ratcreature | Entries tagged with meme

Getty Images, which apparently own the copyright to the penguin photograph that is used in the Socially Awkward Penguin Meme, threatened to sue a German blogger for reblogging a couple of meme images. The blogger decided to pay the fine of about 785€ they were offered, rather than risking a court decision on whether this infringed on Getty Images' copyright. German copyright does not have "fair use" like it exists in the US though there are other provisions (for citations and parody for example), so apparently it's not clear how it would have gone in court. However, the blogger didn't follow the gag order Getty Images wanted to be followed (I guess it's bad for the business model if people are forewarned what they might risk) and posted about it. I haven't found any English news articles but here's a link to a German one.

WTF, nearly 800€ for reblogging a penguin meme...

Eta: Some English language news now have picked this up, so you can read about the case here in English.

lilacsigil prompted: "Fandom and language for you: what fandoms did you experience dubbed into German, are you in any German-language fandoms, how does English-speaking fandom feel to you, things like that."

Well, as far as dubbed tv shows go, pretty much all my fandoms before I had fast internet I first watched in German. So all the series I felt fannish about before finding online fandom, and the things I watched in the late 90s when I first found online fandom too. Some of those I have never actually bothered to rewatch in the original (I don't rewatch things very often in general), like most of original Star Trek episodes I only watched on tv here, same for TNG. But for example the X-Files I first watched haphazardly in German, but later on I got the episodes in the original and rewatched.

With Buffy the video tapes came out with not too much delay (about a season iirc), so that was the same as watching them here, so I bought those from the UK soon. With The Sentinel I first watched dubbed German episodes, but after I found the fandom I managed to get tape copies from another fan, and the later third and fourth season I only watched in the original.

The dubbing for Sentinel made some odd choices, in particular that Jim and Blair stuck with "Sie", presumably because they called each other Ellison and Sandburg in the original, but who would address a close work colleague who is also a roommate with the formal you? But it is a tricky issue, because obviously if they spoke German, they would start out with "Sie" and then at some point a "Du" would need to be offered, which is a significant marker for a relationship. And obviously that doesn't happen on screen, so they would have had to switch suddenly and that would also be odd.

With Due South I watched the RayV seasons in German first, but managed to get the RayK seasons through tape trade.

Tolkien I first read translated, but then later reread in English. Actually, iirc, LOTR was the first English book I read in English outside of English class assignments (which at that point were still mostly short stories). It was a tad ambitious as a choice for someone who at the time was not fluent. I think I was fourteen or fifteen or so, so I had only four or five years of English classes, because when I went to school they didn't yet start foreign languages in elementary school, but only in fifth grade. So that was quite slow going, even as I knew what was happening. Eventually I had the German edition open concurrently as I worked my way through LOTR in English the first time.

It turned out though that deciphering Tolkien was still a better choice for first reading material than reading French comics in the original, which I couldn't really manage after four years of French later on (even before I forgot most of it again). Being able to read French comics was my major aspirational motivation to drop Latin eventually (which my parents had wanted me to take as second language) and pick up French instead, because so many great comics aren't translated. But with so little text as context for guessing words you don't know, and the text not explaining the images but conveying separate things, and being spoken language with jokes and slang, comics are quite far from easy literature.

Speaking of comics, with Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics the classic German translation by Erika Fuchs is really good and sometimes funnier than the original. I have an English language edition of Carl Barks' complete works, but I really like the German translation as much, and many German fans prefer it. Because Erika Fuchs translated so many Disney comics with inventive language she had quite an impact on contemporary German language use, btw.

Actually Donaldism is the closest I come to having a German-language fandom, with German fanzines I have and such. And general comic fandom too to some extent, though that is more a multi-lingual thing. And mostly offline fandom engagement.

I don't watch a lot of German tv. These days I mostly watch tv shows on the computer, and I'm not in any online German fandom. Generally my online fandom engagement happens in English.

I find it even somewhat awkward to talk about fanfic fandom in German, because so many of the terms are English, so that when you talk with another German fan about something, you end up talking Denglisch with every second word (at best, sometimes seven out of ten) or so being a direct loan. Which okay, on the one hand, I won't start saying Schmerz/Trösten or whatever it would be instead of h/c, but otoh at some point it just gets ridiculous.

If you take a fairly normal fannish sentence you might to say to someone while talking about fanfic, like "XY wrote a great gen h/c ficlet for a Mundane AU prompt on the kink meme." you end up with very few German words, and maybe one of them a noun. I mean, even those that have translations are difficult, like say "prompt": Would I pick "Stichwort" or "Aufforderung" for "prompt" in a kink meme? Both sound odd. Maybe just stick with prompt, even though only the adjective meaning is the same in German (I don't think prompt as noun got loaned yet). And sure, you can translate "mundane" as "alltäglich" but "Mundane AUs" are a thing, saying "alltägliche alternative Universen" might as well mean "common AUs". Similarly you could say Geschichtenschnipsel for ficlet, or half-translate it as Fic-Schnipsel (though honestly, saying "fic" in German is, well, it sounds like you say fuck only in German that word is more obscene, because normal German swearwords all are more fecal-based than sexual, as I explained at length in my intro to that topic), but you'd probably end up saying sentences like "XY hat ein tolles gen ficlet für einen Mundane AU prompt im kink meme geschrieben." Awkward.

On the flip side, when fandom first shifted to the blogging/journaling format from mailing list, I hestitated starting one, because doing anything journal like in a foreign language felt weird to me, because I had kept paper diaries before, and those had obviously always been in German. And while thinking about fandom stuff in English was quite natural by then (after years of practicing with maililng list posts), for most other things it was not. The very first post in my blog in 2002 (reposted on DW here) which I started before getting an LJ was about that issue, and the odd feeling. Obviously more generalized nattering in English has started to feel more natural with years of practice.

Though in a way it is still weird, because I've gotten out of the habit of keeping a paper diary, and I post more often about non-fandom stuff, but still in English, so by now it feels more natural to narrate my own life in a foreign language. But that is not really fandom-related.

