings and fan theories about the media they love.

• 3. A Separate Tradition

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  Within science fiction fandom, the term fan art carries an older and quite different meaning. There, it traditionally refers to original artwork, not derivative work, related to science fiction or fantasy. This original artwork is created by fan artists and appears in low- or non-paying publications such as semiprozines or fanzines, and at the art shows of science fiction conventions. The Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist has been given each year since 1967 to artists who create such works. Like the term fan fiction, though to a lesser extent, this traditional meaning is now sometimes confused with the more recent and broader usage of fan art as derivative work based on existing characters and stories.

• 4. Copyright and the Law

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  Under 17 U.S.C. section 106, the right to reproduce and display artwork in the United States generally belongs to the original author or artist. Fan art that draws on settings and characters from a previously created work could be classified as a derivative work, which would place copyright control with the owner of that original work. Distribution of such a derivative work would, under that framework, be unlawful. The fair use exemption under 17 U.S.C. section 107 does offer a pathway, however. Courts weigh several factors: how much of the original was used, how transformative the new work is, whether the use was educational or non-commercial, and what economic effect the derivative work has on the original copyright holder's ability to exploit their own derivative works. No single factor is decisive on its own; the analysis requires looking at all relevant facts and circumstances together. American courts also typically extend broad protection to parody, and some fan art may fit that category. That question has not yet been explicitly decided in court with respect to fan art. Even where parody applies under section 107, a court must still conduct a fact-intensive, case-specific inquiry for each individual work, meaning no blanket rule covers fan artists who believe their work qualifies as parody.