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alias_sqbrGeneral meta about fanworks tends to be written by fanfic writers(*), and I often get a squidgy feeling of "that's not right" when I try and apply their conclusions/assumptions to fanart. Unfortunately I suck at this sort of sociological analysis so this is just some vague impressions, please let me know if your experience is different.
Some major differences that jump out at me:
a) A lot of successful artists openly draw fanart as fanart, but few successful writers will openly share their fanfic unless they call it a "postmodern pastiche" or something.
b) It's considered more acceptable to show creators fanart of their work than fanfic.
(b) There are many examples of fanartists being hired as commercial artists based on their fanart, but I don't know of anyone getting a writing gig directly via fanfic (though I wouldn't be entirely surprised, I know people have gone from fanfic to official spin off novels) EDIT: Two counterexamples so far in the dw comments. I get the impression it is still rarer for fanfic, but maybe not!
c) Lots of fanartists openly sell fanart and do fanart commissions of copyrighted works, while selling fanfic is usually considered unethical and dangerous. (Opinions on the legality of both differ wildly, I'm not sure of any consensus in either case)
Thus it annoys me when fanfic writers talk about how fanworks "are always done for love and can never make money" etc. There is a gift economy around fanart (all mine is certainly done for free), but there's a thriving cash economy as well. NOTE: I do not want to get into whether or not this is a good thing. My point is that it exists.
EDIT: Plus of course people sell fanfic of out of copyright works all the time e.g. Pride and Prejudice fic. WHICH I WRITE. *thwaps self* This post is (I realise belatedly) focussed on attitudes to fanworks based on in-copyright works, though if you have opinions about out-of-copyright stuff I'd still be interested to hear them. Also! As always my POV is very much limited by my experience (English speaking, Western country, mostly lj-clone and DeviantArt based etc)
Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to ponder why these differences exist.
This is just a theory, feel free to poke holes in it.
One of the major issues with fanfic is the clear distinction in people's minds (whether they write fanfic or not) between fanwriters and "real" Writers. Where "real" Writers includes not just writers of Real Literature like Hemingway etc but anyone who's published a short story in Asimov's, Stephen King etc, a large and opinionated group that a great many regular people like to imagine they could join one day and whose works we are all familiar with.
But while there is a distinction between fanart and "real" Art, it's a much more complicated continuum. On one end is fanart, in the middle there's graphic design, comics and illustration, which are the bulk of the modern art we see in everyday life(**), and at the fair end there's Fine Art, an esoteric discipline that most people have little contact with or interest in. Consider the number of places you can buy newly published Literature versus the places you can buy newly created Art.
I would say that fanart is accepted as Fine Art as little as fanfic is accepted as Literature. You could get into a discussion about how this relates to postmodernism and the way Fine Art has less of an emphasis on originality etc, but to a large extent it doesn't matter since the opinions of The Academy have little impact on broader attitudes. (Also: my understanding of art and writing theory is way too shallow to discuss this very well)
But since the sort of modern art we see around us most of the time is inclined to be in the form of illustration or commissioned work there isn't this emphasis on originality. People also are less inclined to notice artists as individuals at all, think of all the anonymous wall art at Ikea, generic fantasy art posters etc (some people do pay attention to who creates these things. But many consumers don't). Certainly within fandom I've noticed this attitude towards art as this mysterious Thing that just appears and can be shared about and turned into icons etc, the fact that there's actual artists who make it and might like credit and feedback doesn't always seem to occur to people.
Thus a great many professional artists are unselfconscious about making fanart, since the art they create to pay the bills isn't entirely original anyway. I'm less sure why people are more ok with fanartists (whether they are also employed as professional artists or not) selling their fanart without the ok of the copyright holders. (Again: not interested in discussing if they SHOULD be ok with it, and I know some aren't. But it seems to be much more accepted overall)
It's also interesting to compare fancomics to original comics. One the one hand we have published mainstream comics, which often have an emphasis on the Writer with various artists who usually get less attention (EDIT: Except, as has been pointed out, when the opposite is true. I fail at understanding the comics industry.) On the other hand we have fancomics, which afaict are pretty much always the result of a fanartist deciding to have a go at writing (are there any examples of fanfic writers who can't draw creating scripts and getting them turned into comics by an artist? EDIT: Yes!) But in the middle are webcomics, which like fancomics usually have a single creator and are done for free. Something I find interesting is that there are webcomics which are fanart but are culturally very much a part of the webcomics world, and there are long running continuing fancomics which don't seem to consider themselves webcomics (and of course comics that straddle the boundary), and the difference seems to have more to do with where the creator started out than what they're making. In either case, fancomics seem to be taken relatively seriously within the webcomics community. But webcomics themselves tend to often be belittled by mainstream comics culture even when they're published and successful, and even Real Graphic Novels tend to be looked down on by both fine artists and novel writers.
