"On model" describes fan-made artwork or animations of copyrighted characters, made to be stylistically near indistinguishable from the actual official art of the source material. In some cases, the only way to distinguish it from official art may be the subject matter of the artwork.

Additionally, the on model tag can be used to describe when characters are depicted in a way that is heavily based on the official style and proportions of the original character designs, or where the character's face alone is more or less on model, while the rest of their body is altered.

Notes

As hinted above, there is some "wiggle room"...

• on_model can still apply to fan art that uses a different medium than the source material, or is slightly different in terms of colour, line thickness or line art style, etc — so long as the character design remains extremely close to the official artwork , it should look like the artist based the drawing off of screenshots or the official model sheet of the character
• e.g. an Animal Crossing character digitally painted rather than 3d rendered, but retains the anatomy and proportions of the game

• this tag applies regardless of subject matter, and can apply even if there are changes the anatomy of the character without changing the art style they are depicted in
• Explicit fan art that gives the on model character genitalia, or fan art that gives a character larger breasts or buttocks is still on_model so long as the overall style of the character design remains similar to the original source material.

Related Tags

• fake screencap, on model artwork may be seen in a fake screencap of a real piece of media
• official art, art from a production which is officially sanctioned, e.g. model sheets, advertisements, comics

See Also

• on style, art that replicates the source material's style, but may deviate from the character's typical design
• style crossover, when two or more characters drawn in visually distinct styles are interacting in a single scene
• this is frequently seen in crossover art with both characters drawn on_model
• style emulation, when art is drawn to emulate a particular style, regardless of whether it is fan art, or on model for the character depicted