Wtf is this shit?

art by the people who made the games etc

I was going to say check the wiki, but there is no entry for it. Hmmm...

ippiki_ookami said:
art by the people who made the games etc

But that's outside info, is it not?

So basically it's the exact same thing as concept art?

720p said:
So basically it's the exact same thing as concept art?

Not quite. Concept art is the pictures made while working out what the final thing is supposed to look like. It typically very noticeably differs from the final product by a whole lot.

I presume official art would cover things like promotional art, magazine articles, and other things usually covering finished stuff. Basically, stuff that's not concept art, for the most part.

MaShCr said:
But that's outside info, is it not?

So is the character's name, the producer (such as Nintendo for Pokémon), and sometimes the artist's name. Official_art could be argued as falling into the same category, as outside info, but still of use.

MaShCr said:
But that's outside info, is it not?

I would have to agree with you on this. There truly is no point in having this tag. It does not describe the art in any way that is searchable.

Unlike character, artist, etc; an argument can be made that they are used for they are seen in the image. We know what Krystal, MLP's, Sonic, (and so on) is and we can tell art easily from many artists like Meesh, Kasey, Wolfy-Nail and so on. That is stuff we can see, but "official_art" is not something inherent and is truly an outside source of info.

I am with Mash on this one, "WTF is this shit?"

Well.

Furballs/Fur Fighters concept art

MDK2 official art(a few oncept art too)

Though I think it falls into the same category as character names and artists as far as outside information goes, I also agree that there's not much point. However, if people want it, I won't get worked up about it existing.

720p said:
So basically it's the exact same thing as concept art?

Concept art is a subtype of official art.

Official art can also be images from advertising/promotional work, graphics from peripheral products such as manuals or art books, or visual assets directly from the comic/movie/game. All of those things are official artwork, but they're all well beyond a conceptual state.

_Waffles_ said:
I would have to agree with you on this. There truly is no point in having this tag. It does not describe the art in any way that is searchable.

By itself, the official_art tag isn't particularly useful. But I think it works quite well in conjunction with copyrights, for example in official_art nintendo.

It works as a sort of surrogate artist tag. The actual draftsmen and designers that create official art assets are rarely, if ever, explicitly credited. The official_art tag is a tool to find work from in-house artists when searching a commercial serial.

It's not outside info any more then tagging the artist. IF the artist is the creator of something commercial, it's official art