Hmm. And I have no conclusion. Anyway, do people agree with my analysis?
EDIT: Some further thoughts:
I get the impression that attitudes are different in Japan than Australia and the US (which I'm more familiar with via physical proximity and internet dominance respectively) On the one hand they have fairly accepted sales of doujinshi fancomics, on the other hand fanartists seem to be much more worried aboutbeing sued EDIT: being outed and suffering the shame of being a known fanartist.
And come to think of it, sales of fanart may be common in Western fandom but sales of fancomics are less so. Then again, fancomics are rarer than fanart and fanfic.
EDIT: Emily Carroll Classes It Up In Her 'BioShock' and 'Mass Effect' Artwork, in which a comics blog promotes the fanart of a webcomic artist as "classy". It's also notable that the blog seems to classify Marvel/DC and webcomics etc as all just "comics". I can't imagine a prose focussed blog blurring those boundaries so much, at least not with serious fanworks of copyrighted works (though they might post silly crack fanfic, a fairytale retelling, or an original short story by a random blogger)
(*)Which isn't the fanfic writers fault, it's hardly surprisingly that writery types are more prone to writing. But it inevitably skews the analysis.
(**)Since we're talking about attitudes to living, working artists and writers the huge swathes of old art prints around the place are less relevant though their existence is worth noting.
Some major differences that jump out at me:
a) A lot of successful artists openly draw fanart as fanart, but few successful writers will openly share their fanfic unless they call it a "postmodern pastiche" or something.
b) It's considered more acceptable to show creators fanart of their work than fanfic.
(b) There are many examples of fanartists being hired as commercial artists based on their fanart, but I don't know of anyone getting a writing gig directly via fanfic (though I wouldn't be entirely surprised, I know people have gone from fanfic to official spin off novels) EDIT: Two counterexamples so far in the dw comments. I get the impression it is still rarer for fanfic, but maybe not!
c) Lots of fanartists openly sell fanart and do fanart commissions of copyrighted works, while selling fanfic is usually considered unethical and dangerous. (Opinions on the legality of both differ wildly, I'm not sure of any consensus in either case)
Thus it annoys me when fanfic writers talk about how fanworks "are always done for love and can never make money" etc. There is a gift economy around fanart (all mine is certainly done for free), but there's a thriving cash economy as well. NOTE: I do not want to get into whether or not this is a good thing. My point is that it exists.
EDIT: Plus of course people sell fanfic of out of copyright works all the time e.g. Pride and Prejudice fic. WHICH I WRITE. *thwaps self* This post is (I realise belatedly) focussed on attitudes to fanworks based on in-copyright works, though if you have opinions about out-of-copyright stuff I'd still be interested to hear them. Also! As always my POV is very much limited by my experience (English speaking, Western country, mostly lj-clone and DeviantArt based etc)
Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to ponder why these differences exist.
This is just a theory, feel free to poke holes in it.
One of the major issues with fanfic is the clear distinction in people's minds (whether they write fanfic or not) between fanwriters and "real" Writers. Where "real" Writers includes not just writers of Real Literature like Hemingway etc but anyone who's published a short story in Asimov's, Stephen King etc, a large and opinionated group that a great many regular people like to imagine they could join one day and whose works we are all familiar with.
But while there is a distinction between fanart and "real" Art, it's a much more complicated continuum. On one end is fanart, in the middle there's graphic design, comics and illustration, which are the bulk of the modern art we see in everyday life(**), and at the fair end there's Fine Art, an esoteric discipline that most people have little contact with or interest in. Consider the number of places you can buy newly published Literature versus the places you can buy newly created Art.