Otherwise English-speaking fandom doesn't feel like anything particular to me, that I could trace to the language. Sure, you can ponder the pervasiveness of English on the internet and the relative dominance of English language pop culture, and what it means for language diversity and power in international fandom, but in the end having a lingua franca is a practical thing, even if it is not a neutral thing. I like German, and I don't think English sounds cooler or some nonsense, but I'm pragmatic about reaching fannish audiences, English is more common than German, and I speak it well enough to make communicating in it not a hardship. So English it is.

Compared to last time I did this, only a few people wanted to play (I guess I should look for memes not requiring any audience participation instead), but doing drawbles again was fun. It's been too long.

Anyway, my character list was:( the list )

( for isagel )

( for lilacsigil )

( for reginagiraffe )

There haven't been many prompts for the talking meme, so I decided to drag out another meme: Character Roulette, but of course I do this with drawbles not comment ficlets.

You probably know how it works: I have a secret list of fifteen characters, then commenters suggest a scenario with the numbers, and I respond with what I think would happen, but as quick doodle.

But please keep in mind when prompting me that in this instance the response is supposed to be possible in a picture. Last time I did this results were mixed, because some prompts were hard to doodle, but it was also cracktastic fun.

tassosss asked: "Do you have a process for how you approach your fanart? Certain things you do first? How you work with ideas?"

(Also, please, if you have a question or prompt for me in the January Talking Meme, you can comment here. Most remaining dates are still open.)

I have an art process tag for posts with in progress stages of several fanart pieces, so there you can see some of the specific details.

In more general terms, I think the central thing about my approach to fanart is that I'm lazy, that is I experience a great deal of inertia before doing anything, and also I have real trouble to self-motivate, which is very bad for something that only truly thrives with practice like drawing/painting. So the problem is that I know in my head that I would need to draw a lot more to gain the ability to draw and paint the kind of thing I would like to produce, but that that would take a lot of effort.

And I don't have any real inner urges to draw or anything like that, which is why last year and the year before I only managed any fanart for exchanges. And it is not that I have a bunch of drawer scribbles or unfinished WIPs or drew non-fanart stuff. I did not draw at all otherwise.

I often have ideas for things that would be cool to draw or paint as I engage in fandom, whether with the source or with other fanworks. These sometimes are a conversational impulse, and that usually results in an uncomplicated doodle that I don't refine further and that takes only a very short time, because the point is just the reaction, or someone said something funny and I want to sketch it or such. Examples for that are this cracky doodle I did for one of Beth H's stories or this reaction to a posted chat transcript.

Far more often I have ambitious ideas for awesome art, both in reaction to canon and illustration ideas for fanfic, or sometimes just daydreaming cool scenarios with characters. Those ideas usually die, because they would be hard to realize and I can never make it look like in my head anyway etc. Sometimes I put them in my "fanart ideas" textfile and then they die.

Looking at that file right now, there are about two dozen fanart ideas I felt strongly enough to make a note about, and then I never did anything further, though in one SGA case I actually started some pencil sketches and intended that to be a reversebang piece where I had signed up, but RL stuff happened and I had to drop out, and then I became less interested in SGA soon after, so that got abandoned even though I had some scribbles. Usually once I start to invest some time into a piece I then bring it at least to a point to show, because one thing I loathe more than making an effort is wasting it, and not have anything to show for the time I spent. Though larger projects can be abandoned in the middle, like I did an SGA/ATLA fusion with Teyla as Waterbender, and in my head I had a full set for the team with John as Airbender, Rodney as Earthbender and Ronon as Firebender. Obviously the last three never materialized, because sadly we still don't have the brain-interfaces to make images happen as you think them.

My fanart ideas are often scenes of fanfic that stuck with me as I read them, same with written canon sources, and then I make a note of the scene with a link to the fic in case of online fanfic. For example while reading the Dresden Files, I found numerous scenes compelling to imagine in my head, so I made notes in that file like "Dresden and Michael at Union station, the hobs (baboon monsters) surrounding them visible in light of the newly drawn sword. (from Small Favor, p 185/186)" or "Dresden in church, standing in shadow (from Proven Guilty)" and such. Of course none of these compelled me enough to actually overcome inertia, but that's how I jot down ideas.

Same when I read fanfic, for example one that I eventually painted was the illustration for

basingstoke's Unalienable (I did a process post about that here), and that started as a note "X-Men/HL xover illustration for basingstoke, Methos with mutant baby" with a link to the story.

Sometimes I have ideas for scenes or scenarios that are not illustrations for something existing, but ideas for something I'd like to see. Those are often AU or worldbuilding ideas, because my imagination runs in the worldbuilding direction rather than imagining plots for characters I like. Examples for this from my fanart idea file are (translated from German, my notes file is bilingual): "AU: Erik as Celtic druid (romano-celtic Britain, power over metal seen as magic? Charles as upper class Roman?)" or "X-Men AU, Erik & Charles meet in the Spanish Civil War in the international brigades".

So those are pretty vague ideas. The next step is that I look around for images for further inspiration and ideas, like for example I googled for images of the international brigades and the Spanish Civil War for potential ideas of what I might draw to visualize that AU idea. So in this case I ended up with a folder of mixed historical pictures on my hard disk, from propaganda posters to group photos, but nothing really grabbed me, so thus far it hasn't gone any further.

If I have a specific scene in mind I look for references I could use for my picture and collect all sorts of stuff. With elaborate scenes I sometimes do thumbnails and such for composition, later on sometimes studies of bits (like a hand pose or such) and then I sort of try to assemble it into my first pencils. It's sort of like using photoshop layers but in traditional media, i.e. I often do things on transparent paper and move them around, and use my self-made light box too.

