I'm just curious about this, because I have this tendency to rarely do fan art, aside from Undertale and My Little Pony.
It would have developed my own art style, but for some reason, my imagination and a bit of learning from realism helped me to develop my own style.
Though to ask from you, do you have an aversion to do fan art, and why?

Until recently I rarely made any because it just doesn't feel like I'm adding anything interesting to something already incredibly saturated. It's the "pissing in the sea of piss" thing.

I've made a lot more recently but for a pretty specific reason. The above still applies.

I'll touch on it occasionally, but I've been doing 95% original work since I hit puberty. Most of my "fan art," is actually just gift art for someone because I think their OC's design is really cool. Mainstream fan art I've done I've either done on commission, or if I have something to say about the property.

My opinion of fan art is that it is a shit-magnifier, as in it would be a bad picture already but it is made much worse by using properties that the artist does not own. This isn't true of all artists who do fan art, even those who do it almost exclusively (I was personally a big fan of Sophiecabra's "Canterlot High" pictures when she was still doing them,) but most fan artists seem to lack any real creativity of their own and so have to piggyback off of other people's hard work. This is especially obvious when someone takes a property and hammers it to fit their own interests rather than organic developments from the property itself. This is fine when you're five and you're learning by imitating others, but a lot of fan artists never seem to grow out of that. This is why when I set up a quality-controlled art group on deviantArt, I specifically excluded fan art.

Plus, there is something just a bit unsavory about erotic fan art at its core. I feel bad for people who make something that isn't inherently sexual in any way only to have metric tons of really weird porn of their creation get bukkaked all over the internet, especially when that thing had an intended audience of young children. I'm a bit more forgiving when such property is 20 years old and the artist was probably going through puberty when they were fans of it, but when it is new fresh properties...I'm not kink-shaming, but I am kink-please-keep-it-to-yourself. I also have to question how much of a fan an artist actually is if all they do is alter the bodytypes of the characters (looking at you, people who made hyperfat Rouge the Bat for the 15,000th time;) how much of a fan are you really if you have to change it so much to suit your tastes?

lonelylupine said:
...

This isn't trying to start an argument because this is your opinion and there's no "right or wrong" here, and this isn't an attack on wanting to only create original work, or preferring original artwork... but, I'm very glad most people don't think like this.

Fan art can be very creative, and in my opinion, sometimes a piece of fan art can even be more creative and interesting than a similar piece of original work... whether artists alter a character or not doesn't make them any less of a fan, I think that's a rather silly implication, nor do I feel they're "piggy backing", being lazy, or being childish. Not everyone wants to create art for the sake of bringing a wholly original idea, character or story to life; some people enjoy combining, modifying and transforming existing things they're a fan of and sharing that personal interpretation, some create art because they enjoy... well, making art, this doesn't make them creatively bankrupt.

If something inspires someone to create art, good, if that art ends up being conceptually interesting, even better, if that art is aesthetically appealing, fantastic... but it doesn't have to match my taste or your's to be valid.

hungrymaple said:
This isn't trying to start an argument because this is your opinion and there's no "right or wrong" here, and this isn't an attack on wanting to only create original work, or preferring original artwork... but, I'm very glad most people don't think like this.

Fan art can be very creative, and in my opinion, sometimes a piece of fan art can even more creative and interesting than a piece of original work... whether artists alter a character or not doesn't make them any less of a fan, nor do I feel they're "piggy backing", being lazy or being childish. Not everyone wants to create art for the sake of a wholly original idea, character or story; some people enjoy combining, modifying and transforming existing things they're a fan of and sharing that personal interpretation, some create art because they enjoy... well, making art, this doesn't make them creatively bankrupt.

If something inspires someone to create art, good, if that art ends up being conceptually interesting, even better, if that art is aesthetically appealing, fantastic... but it doesn't have to match my taste or your's to be valid.

I know all that, which is why I said:

lonelylupine said:
This isn't true of all artists who do fan art, even those who do it almost exclusively (I was personally a big fan of Sophiecabra's "Canterlot High" pictures when she was still doing them,)

lonelylupine said:
My opinion of fan art is that it is a shit-magnifier, as in it would be a bad picture already but it is made much worse by using properties that the artist does not own.

I disagree. A bad picture would be just as bad whether or not it's fan art. People trying to be original, on the other hand, can easily become tryhards. Not to mention even trying to define "original"; is it really that different for someone to draw something based on a fox anthro they saw than a braixen they saw? They saw something they liked, and wanted to try drawing something like it themselves. People make art based on pre-existing things/experiences, and "fan art" is only a term for things that some third party could claim IP ownership to.

lonelylupine said:
Plus, there is something just a bit unsavory about erotic fan art at its core.

I disagree with this also. People like what they like, and if they like porn also, telling them they shouldn't make porn of it is stifling creativity, which I generally consider bad. And when there are other people that also like porn of the thing, it becomes something to interact and bond together over, which is a good thing. In some cases, there's a wealth of potential story-telling ideas, and concepts to explore, by taking an adult look at something that might not have been created for adult purposes. As long as it's kept to adult-only areas (standard behavior for any kind of porn), I see no issue whatsoever.