I would say that fanart is accepted as Fine Art as little as fanfic is accepted as Literature. You could get into a discussion about how this relates to postmodernism and the way Fine Art has less of an emphasis on originality etc, but to a large extent it doesn't matter since the opinions of The Academy have little impact on broader attitudes. (Also: my understanding of art and writing theory is way too shallow to discuss this very well)
But since the sort of modern art we see around us most of the time is inclined to be in the form of illustration or commissioned work there isn't this emphasis on originality. People also are less inclined to notice artists as individuals at all, think of all the anonymous wall art at Ikea, generic fantasy art posters etc (some people do pay attention to who creates these things. But many consumers don't). Certainly within fandom I've noticed this attitude towards art as this mysterious Thing that just appears and can be shared about and turned into icons etc, the fact that there's actual artists who make it and might like credit and feedback doesn't always seem to occur to people.
Thus a great many professional artists are unselfconscious about making fanart, since the art they create to pay the bills isn't entirely original anyway. I'm less sure why people are more ok with fanartists (whether they are also employed as professional artists or not) selling their fanart without the ok of the copyright holders. (Again: not interested in discussing if they SHOULD be ok with it, and I know some aren't. But it seems to be much more accepted overall)
It's also interesting to compare fancomics to original comics. One the one hand we have published mainstream comics, which often have an emphasis on the Writer with various artists who usually get less attention (EDIT: Except, as has been pointed out, when the opposite is true. I fail at understanding the comics industry.) On the other hand we have fancomics, which afaict are pretty much always the result of a fanartist deciding to have a go at writing (are there any examples of fanfic writers who can't draw creating scripts and getting them turned into comics by an artist? EDIT: Yes!) But in the middle are webcomics, which like fancomics usually have a single creator and are done for free. Something I find interesting is that there are webcomics which are fanart but are culturally very much a part of the webcomics world, and there are long running continuing fancomics which don't seem to consider themselves webcomics (and of course comics that straddle the boundary), and the difference seems to have more to do with where the creator started out than what they're making. In either case, fancomics seem to be taken relatively seriously within the webcomics community. But webcomics themselves tend to often be belittled by mainstream comics culture even when they're published and successful, and even Real Graphic Novels tend to be looked down on by both fine artists and novel writers.
Hmm. And I have no conclusion. Anyway, do people agree with my analysis?
EDIT: Some further thoughts:
I get the impression that attitudes are different in Japan than Australia and the US (which I'm more familiar with via physical proximity and internet dominance respectively) On the one hand they have fairly accepted sales of doujinshi fancomics, on the other hand fanartists seem to be much more worried about
And come to think of it, sales of fanart may be common in Western fandom but sales of fancomics are less so. Then again, fancomics are rarer than fanart and fanfic.
EDIT: Emily Carroll Classes It Up In Her 'BioShock' and 'Mass Effect' Artwork, in which a comics blog promotes the fanart of a webcomic artist as "classy". It's also notable that the blog seems to classify Marvel/DC and webcomics etc as all just "comics". I can't imagine a prose focussed blog blurring those boundaries so much, at least not with serious fanworks of copyrighted works (though they might post silly crack fanfic, a fairytale retelling, or an original short story by a random blogger)
(*)Which isn't the fanfic writers fault, it's hardly surprisingly that writery types are more prone to writing. But it inevitably skews the analysis.
(**)Since we're talking about attitudes to living, working artists and writers the huge swathes of old art prints around the place are less relevant though their existence is worth noting.
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Date: 2010-11-10 02:14 am (UTC)It's because it's less of a grey area, legally. Fan art - especially non-photomanip art done of live-action characters - is seen as non-deriviative work, because doing a painting of Spock is similar to doing a portrait of a random person who happens to be an actor who played the part of Spock. And there's no law against painting portraits of random people.
Writing a fanfic "portrait" of a character, on the other hand, is seen by some as a "derivative work" (and thus illegal under Copyright law) while it's seen by others as a "transformative work" (and thus legal under Copyright law) but even when it's transformative, the legal protection of the fan writer is greater when they don't make money from it. So it's basically safer for everyone if fanfic writers don't try to sell their work.
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Date: 2010-11-10 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 02:32 am (UTC)Not that I can offer much thought on the subject, since I lean more toward original than fanwork most of the time. But your analysis reflects most of what I have observed, so I agree!