If I was lucky enough that the reference matches closely what I want in the scene, I sometimes even trace it in that step to get the posture right (see the whole lazy part above), though it usually morphs from that later on. As side note: I know tracing is contentious (much more than even photo reference which some life drawing proponents don't like either), and it just doesn't work for faces, as anyone who traced a face hoping to end up with a reliable character likeness will have noticed (because unfortunately humans don't really have lines, and to get likeness you need to either faithfully copy all shades or actively do some abstraction towards cartooning, mere "edge detection" won't do it for our finely tuned face recognition). But if you want to draw, say, a human jump, and have found a picture of such a jump from the perspective you want showing a human of roughly the right body type matching your character, and you trace where the arms and legs go that works well enough to have something in your draft quickly. Of course to not end up with some kind of Franken-drawing of mismatching parts, you have to watch that whatever you traced at some point will coalesce with the rest, i.e. the morphing I mentioned above, same as you do any time you reference things in bits and need to make them fit.

Anyway, looking at pictures on the internet (for backgrounds, actions, costume, character likeness, even just moods) is a big part of clarifying an idea for me, and usually at that point also my vague ambitions of gloriously complicated, epic scenes get broken into something that I might be able to draw in some way at least. Naturally at this point once again many fanart ideas stall.

But if I arrive at something workable I eventually assemble the parts into a whole, this process post about my Star Trek reversebang piece goes into the details, and is an example of the most effort I go to. Often I do less.

astridv gave me the prompt "First online fandom, and first fandom overall (in case those are different replies.)"

(BTW, if you want to ask me a question or prompt me for the January Talking Meme, you can comment here. Most dates are still open.)

I have always been a fan. I've been collecting comics even before I could properly read, and I can't remember a time before I self-identified as a fan. And I don't mean that I did fannish things and had fannish feelings while not aware of fandom, but I always knew that there were other fans like me.

My biggest early comic love were definitely Disney comics, in particular the Duckburgh ones, but I've always read and collected other comics too, like Yps, and a bit later I started reading Spirou and Tintin and all kinds of Franco-belgian ones, which my sister collected too, so once I was old enough not to destroy her stuff, I was allowed to borrow those, and of course I read comics from the library too. Though I soon bought my own copies, even if I had read them elsewhere, because collecting comics as physical objects has always been something I loved.

So well before I found internet fandom I was in offline comic fandom. I regularly went to comic stores and collector meetings, attended comic cons, bought zines, read books about drawing comics and comic history, went to open university lectures about comics, and drew comics and cartoons myself. I still have the comics I did in fifth grade. They aren't very good of course, but I was never a "drawer production" person, so I was showing these to my friends. Unfortunately even then I had trouble coming up with interesting stories. Worldbuilding I could do, but not plot. The results were best when I could collaborate with someone, so I did comics together with my older sister and with classmates, but it was hard to find someone wanting to write comics, have it be the kind of comics I'd want to draw and also have them happy with my drawings. I even met with other local teenage comic fans in a comic drawing workshop, but the others there were also into the art mostly, so that wasn't for collaboration. Also quite hilarious in retrospect, this comic drawing group for teenagers was actually some sort of thinly disguised city social work for drug and gang prevention, I think. Only at the time I didn't realize that I probably wasn't the target audience.

I mean, I was of course in the sense that I was a teenager and wanted to become better at drawing comics, and I had seen this offer advertised at the central public library, and went because it was a free comic drawing group. However, the group leaders were an artist together with some sort of youth social worker, and we always met in these youth centers in slightly dodgy places, first some mildly dilapidated building near the central station, then in some sort of anti-drug youth project thing, where I (as sheltered comfortably middle class girl) would have never gone otherwise. I was somewhat out of place, one of the few girls and among the youngest too, but it was quite fun, I learned a lot, and we did a fanzine together and had an exhibition at a local comic con (though I'm still disgruntled that I never got my original art back from that).

That was the only comic fanzine I've had my comics published in, though I also had my comics as serial in our school paper, and did some cartoons for that too.

The first times I ever used the internet were also because of comic fandom. I think it was in 1993 or 1994. My older sister had access through the university, and had told me about this, and I wanted to find what fan resources there were. So I visited her, and browsed newsgroups and FTP sites with FAQs about comics, using Lynx and Mosaic and Gopher for searching, and then printed the pages for reading at home. I still have a folder around somewhere with a stack of these printouts, I think.

But accessing the internet that way is rather inconvenient, so I didn't get to participate in online fandom yet. When my brother got a Compuserve account, I also visited him to use that, and I tried joining a due South mailing list, but the list traffic flooded his mailbox capacity, and it turned out to be totally impossible. But as you can see I was kind of trying to join online fandom before I was online, so as soon as I had personal internet access, even if it was dialup and cost me per minute, I was in online fandom. That was late 1997, iirc, and by then there were already many web sites and lists and lots of infrastructure besides newsgroups.

My first real online fandom was The Sentinel. As usual episodes aired here were much behind the schedule in the US and initially I just wanted to find an episode guide to see whether it was continued in the US, and I found Nightowl's Nest, and found much more than just an episode guide. I read my first fanfic then, and promptly wrote a squeeful email to the author how awesome it was to have found fanfic and their story (it was probably odd, I never heard anything back, and unfortunately a hard disk calamity destroyed my carefully hoarded early emails, so I can't reread it now with hindsight to check how it comes across). But as you can see I wasn't shy, and not even everything being in English could deter me (it certainly increased my English language practice a lot).

So soon after I joined my first mailing list (Senfic), didn't bother much with lurking there either, but started to participate in discussions. Of course I was reading lots of fanfic once I had found it, only gen at first, mostly because I was confused by all the slash warnings, assuming they were for violence (as in "slasher movies") rather than sexual content, though I couldn't quite put together why TS of all things would inspire so much gore, but that didn't misunderstanding didn't last long.

