Exactly what it says on the tin. But I'll be adding another question?
Should I make fan art of someone or something from a show that I haven't watched yet without risking for that character to be out-of-character?

alexyorim said:
Should I make fan art of someone or something from a show that I haven't watched yet

That's what many of the most successful patreon artists do. It works commercially even if they're mostly just drawing the same body over and over with different hair and don't care about the source material. The artistic downsides are obvious, but money is money and respect is respect, don't need one to have the other.

"I fear not the man who has drawn 10,000 waifus once, but I fear the man who has drawn one waifu 10,000 times."

The speed that artists jump onto trends these days makes it pretty difficult to even hear about something before seeing fanart, let alone watch it.

alexyorim said:
Should I make fan art of someone or something from a show that I haven't watched yet without risking for that character to be out-of-character?

I find it just a little disingenuous to draw a character you know nothing about and call it fanart, but I'm sure there's plenty other people already doing this. Unless you're making a comic or something plot-heavy I doubt anybody is going to care whether it's out-of-character or not.

I don't think I would have ever considered playing several of of my favorite games if it weren't for parodies and fangames on Newgrounds back in the day. also I only decided to play Jet Set Radio after DJ Professor K was prominently featured as a SiIvaGunner character.

alexyorim said:
Should I make fan art of someone or something from a show that I haven't watched yet without risking for that character to be out-of-character?

I think a lot of the time you can kind of pick up most of what a character is about based on just consuming fan creations and existing in a space where the characters are discussed.

I feel like there are a lot of cases where the "collective headcanon" around characters is actually more coherent and engaging than what's in official media. for example, as a Sonic nerd, I think that stuff like Super Mario Bros. Z is way higher on the "required reading" list than pretty much any of the official media released between like 2008 and 2018.

honestly, it probably depends on what you intend to make fan art of, I don't think that there's really a one-size-fits-all answer for this. you'd probably want to ask a fan of said series what they think or something.

I watched 2.5 seasons of MLP because of the thread simulators, I suppose. Hard to imagine I'd have watched it for any other reason.

Being a furry got me to watch Beastars eventually. I had decided to make sure it'd get on my next Plan To Watch list once I'd cleared out my old one, but frankly it was probably too highly rated and unusual for me not to do that anyway. Beastars' fan art had very little to do with that decision. Objectively, I think Beastars was probably the best anime I'd seen in over 5 years, which I could tell by around episode 2, and I felt great melancholy knowing that I'd probably watch it too quickly to get full value.

I did find out about and watch Helluva Boss, Hazbin Hotel, and The Amazing Digital Circus because of furry connections. Gave The Summoning a try too, but it has too many problems.

alexyorim said:
Exactly what it says on the tin. But I'll be adding another question?
Should I make fan art of someone or something from a show that I haven't watched yet without risking for that character to be out-of-character?

Most porn is out of character. That's almost the point. Animators made a nice-looking character and people want to defile that with scenarios that character has never been in or expressed interest in. Even SFW fan art is filled with headcanon and stories outside of official lore and plenty more art that's too simple to be in or out of character. The believable, lore-accurate interactions and behaviors may be more of the rarity.