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Date: 2010-11-12 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 03:22 am (UTC)So yeah I am just being pedantic. :V
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Date: 2010-11-10 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 02:53 am (UTC)*headdesk*
I'll just go edit the post.
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Date: 2010-11-12 02:35 am (UTC)Thinking about it there is still a difference, from what I've seen (and here the fact that I consume Austen fic but tend to avoid the greater fandom makes my conclusions shaky). Afaict published Jane Austen authors are trying to be Real Authors with Real Published Books, eg people don't pay each other $30 to write a fic to spec. Come to think of it, outside Yuletide are there Austen gift exchanges? Maybe there are and I'm spouting rubbish.
You're right that it is more accepted though, look at that Colleen McCullough book. Are there any published authors who admit to writing Austen fic for fun? Hmm. But writing for fun is a different beast to drawing for fun.
Anyway, on further thought (and thankyou for pointing out the gaping hole in my argument as given) I was really thinking about attitudes to fanart and fanfic of in-copyright works. Fanart of out of copyright stuff is VERY accepted, pictures of Alice in Wonderland characters and all that. They're CLASSICS after all, it's not like basing art on shallow popular culture.
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Date: 2010-11-12 02:46 am (UTC)There are not gift exchanges that I am aware of, but there are challenges and writing-to-prompts, and writing-as-a-gift as concept (like writing a tiny piece for people who delurk)
But if you're talking strictly on-copyright work, then all that I said is mostly pointless. /0\
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Date: 2010-11-12 02:57 am (UTC)There are not gift exchanges that I am aware of, but there are challenges and writing-to-prompts, and writing-as-a-gift as concept (like writing a tiny piece for people who delurk)
Well, I think that's moderately equivalent. Heh. Now I feel like remembering my AHA password (I keep forgetting it, forums scare me) and reading the forums again for anthropological reasons, this is interesting :D
Oh, utter tangent: Homestuck fandom is almost entirely forum based (plus a bit on DeviantArt and tumblr, which is where I tend to encounter it), it's funny seeing how it is in most ways UTTERLY unlike Austen fandom but in this specific way kind of similar :)
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Date: 2010-11-20 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-21 07:46 am (UTC)The forums move very fast and individual works get very little attention.
There is a perceived cult of nice, with restrictive rules about sexual content and people feeling unable to express dissatisfaction with canon and other fans.
There's lots of off topic conversations about books/art techniques etc at the forums you won't get elsewhere.
There seem to be more guys than I'm used to on lj, including on the fanfic and shipping etc threads.
The first is the result of all fanart going in one massive Fanart Thread etc, and the fourth has a lot to do with canon. The second and third are true of the Jane Austen forums as well, would you agree?
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Date: 2010-11-21 06:47 pm (UTC)The second... in some ways? I mean, there are strict limitations (like, say no underage and no bestiality, or not above pg-13 in the open forums) but there's plenty of sexual content. There's definitively a Cult of Nice going on. I always thought it had to do with the average age of the fans (older), but it could be the forced cohabitation of the forums. I mean, you can't really fight with anyone -- if you do, you are stumbling on them all the time and it can get really uncomfortable. Hell, it already is, since the CoF does not change the fact that people are incredibly passive-aggressive.
About canon -- I've seen a lot of dissatisfaction, depending on the subject and how it's expressed. (Nicely if it's lack of sex. A general 'understanding' that JA didn't quite 'get' how some stuff went down in her own time, like sex. Some polite agreement and/or disagreement about pairings that are not Darcy/Elizabeth, including Bingley/Jane and Fanny/Edmund and Elinor/Edward. &c &c) There is a distinct lack of vile towards the author, of course... I mean, we're janeites... /0\
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Date: 2010-11-28 12:26 pm (UTC)I guess the author being dead rather than a member of the forum makes a difference :D
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Date: 2010-11-10 02:53 am (UTC)Fic writers who go pro: Paul Cornell is one of these; he started in zines, pitched a tie-in novel and his career grew from there.
Writers collaborating with artists to create fan comics: this is how the team behind Torchwood Babiez does it.
More later!