As far as online participation goes I was almost a monofan for my first years in online fandom, though I did read X-Files and Star Wars and some other fandoms too. I wasn't drawing fanart, because it never really occurred to me that I could. It wasn't a very fanart friendly environment. Part of it was technical, with it being on mailing lists and bandwidth issues on archives, but the bigger part was that there was little diversity in styles, and it didn't seem like fanart was welcome. What little fanart there was, were mostly just collage type photomanips (often not very good ones either, so I didn't like what I saw of that art form) and the few illustrations were all aiming for a very photo-realist style, which is not anything close to what I draw like. 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. Very few artists showed anything online, and zines were expensive, so I only ever ordered a couple, and even those often did not have any illustrations at all.

Anyway, 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.

For full disclosure of my firsts in fandom, 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. Of course like I said above, drawer works are not my thing, so I actually posted my first piece of fanart as a sockpuppet (in a way similar to daring to post in anon kink memes first these days). The author didn't react at all though to getting my illustration for her story, so that rather confirmed my impression that fanart wasn't wanted.

Sentinel fandom quieting down coincided with the shift towards LJ, and I became more actively multi-fannish there, and I got drawn into DC fandom (against all my expectations, I never thought I'd like superhero comics in my first decades of comic fandom). 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 there was more encouragement for it too, and with LJ it was easier to post pictures. So I posted my first proper fanart only after being in online fandom for over five years already.

madripoor_rose prompted with "favorite fandoms" and then clarified that she meant favorite sources rather than my favorites as far as fandom experience goes.

So the latter would actually be easier because I could just point to the largest, most active fandoms I've been in which I tend to find the most fun.

Anyway, favorite fandom sources. This is tricky, it starts with the question of what turns a source into "being a fandom" for me? I think for something to really feel as a fandom for me it has to occupy my thoughts in some prolonged way. However, unlike many other fans I don't usually rewatch or reread media, even if I enjoyed them a lot. Movies I usually watch once in the theater and then maybe once on DVD with the extras or such, same for tv -- even The Sentinel which was my main fandom for many years and for which I eventually acquired copied VHS tapes to watch it undubbed in the time before high speed internet sharing, I pretty much only watched most of the episodes once in the original. With few exceptions (mainly LOTR which I reread multiple times mostly as teenager) I don't reread books at all, e.g. I love HP, have read a ton of fanfic, but have only read the books once each, etc.

So the source on its own almost never occupies enough time for me to turn it into a real fandom feeling (unless there is a *lot* of source). That feeling usually only happens as synergy with other fans present who talk about the source, analyze it, do art, write fanfic etc. so that those conversations and works recall the source and cause me to think about it again and again. In cases where I love the source but that is absent, because I'm not in sufficient contact with fellow fans, I still may think about it in a fannish way, post some meta and fanart, but it is not sustainable. Like for example I like Animal Man, have written some meta, drawn some fanart, but I can't honestly say it is a real fandom for me. It could be, if Animal Man ever got really popular.

Similarly I would love for Rivers of London to become a real fandom for me, because I love the books and their world, the characters are great, and I enjoyed the fanfic I have read and wish there was more, but it is just not a daily occupant in my head.

As far as all time favorite sources for which that requirement is (or has been) true, Duckburgh comics, especially those by Carl Barks but some other creator's too, are high up there. They were my first fandom when I was a little kid, and I still love them decades later. I am still in a fanclub for them, I love both Watsonian meta about the Ducks and their world, and Doylist behind the scenes articles and comic indexes (I have piles of zines and several books); they are the single biggest influence on my art, and I adore the characters, even though I don't currently collect and read a lot.

Tolkien would be another longterm beloved fandom, mainly Lord of the Rings, though I did like getting the background from the Silmarillion and from the fragments of his writing too. I love the world building, and I come back to that again and again. I mean, I never really give up on fandoms, so if I see a new fanwork I remain interested, but LOTR is one of the cases where the source is rich enough that I need less fandom input, though I like Tolkien fanworks too.

As for current favorites right now, that would be the MCU/Avengers, because I like all the characters as heroes well enough and it provides enough fanworks I enjoy for a steady stream of things to engage with, though I actually haven't even watched all the movies (like I haven't watched Iron Man 2). I expect the X-Men to occupy more of my time again once the next movie comes out this year.

kass prompted: "Would you talk about how you created your Ratcreature avatar (did it evolve into the current recognizable form, or have you always drawn it this way?) and what do you enjoy about having a customizable avatar of yourself?

This is going to be a bit rambly, because the origins of my avatar are something of a confluence of things.

I got my LJ in September 2002, and at that time I already had chosen "RatCreature" as my pseud for my website and generally for posting in places that were indexed by search engines, though I had used my first name on mailing lists earlier. On my website I had initially a color-shifted picture of a rat as image to go with the pseud, but that wasn't very fannish or personal and I wasn't invested in that. Icons were an important marker to recognize people, so I wanted mine to be unique and recognizable (I didn't really think I needed more than one initially, little did I know, heh), and a picture of a pet didn't fit that. Also at that particular time I didn't actually keep rats, though I had before.

Of course many fans chose pictures of their favorite characters/actors and such, but I wasn't comfortable to represent myself through photos of other people or objects or something like that, I wanted my icon to be *me* and completely mine not just a rat, but I also didn't want to use a photo of my face, in part because my LJ was for my fannish pseud not about RL. On blogs and on LJ as well many artists choose a drawn self-portrait as avatar, so I decided to do that, even though back in 2002 I hadn't drawn any fanart. There was much less fanart then, and all the art I've seen for the online media fandoms I'd been in had been very realistic art, so not suited to my style or abilities at all.

But I had drawn goofy cartoons a lot in school when I was bored in lessons, which teachers generally tolerated because I wasn't disruptive and could still follow the material and participate even while getting a lot of drawing done. Being lazy by nature I appreciated that I could get good grades without much effort and had strongly resisted any suggestions that I ought to skip grades, and I liked my classmates too for the most part, so I got a lot of doodling done. Anyway, the things I doodled were mostly funny creatures with big noses, initially just with feet and no arms, and some had trunks like these in this very old drawing. I've also always loved anthropomorphic animals, and comics with them. Not quite a furry inclination (I've never been into cosplay), but the Mary Sue self insertion characters in my early teenage fantasies looked like this.

