Fanart accreditation

There’s been much ado in parts of the otakusphere these past weeks regarding the use of fanart and illustrations on image boards, blogs and other such websites without mentioning, crediting or linking back to the artist(s) who created the art.

Felt like making a small annotation to the whole topic, about which there’s many posts, some contained interesting arguments like Fuzakenna’s text for instance’, alas some other writings and their comments sometimes degenerated into a cacophony of insults and misunderstanding.

The lovely “K-ON!” artwork seen above is by Kitagawa Unagi. あずにゃんほしい…

Can understand the grievances of artists who see their work copied, used everywhere without ever being credited, nor gaining any of the deserved visits, interest, feedback or praise for their art creations.
Ideally, this should not be so and everyone should make an effort to correct it.

Should I have sinned against this, which I no doubt in my unawareness might have, sincere apologies to the grieved artists.

Likewise, can relate to the arguments offered that it’s not always easy to track back the creator of an artwork and that the artist who created fanart does not hold any legal copyright to the original characters or work it may be based on (which along with fair use can be somewhat of a grey area as Thoughtscream wrote).

To see the flaming, trolling and all out feuds we witnessed was quite sad. Would like to ask everyone to just take a deep breath and try and communicate constructively, logically and positively to each other about this and about our passion for anime, manga and its great art.

Another terrific けいおん illustration by Kitagawa Unagi. Mhh… Ritsu and Mio~

Isn’t that what it originally is all about? Aren’t we here to share our love and passion for anime, manga and art?

Didn’t you create fanart to show your love for a series or character? Didn’t you put it online to share and spread that love?
Didn’t you put a fanart that you found up on your blog or on an image board to share with everyone else what a great and amazing artwork it is?

Firmly believe most of us are here for that reason, because of our love and passion that we want to share with kindred spirits.
So why not share it in a positive way and with renewed respect for each other?

Don’t let the fraction of disrespectful and nonconstructive people get in the way of the majority of decent and nice people to get along.

Above illustration of Azusa and Mio is by Kitano Yuusuke I think. でれでれ澪-ちゃんかわいい。

The blog posts made here containing fanart or official art all have the intent to showcase the amazing creations of these many artists, to spread that passion and ignite a spark in the readers so they too can discover such art and come to love it.
Talking about the art of Gofu, Tony Taka, Mahiru Izumi, Kantoku, … and many others, is to share enthusiasm for their amazing art, to try and drive more people to discover and love their art.
If that has offended them or caused them harm, then I regret it.

We could spend our short time here on earth filled with rage, hate and negative emotions. Can’t stop anyone from doing that. But it’d be too sad to be like that, wouldn’t it?

There’s other blog posts about this topic which you may find interesting to read, like those by Fangzhao, Hinano, Wah, Rabbitpoets,…

In all, my thoughts for all to get along might seem like I’m just a positivist or idyllic idealist… but still firmly believe we’re here to share our common love and passion for anime and art, so we should be able to understand each other.

Like Vash the Stampede said, love and peace!

The hidden goal of this post is not to infect you with yuri themed “K-ON!” images…