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Date: 2010-11-12 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 07:52 pm (UTC)You know what? I have been yearning, for years, to find a friend I creatively click with, and could do fancomics with. I've started scripts in the past only to end up frustrated because a) I don't know how to write comics scripts (note to self: look it up!), and b) I haven't found a collaborator yet. I wish there existed a sort of collaborative culture, with fanartists looking for writers and fanwriters looking for artists, to work on things collectively with. That would be so awesome. For me, because I hate that I can't draw but have lots of ideas for arty things, but mostly for the community, because it would make writers think about individual artists more. There definitely is an atmosphere of 'fandom is about the fic! and also the art and vids and mixes and meta, but it all starts with the fic!' and I'd like to see that changed.
...alas, I have no thinky-thoughts on the selling fanworks thing; I've seen the same thing as you, that selling fic is A HUGE NO-NO but selling art is okay. I haven't seen fanart sold on a big scale (I know James Franco has an art show at a gallery that includes some Kirk/Spock fanart, but I don't know if that's being sold or display-only) but things like friends taking commissions. I've paid a friend or two for fanart over the years, because they needed help with money and were taking commissions and there was something I wanted in their style. I never really thought twice about it (but then, I would also pay a friend for fic if they were taking commissions and needed help with money). And then there is the 'what if they don't need help with money and just take commissions?' question, which I have no idea the answer to. *hands*
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Date: 2010-11-12 02:42 am (UTC)If you had a script for a one page comic I'd be willing to give it a look and say if I felt up to drawing it (beyond that and I have trouble motivating myself to draw my own scripts, sorry :))
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Date: 2010-11-19 04:44 am (UTC)Having said this, fanzines were never openly sold (unlike the Japanese manga). And that's where the interesting comparison with fan art comes in.
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Date: 2010-11-19 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 05:22 pm (UTC)Fanzines usually were sold within fannish circles. Within those circles, they were openly sold - at fan conventions and of course, when the Internet hit, they were advertised and sold online. Fanzines are even now being sold on eBay.
However, this openess has not been embraced by many fans and, as Internet culture has shifted fandom away from the printed words, the very fact of buying and selling fan fiction - even just for cost - has become a negative act in some minds. The irony that some fans are trying to stamp out a 30 year old tradition because they don't understand their own history.....well that makes me sad.
There is a wider consensus against selling fan fic for profit - in the early days of fandom, all fannish activities rested uneasily side by side with the studios, so stressing the non-profit status was one way to shore up our fair use claims. Nowawdays, lack of profit is not so much a shield against insane copyright claims (think of the parents forced to take thier toddler videos down from Youtube because music is being played over the kitchen radio while they film and you get the drift...
So short answer: zines were made and sold quasi-openly but profit was not considered acceptable by most fans.
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Date: 2010-11-21 07:51 am (UTC)The rigid negativity towards any selling of fanfic for money does confuse me a little. These distinctions can be so arbitrary!
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Date: 2010-11-19 06:29 am (UTC)I don't know of anyone getting a writing gig directly via fanfic
Missy Good was a BNF in "Xena" fandom and eventually wrote some actual episodes of the show, due to showrunners/TPTB recognising her work.
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Date: 2010-11-19 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-20 03:46 am (UTC)I saw a link to the LJ version of this on
I really wish I could do fanart, but I can not draw faces. I can draw bodies, but my faces all look horrific. And I always get too demoralised by my lack of even slightly knowing how to practice as much as I should...
So, hey, for the first time in a million years I look like I might not be entirely sick, I should come visit you at some point. (will not be for at least a few days, don't worry, there will be adequate notice and checking you have leisure and spoons to be visited)
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Date: 2010-11-21 08:46 am (UTC)It is hard to motivate practice when you're below the level where your art makes you happy (and this often has more to do with one's self esteem than one's ability) I spent a while drawing celebrity faces out of magazines in that basic sphere + cross + chin way they show in all the art books until my faces looked less munted, it was very helpful. But YMMV.
Visiting would be good! I'm a bit overwhelmed by Stuff at the moment, but might be ok late next week , if that's ok.
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Date: 2010-11-21 09:57 am (UTC)Fortunately, I can excuse myself on the grounds of my known brain issues. You may have subscribed at some point in the few days following some seizures, for example, at which times my brain does not function.