So I generally didn't draw cartoon humans, but anthropomorphic animals and odd creatures in my cartoons. By the time I was finishing high school I regular drew creatures that looked quite similar to my avatar to represent humans, not just me but humans in general, in cartoons for our school paper and such. So naturally in our end of high school yearbook ("Abizeitung") on which committee I was (and suffered much frustration) on my personal page I drew myself like that, rather than as a cartoony human resembling me.

Anyway, when I needed a default image for LJ a few years later I thought back to that, and pretty much took the image from the second panel from the old personal page above, removed the braid, because in 2002 my hair was short and I wasn't wearing a braid like in high school, and made it smile, but I didn't really start drawing RatCreature icons just yet, I had just modified that one picture.

So I had my first icon, and it was good as default, but of course fans did a lot of things with icons on LJ in 2002/2003, There were icon memes and icon makers doing certain themes and such, and being as much of lemming as the next fan, I wanted to participate and have icons like the other fans had, but I still wanted my icons to be unique and immediately recognizable. You can see how that is something of a problem.

One of the prominent icon things at that time that many people had were

lanning's "zen fen", with calm pictures and such. I wanted one, but still didn't want to represent myself by an object, like a pond or a zen garden. Also, in kerfluffles I'm not actually very zen (then even lessthan now), so I thought it would be funny make mine a little different, and in February 2003 I drew my zen...or not icon. You notice how the angry posture is pretty much copied from the typical Donald Duck outburst, a scan of which you can also see on my personal high school page. I think I've gotten smoother drawing my avatar with practice since then.

That sort of broke a dam, because the same month I made my first fandom themed avatar, Batman!RatCreature, because I was very much into Batman comic fandom then, and posting about that, and it seemed easy to dress up my avatar with a Batman costume, to have a fandom icon and still a recognizable image that would be me. Sort of like virtual cosplay. Free LJs had three icon slots back then, iirc, and in the Batman GIP post I said "BTW, were I using this LJ and not my blog as main journal, and thus paid for a LJ and had more icons, I would have more different moods and actions with my cartoon personality." (I had started a blog on my own website earlier and was still posting there and on LJ).

Of course with other fans being awesome and enabling, I was promptly gifted with some paid account time, and drew Happy!RatCreature as a celebratory response the same day, and the next day followed Spiderman, Superman, and a tv watching RatCreature, and that has expanded to now 136 icons.

What I still really like about my decision to stick with my avatar in variations as icons, is that all of my icons are recognizable as "me" regardless of their topic or fandom, once you are familiar with their basic "premise", even if you haven't seen that particular icon before. I like that my picture can always be me yet still be flexible and express my mood, so I don't have to be a Sad Panda one day and a Grumpy Cat the next in my images, but I am sad RatCreature and a grumpy RatCreature etc. It does take a little more effort to make new icons and to adapt icon memes and such to my theme, so that can be a bit frustrating at times, but it can also be really fun, and it has been inspiring me to draw. I'm not sure I would have started to draw anything in fandom without first venturing into fannish drawing through these doodles where I couldn't really do anything "wrong" or not get characters right or anything like that, because it is just my avatar.

Many people have been doing this in December, and it looks like fun, so in an effort to post something besides f-locked, boring whining about my latest cold, I've decided to try this in January. Slightly late, but there is still plenty of January left to pick days from if you'd like to suggest a topic to, so:

Pick a date below and give me a topic and I'll talk about it (though I'll reserve the right to decline prompts).

( list of days )

Current Mood: bored

Almost a year ago I offered fashion meme sketches, and then between one thing and another never got around to doing any. However, here is one for

lilacsigil, who prompted "Mystique and reformed dress! With bloomers!"

Better late than never, right?

( sketch behind the cut )

( that house meme )

Current Mood: bored

Gakked from

astridv.

Pick a number from the list and I'll answer it in the comments.

1 - Your current OTP.
2 - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind.
3 - A pairing you have never liked and probably never will.
4 - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.
5 - Have you added anything stupid/cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?
6 - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?
7 - Do you remember your first OTP? If so who was in it?
8 - Do you prefer characters from real action series or anime series?
9 - Has the internet caused you to stop liking any fandoms? If so, which and why?
10 - Name a fandom you didn’t care/think about until you saw it all over tumblr your social network sites.
11 - How do you feel about the other people in your current fandom?
12 - Your favorite fanartist/author gives you one request. What do you ask for?
13 - Your favorite fanart or fanartist.
14 - Your favorite fanfiction or fanauthor.
15 - Choose a song at random. Which OTP does it remind you of?
16 - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).
17 - A ship you’ve abandoned and why.
18 - A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships.
19 - Show us an example of your personal headcanon.
20 - Do you remember what your first fanwork was?
21 - Self-rec: What's your favorite fanwork you've created?
22 - Are you one of those fans who can’t watch anything without shipping?
23 - 5 favorite characters from 5 different fandoms.
24 - 3 OTPs from 3 different fandoms.
25 - A fandom you’re in but have no ships from.
26 - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go.

Sorry that the costume meme responses haven't yet been forthcoming, but I was so bothered by the Goodreads thing I mentioned in the last entry (where they switched away from Amazon and that messed up some book data they got from there) that I asked for the "librarian" rights to help fix the stuff myself. As a result a massive time suck event happened, as I'm correcting the data for my books and adding covers and so on. (And of course I first had to read the rule manual and learn the idiosyncratic conventions of the site to not mess things up.) But I haven't forgotten about the fashion meme.

Current Mood: apologetic

I saw this meme in

astridv's journal, and since it's always nice to see a fanart meme come by, I thought I'd participate too.

Give me a character and a time period from fashion history, and I'll draw the character in said fashion.

