First of all I'll say that character copyrights is something I've never really understood. Major companies will claim copyrights on their original characters and yet there's countless thousands of "fanart" drawings online that no one seems to care about. I've heard of the owners of various comic characters, for example the Superman and Shazam! comics, sueing one another simply for having similar characters and yet as far as I've seen from reading US copyright laws from government websites and sites that talk about the subject I don't see anything that says a "character" even can be copyrighted. Plus there's that thing with the Fair Use Act. I just don't understand it.

Anyways, what I want to know is what other people's opinion on drawing fanart characters is. I've never really felt right about drawing someone else's characters (except when I was on a weird Donald Duck phase in elementry school) and so I've only rarely done it. I just feel like if it isn't original to me then I'm not truely expressing what I want in my art. I know other people though that only draw fanart and nothing else and for them it's an expression of their love for the character. What you guys think about drawing other's characters versus drawing only your own original characters?


-edit, Shazam was called Whiz Comics at the time, and I think that occured before the Fair Use Act was passed.

Well, I think as long as you're just drawing whatever fanart for fun, it's not such a big deal. It's when people start selling the fanart or characters that closely resemble characters previously made, it becomes an issue. As for individual character copyrighting, I'm not too clear about, so those are kinda some od "my" ideas anyway discluding the broad knowledge of certain acts and laws.

I don't like drawing other people's charcters. It's to much fun making up my own.

I've made up hundreds *has a village in my head* @_@

I'm up to the 2 hundreds.

Most companies aren't going to sue people for doing fanart because not only is it free advertising for them (usually), but it'd be bad PR to sue little kids for drawing their characters.
On the other hand, as gigandas pointed out, if you're making money (or even using the characters to endorse something), then they're more likely to come cracking down.

as for people "making up characters," I have to question that. there's a lot more to designing a character than just drawing them.

Half the time, as far as creating a character, I come up with an entire personality in my mind, and then I try to draw them. This usually doesn't work too well, because I can never draw the character to my satisfaction; they never look like they do in my head. It tends to work better (for me, anyway) to draw a concept first, then build up on that.

As far as their personalities; I have made Livejournals for four of my characters. You just don't get worse than that.

I have made countless fanarts, but for the reasons Giganda's stated above, I don't sell.

Marcello: What is there more to designing a character than just drawing them????

@ Derrick Ewinh: Marcello might be talking about making a fictional character you might want to use in a story, or trying to develop certain characteristics in their personality so you can make the character express that if you are making a comic/manga/story.

I still want to know what Marcello thinks about what makes a character. He mite know something I don't.

marcello- In a book I have on Terry Pratchett from the Disc World series he talks about character creation and mentions that the creative process involves thoughts and memories from the artist (I assume he's talking about how creativity is largely the result of mixed experiences from a person's past and ideas that the artist is reworking and reprocessing). I've heard a lot of discussions that challenge the idea of originality too, since in many ways artists are simply reprocessing and reinterpreting what they have experienced.

visceralvamp- My external hard drive is named after a town I made up that my character Rin lives in. She has her own "house" (folder) in it.

Yes, I think fanart can be fun (I draw a lot of fanart). I also think that creating your own character is awesome and just as fun (if not more), but sometimes people don't think much about their character, just draw a random person, and slap a name on them. It bores me to see a generic character that someone came up with in less then ten minutes. I think if your character has cool characteristics or unique looks they can be really fun.

Most of my characters ended up being quick fill-ins that I made in roughly 10-40 minutes, but a few like Rin, Reiko, and Young Su I spent over a year on. Really Rin is only just now being fine-tuned the way I wanted her, almost a year and a half after she got a name (and that alone took several days plus many more months for the last name). To me my characters are very personal and are each an expression of some part of myself.

ok once again I was too lazy to read everything.. but I will... going by the title of this post... do original work if you want it stolen... copy others if you don't... all in all... I don't care... the ideas are endless.... there's always more...

Fanart is very useful for learning to draw characters consistently and just adapting certain styles, but once you reach a certain point you need to move on to original stuff. Fanart is to art what junk food is to food.

Or you could just do it for fun, rather than try to get anything out of it.

Even then you're getting something out of it, though: fun. My point was that it's only so useful from an artistic perspective (fun or not).

So you're saying that maybe fan art is for, at least certain types of, illustrators similar to what a still life is for a developing fine artist?

If anything I have a serious lack of consistancy in my art when it comes to drawing faces for example. My own characters rarely look just the same more than a few of all the times I draw them, and can't always be identified as being the same character even.