I'm thinking of practicing faces more on, like, scrap paper and printer paper and stuff. Maybe I'll hate the result less if I don't feel like I've just defaced my own sketchbook. (Overall, my sketching tends to result in "not perfect, but I'm pleased enough", so long as I don't try to draw a face ever.)
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Date: 2010-11-26 02:23 am (UTC)Drawing on scrap paper sounds like a good idea. I find I sometimes have to do some tricky mental gymnastics to get around my "But this is crap why am I bothering" reflex.
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Date: 2010-11-21 04:00 pm (UTC)Generally the attitude seems to be that for anything physical reimbursement for materials is definitely okay, reimbursement for time on top at a minimal level (i.e. the price range of commissions where the artist would get more per hour if they sold themselves for unskilled, menial labor) is seen okay by most, especially if something is custom made rather than first made for fun and then sold, and with that model come a few "break out" instances, where the artist/crafter skill is such that their basically manage to become collectibles, and as such defy the overall pricing logic of the fannish market. Obviously digital art is not physical, but it was probably "grandfathered in" or something.
I suspect that there is no commission market for fanfic is because most people would only be willing to pay for long fic, but even minimal wage hour rate like done for the average fanart commission would then make it really expensive. Probably similar if you applied per word prices for fiction. So nobody bothers outside of the charity auction thing. But some artists can make nice looking things more quickly, if someone calculate €5 per hour for their fanart, if they are not completely slow like I am, they could offer a detailed pencil drawing for €25. That's quite affordable for the buyer, and while it is a ridiculously low hourly wage, in these days of recessions and wage dumping it's still in the range to make it worthwhile for some as a little extra income, especially with the hope that over time proficiency increases exposure and maybe demand and thus the value of your art, and decreases the time it takes you.
There probably would be willing fan patrons with enough disposable income to sponsor a few fanwriters for writing them something specific for prices that would be akin to the highest priced fanart collectibles, but these don't happen because the underpinning of a low price market isn't there.
It's considered more acceptable to show creators fanart of their work than fanfic.
I think that is probably not usually true for explicit art, and maybe most true for realistic portrait work. Showing the latter seems to happen often for signing, like how other people get actor photos signed, so there is a continuity there to other behavior. Then there are instances where fanart directly illustrates the source, so with that there is little room for offense on behalf of the creator, unlike when fanfic writes the characters doing something else that the creator didn't imagine. I think whenever fanart ventures into the usual areas of fanfic, i.e. becomes speculative rather than source-illustrative, the acceptability to show it declines rapidly, unless maybe it is fandoms like comics where the lines between the professionals and the fans are so blurry as to be no real lines at all.
Certainly within fandom I've noticed this attitude towards art as this mysterious Thing that just appears and can be shared about and turned into icons etc, the fact that there's actual artists who make it and might like credit and feedback doesn't always seem to occur to people.
This is so true. I have no idea why. Maybe because many people are so divorced from art production? I mean, on one hand it is infused with this myth that art is "hard" (though I have no idea why, because sure, being very skilled at art is hard, but not more so than writing fiction, and producing something other fans enjoy looking at, find amusing or cute or pretty enough to click and maybe comment does not demand marvelous art skills, it's just that there is no habit of everyday drawing like there is for everyday writing). On the other hand some people are surprised when you tell them how long and complicated making a single image can be. I've posted process notes, and I've gotten comments that viewers did expect that it took this many sketches, references, models, and drawing stages to get to a finished painting, even though nobody blinks an eye at the idea that sometimes a 5000 word story may need a ton of research and go through countless revisions, depending on how an author works, even while at the same time another author can write another story of equal length in an afternoon.
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Date: 2010-12-09 02:47 am (UTC)The fact that traditional art costs more to produce makes some sense, especially now that the reproduction of text electronically makes zines less common.
You make a good point about the amount people would have to charge for fanfic to make it remotely worth their while to write. Since I find art much easier than writing, on the whole, I find it hard to judge how much effort it takes for more writerly people.
I was brought up to draw a lot since my parents are artistic types, and I definitely think this is why I find art so much easier than many other people despite never having exhibited much talent as a kid. And yes, I don't think people realise how much effort goes into (some) art, or how much research it requires. I guess I can't complain to much, at least I'm drawing in the age of google image search :D