I changed the linked website to the wikipedia category for history of clothing, because I found the originally linked website impossible to navigate and badly designed, whereas wikipedia offers conveniently sorted links and a fair amount of nice pictures in the articles' galleries.

Fandoms on offer: X-Men, Star Trek, Merlin, SGA, HP, DC and Muppets

I've never really drawn fashion, so while this seems like an interesting challenge for me, I'm going to limit it to five people, because I'm not sure how much effort this is going to turn out. So for easier queuing I've bundled comments on my main journal on DW for this entry.

I've seen More Joy Day! linked several times in my circle today, so I thought, why not offer you drawbles to spread joy?

As usual: I'll do my best for any fandom I'm familiar with, or random stuff (monsters, steampunk machines, animals...) or I can just pick prompts from your interests. I don't draw porn though, and I'm not good at portrait likeness. Also keep in mind that these are quick doodles, so for a prompt that is a description of some epic scene you've always wanted to see realized in fanart the results aren't going to very satisfying for you (or much fun for me).

If you want to see the quality (or lack thereof) you can expect, look at the drawble tag. I don't make any promises for results or a timely delivery, but the past I've usually managed to draw something for everyone who prompted me for these non-demanding, open drawble offers.

Your main fandom of the year?
Definitely X-Men: First Class in the second half, and probably rediscovering Highlander in the first half.

Your favorite film watched this year?
X-Men: First Class

Your favorite book read this year?
Possibly Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch. Though I was probably more invested in Ghost Story by Jim Butcher.

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?
I don't listen to a lot of music.

Your favorite TV show of the year?
Merlin, like last year.

Your favorite DW/LJ community of the year?
I haven't been very active on any comms besides my own (obligatory plug: check out

fanart_recs *g*), but perhaps the XMFC kink memes? But then I don't really like the kink meme format that much, it's just that I go where stories are to be found.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year?
X-Men: First Class again. Though I've been into X-Men before, so it's not strictly new. Then again the non-reboot media launches seem to get ever rarer.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?
Hmm. I've not been really disappointed in a fandom in which I was still very invested. Perhaps that so far I haven't even watched SPN season 7 anymore counts? In fandom I've missed

yuletart a lot. And as far as general infrastructure goes, I really wish Delicious hadn't self-destructed.

Your fandom boyfriend of the year?
I'm still not sure how to take this question. A character I really like? Someone whom I fantasize having a relationship with? In the latter case none, in the former, possibly Erik Lehnsherr (with the understanding that I want Charles and/or Raven to keep him occupied and far away from me).

Your fandom girlfriend of the year?
I don't think I fell in love with any characters this year specifically.

Your biggest squee moment of the year?
Uh. I actually have no real idea. Possibly Ghost Story arriving by mail?

The most missed of your old fandoms?
Like last year, when it comes to nostalgia I probably still miss The Sentinel most for the complete fandom immersion of being almost mono-fannish in a big and centralized fandom, that was very active with both fic and discussion.

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?
I can't think of anything. Feel free to suggest stuff...

Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?
The next thing in the calendar I look forward to is the new Sherlock. Later 2012 there's the new Temeraire book (I wasn't that thrilled with the last one, but still hope for the next), the Legend of Korra, and later The Hobbit movie comes to mind as well.

Current Mood: bored

Three people asked for a drawble in my last meme post (in exchange for reposting the meme and offering doodles themselves).

derryderrydown asked for "Tony Stark/Steve Rogers", and I'm not really familiar with the fandom, but I have sufficient Marvel familiarity through osmosis:

( Tony Stark/Steve Rogers (SFW, they just kiss) for Derry )

goss asked for Zuko, and I intended to draw him in some action pose, as a fierce firebender, but it was just not working, and instead I felt compelled to draw Emo!Zuko, staring forlornly down at some flame. IDEK.

( Zuko for Goss )

rosaw asked for Charles/Erik, but somehow I couldn't come up with a couple-scene for them (even though I ship them!), so I settled for drawing them as they watch each other's back in a fight:

( Charles/Erik for Rosaw )

Adapted from the drabble meme going around:

The first five people to comment in this post get to request that I draw a doodle of any pairing/character of their choosing.(*) In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

(*) Though it would probably help if I'm familiar with the fandom.

Here's another meme I've seen around. (because I really need to stop browsing news sites as diversion)

The Hypothetical AU Meme: Take any one of the fandoms you know I ~~write~~ draw/rec/read AND give me a type of AU (space opera AU, pirate AU, superhero AU, etc) or another time period (Ancient Rome, Regency England, etc). I will then explain the gist of the ~~story I would write~~ scenario I would imagine for that AU.

Current Mood: bored

29 – What is your current project or projects?

Just counting things for which at least something exists as scribbles on paper or in digital files:

There is the piece I started for the SGA Reverse Bang, where I then had to drop out for RL reasons, and which I then stopped working on. It's a steampunkish team scene, where the team in costumes stands around a table in a library with a map open (they are planning for something), and a lot of mechanical gadgets doing something are arranged there too (like curios). Also for some reason Sheppard has a tiny dragon sitting on his shoulder.

There is that Sanctuary thing where wanted to do a creature encounter diary/file/portfolio for some abnormal (inspired sort of by the credits), and I had decided to do a Mothman (after I did a poll here), but then some similar creature appeared in canon, and my design ideas didn't work with that new canon, and I'm not sure what to do now after being kind of jossed. I.e. whether to continue this, or draw them like in canon so that it fit (though I'm not thrilled with that), or maybe switch to another creature. So that's stalled now.

Then there is the X-Men/Watership Down fusion for which I got the inspiration from a kink meme prompt, and I thought it would be simple, but it turned out rather hard to draw a Rabbit!Magneto freeing another rabbit from a metal trap, and I'm currently still stuck with a ton of thumbnails, a whole pile of photos of sitting rabbits as well as action shots of rabbits, and stupid photos of small, supposed-to-represent-rabbits models I arranged to figure out composition and perspective. Anyway, much harder than I thought, even though this premise already dodges my usual stumbling block of character likeness what with them being rabbits. (I really wish I had an eye for caricature to get likeness right. I think that is the art ability I covet most, but have no idea how to cultivate, short of the extremely labor intensive method of doing thousands of sketches of different faces trying to pick out the distinctive features, which makes my inner sloth recoil.)

The list of potential artworks that so far only exists as text description of ideas is much longer. Looking at my file that is a total of 35 fanart concept ideas in 12 different fandoms, but considering that some of them have been on that for several year now, I can't exactly count those as "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!

Uh. This is hard. I'm quite proud how my Star Trek Reverse Bang art turned out. I think the atmosphere with the giant statues works and I did a decent job with a group of people. Also it was the first time I tried a painting without ink lineart for clarity, and I like the result.

27 – Where is your favorite place to create art, and do you use traditional media, or digital ones, or both?

For scribbling ideas my favorite place is actually my bed, because it also functions as my couch, so that's were I sit/lie with my laptop when I read fanfic or watch tv. My initial sketches are always pencil, so that is no problem doing in a comfortable spot (for a while I stuck with a resolution to try to do more life sketches, and drew people on the bus and such but I feel always self-conscious and awkward -- I probably should do more of that, exercise being good for you and all that, but the public is not a favorite place). However it gets rather unergonomic when I do digital inking like that (it probably is unergonomic with paper too, but a sketchbook or pad is easily held, rearranged and not very heavy compared to a laptop/tablet setup), though I still do it for quicker pictures even though neither my back nor my right hand thank me for it, not least because my actual desk tends to be often buried under all kinds of crap. For traditional painting I use said desk with an improvised drawing board put up.

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?

I've never collaborated closely. In the ST Reverse Bang a writer wrote a story based on my art, I've got a drabble for a picture once, and I've done ten illustrations for fanfic stories, but I don't ask permission or talk to the authors before I draw something. I show them the illustration afterwards and most authors seem happy to get fanart. Only once did I have an author not react at all when I linked my fanart in a comment. I suppose she could have not gotten the LJ comment notification, though the LJ was still active and in use when I commented, or she could have disliked it and not said anything, but either way, that was somewhat disheartening, especially since it was a fairly elaborate painting.

Anyway, the way I've done illustrations so far hasn't been really a collaboration. I sometimes think it might be fun to do work more closely with a writer, maybe on a comic or something like that, where there would be a back and forth, but comics are a lot of work, and I'm lazy.

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?

In general I need quiet to concentrate and music distracts me. I don't use music to create a mood, don't have playlists, and actually I listen to very little music, because I can't read with music on in the background either. Depending on how frazzled I feel (I'm easily distracted, especially on the computer) sometimes background noise helps, so then I may have some tv on in the background, but mostly not.

26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a piece of fanart?

I don't really draw research intensive things, like historically accurate costumes and backgrounds or such. I look for relevant references, whether screencaps for characters, or pictures of movement or postures or animals, but the closest I've come to "research" was getting a few books on machinery for the steampunk puddlejumper picture. You wouldn't think such a basically whimsical picture needed much research, but I still wanted the parts look like machinery, and the prompt this picture originated from was "Victorian steampunk AU" and I didn't settle on a mechanical pterodactyl right away. It turns out children's books explaining technology are quite good if you want detail pictures of machines. For my HP magical creature series I browsed through google books looking for scans of old encyclopedias to get an idea for the style I'd need to fake something like that. That was fun too.

The meme template for this X-Men: First Class fanart meme is from here on dA, by Julia C.

( large image file )

23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? DeviantArt? Just an archive? Your own personal site?

I post to my personal site (since 1999), my art-only wordpress blog (which I use because category sorting there is easier with just art specific labels, than in a journal with everything mixed), my journals (DW/LJ/IJ), and I try to post to communities if I find one that fits. The last two years I've also posted to deviantArt. I would use the AO3 for my fanart (I have an account there for reading locked stuff, commenting and bookmarking) if it already had fanart functionality, but I don't see much sense to archive when I can't even archive the work itself, or have good browsing functionality for pictures. I mean, if I was killed by a falling toilet seat tomorrow and my webspace expired three months later, the archive would be left with a bunch of broken images if I just embedded.

24 – Betaing – Do you use art betas? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?

Yes, for more elaborate pieces I like to have art betas, usually to check over the pencils for glaring errors or get help on perspective and such. I didn't use to, because for a while I didn't even know that kind of thing was done for art too, probably because thanks to art betas in art headers are rarer than to fic betas in story headers, and also I didn't seek out more art-centric forums even after I started doing fanart, because all my early media fandom engagement (on mailing lists and such) was fic-and-meta-only.

I don't have any horror stories, or any dream stories either. My experiences with betas so far have been pretty much what you expect. I sent a scan of my pencils, sometimes pointing out an area I have trouble with, I then got feedback, either written or scribbled over the image (I rather like the latter method), and mostly heeded the advice.

21 – Series/sets – Have you ever created series of connected artworks, and if so, why?

Yes, my HP magical creature drawings are a series, also my DCU/Muppets fusion, though the latter is more on the sketch-side rather than elaborate work. And some others were intended as series, but I haven't (yet?) realized more than one part, like my SGA/ATLA fusion that was supposed to have one for each team member, but I only did Teyla as waterbender. (Sheppard was supposed to be an airbender, Ronon a firebender and Rodney an earthbender.) I like series to show more than one character/thing when the topic is worldbuilding.

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?

Yes, I've done Yuletart as a holiday exchange four times now, have participated in the

paintedspires prompt fest in SGA, and in the Star Trek Reverse bang once. As that list shows, I like fests that are art-centric.

I can't really recall a single favorite experience, perhaps because for me such commitments are always kind of a mix of the pressure helping me to actually create art, and the increased anxiety of failing to deliver. I think overall Yuletart is the most fun, because I like gift exchanges, and it is run very smoothly. Also it runs while so much of my flist is in Yuletide mode so it makes me feel less left out for not writing fic.

Getting a story written from my art in the Star Trek Reversebang was also awesome, but I couldn't really collaborate as much as I would have liked to with the author, i.e. maybe doing another illustration after seeing the first draft and such, because at the time my father had serious health problems and was in and out of hospitals (and it was the first time that it fell to me to do all kinds of practical stuff rather than one of my siblings), and I barely managed to do the one painting properly and provide some feedback on the story draft. And when I think back to doing that painting I mostly feel the horrible dread, and remember the moment of getting an awful phone call while I was painting. So while I like how my art turned out, and liked getting a story, the whole emotional connotation of that fest is swamped by my memories of the RL mess, and not really "favorite experience" material.

I have thought about signing up for regular Big Bangs a couple of times because I like to illustrate stories, but have always been too uncertain whether their setup could work for me. First there tends to be a fairly long time between the sign up and the moment I can start to do anything as an artist (sometimes the art sign-up is later, but I always see the promotions when it starts with the author sign-ups), and then I worry about what might happen if I didn't like the story I'd get to illustrate.

Bundling the "bunny" question set.

18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your art (aka "bunnies") from?

From stories or from prompts, sometimes art also happens because I want to try a technique I've seen. Sometimes discussions and non-fiction posts inspire me, though that happens more for my icons which I use in discussions.

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?

It depends. If the bunny is for something quick and cracky that is very context and time dependent, like comment art, I just do a scribble. That doesn't happen all that often, but when it does I end up with things like Tim turned into a lesbian centaur, John and Rodney in Woody Allen sperm costumes, or Batman getting a time out. For most fanart however it doesn't go like that, because the impetus to make something is less immediate. So I have a file for fanart ideas, write down my idea and most just land there to rot. I usually think about an idea for quite some time, and just imagine it in my head, and only start drawing if the idea is compelling enough and I keep liking it for some time.

20 – Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?

Yes, definitely. (Though bunny should not become a verb.) I like illustrating stories. Other fanart inspires me more in the sense that I sometimes want to try techniques.

First, sorry that the LJ crossposts of a couple of posts all came at once, and some out of order on top of that, but a due to the DDOS a later post was the first to get through, so then some of the earlier ones were crossposted after that on LJ. I hope LJ is back for good now. *crosses fingers*

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?

I started out just with a description, then used proper header formatting and finally started to include previews. Though for drawbles I often use the previews only on my fanart blog and website, not in the journal posts. I always crop my previews to 120x120 px to keep it small (also because then it's all squares suitable for the layout on my own website), and try to pick the most interesting part of the image that still gives a good idea of the whole. I dislike cryptic crops in previews, but I like a good teaser crop better than just having the whole as a tiny thumbnail.

17 – Titles – Do you give titles to your art? How do you come up with them, if you use them?

Mostly I just have titles if a fest or exchange asks for them. I'd like to title my art more often, mostly because I know it makes linking and bookmarking easier for others, but I have a really hard time to come up with anything suitable.

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?

I don't warn on my own website, but in part that is because I so rarely post anything that would need warnings in the first place. In my journal I use headers with a warning field because some of the newsletters and communities ask for that for linking, and overall I've come to see that kind of header field mostly as "content labels" rather than the more negative "warning". And with art that you see all at once there isn't even the issue of spoiling any twists.

What I think is most important to warn for would be anything that has sex/sexual nudity with underage characters, because in some locations such art can count as "childporn" even if drawn, and even if it is teenagers and not young children, so you don't want to download it accidentally. Also labeled IMO should be the fannish equivalent to shock images, and I think if there are preview pictures for such art they should not show that part of the picture but instead use text warnings. So I'd warn for extreme violence and gore, violent sexual imagery, and animal harm in pictures, and probably be specific about what is disturbing so people can avoid specific squicks, e.g. I'd label for "gory medical instrument torture" or "explicit eye injury" rather than just "gore".

Obviously I'd also warn for serious spoilers for the canon, especially if something is still new, as a fannish courtesy.

On the next level of importance I'd put labels for explicit sex, sexual nudity and such that's merely NSFW but not disturbing, and character death. Anything else I'd probably put more under useful, but optional, detailed content labels (anyone who has seen my delicious account will guess that I have a strong preference for detailed labels) to help fans find what they like and avoid what they don't like.

As far as warnings that I have actually used myself go, there haven't been many, and nothing unusual. My art is overwhelmingly harmless. I've warned for drug use once for regular fanart, and for animal harm twice I think in drawbles, and I tend to indicate nudity or sexual activity even when mild, e.g. "PG for clothed, sexual kissing". Really it's all very tame.

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?

My comfort zone pretty much ends at "teen audiences" level. Visual porn doesn't do much for me, and I'm fairly sure I'd feel ridiculous drawing it. So when I do show pairings I'm more likely to pick a situation that just shows intimacy, like cuddling or an embrace, or moments of tension for example when the participants are still clothed, but eager to change that. That is not to say that my sexual kinks don't show through my art, such as power dynamics, but the end result won't be explicit, because that is not what attracts me. So it's no coincidence that for example kneeling people aren't uncommon in my pictures. I can imagine having an idea that would be higher rated due to violence or gore more easily than doing explicit sex, but it's not that likely either.

Also, I'm aggravated to find that I still can't even post comments on LJ. What are they doing to their site over there? It's been over a day. *grumble grumble*

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?

I'm more often inspired by fanworks than by canon, especially if the canon is already visual like live action or comics. Unfortunately I only rarely get a real urge to draw (hello sloth, old friend), and then it is mostly because I wish to illustrate a scene that was vividly described and put an image in my head. So if canon is already visual that doesn't happen all that often. I'm not good at imagining scenarios or stories myself, so if the visuals are already there more often than not I don't feel like doing more. Most verbal stories don't provoke that visual urge either, but some do.

I don't think making fanart changes my view of the source much, except that I pay closer attention to detail.