Profile Pictures - Official, Fanart, and Unrelated

[Agnaa]

I have a few questions about our standards for profiles pictures that have sprung up recently.

Firstly, if there's official art and fanart, but the fanart is deemed to look better, do we prioritize the fanart or the official art?

Secondly, if there's no fanart, are we allowed to use pictures/art that match the character's described appearance? i.e. A character is a sentient version of a building that exists in real life, or a character is a person that exists in real life.

Thirdly, I don't really know how to ask this question without talking about a specific page so, this profile has pictures that don't match the character's shown/described appearance, and are paintings of other characters in an archetype this character belongs to. Presumably because the only official/fan art that could be found looks pretty bad. Is this sort of thing allowed? If not, what's the best alternative? Using the bad art, or having no profile picture at all?

Fourthly, for abstract characters/supreme beings without official art/descriptions or meaningful fanart, what should their profile picture be, if any? Does a picture/drawing of a concept associated with the cosmology of the verse work?

EDIT: A fifth bonus question, should we allow other artwork of religious/mythological beings to be profile pictures for one verse's depiction of it? If a series describes Jesus without providing any official artwork, can one use other paintings of Jesus?

EDIT 2: A sixth question, these three characters are abstract supreme beings who lack official or fan art, so their profiles were given random stock photos, the first some humanlike form with funky colours, and the other two pictures of nebula. Are these allowed, or should they have no pictures?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I've used the later for TES characters so I think it's fine.

 

[DontTalkDT]

IMO official art is always preferable above fanart. Good fanart is better than nothing if there is no alternative. If the fanart is awful, nothing is an alternative. I would leave that to the individual choice of the people interested in the character. Using pictures that don't actually depict the character should IMO be avoided.
I guess using a diagram of the cosmology to a character that embodies it or something is viable.

 

[Antoniofer]

In order to avoid possible copyright issues, personally I would avoid using fanart; also, if there's an official art, for more ugly it could be, I rather use it instead of fanart.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

This point is irrelevant in the case of internet-born series which have either no official art or where even the official art is just the author comissioning an illustration or two from freelancers.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Fourthly, for abstract characters/supreme beings without official art/descriptions or meaningful fanart, what should their profile picture be, if any? Does a picture/drawing of a concept associated with the cosmology of the verse work?

This in particular is fine by me, since characters of this sort are usually all-encompassing personifications of the entire cosmology, so, using a diagram of it is appropriate enough.

Thirdly, I don't really know how to ask this question without talking about a specific page so, this profile has pictures that don't match the character's shown/described appearance, and are paintings of other characters in an archetype this character belongs to. Presumably because the only official/fan art that could be found looks pretty bad. Is this sort of thing allowed? If not, what's the best alternative? Using the bad art, or having no profile picture at all?

Unsong characters are special cases, I feel, since they are very closely associated with the characters depicted in the paintings used for their profiles, to the point that this influences their role in the story, and is acknowledged in-universe, too (With Uriel saying that William Blake "didn't like him very much" as a reference to his depiction in the latter's poems, Urizen, being a negatively-portrayed demiurge figure, or "Ana Thurmond" being a pun on "Enitharmon"). In the absence of any good profile pictures representing them, I'd say this is a good choice.

Secondly, if there's no fanart, are we allowed to use pictures/art that match the character's described appearance? i.e. A character is a sentient version of a building that exists in real life, or a character is a person that exists in real life.

I am frankly not sure about using actual pictures of the real-life people, but I do think that, say, a painting or a representation of them that's otherwise one step removed from reality would be okay to use.

Firstly, if there's official art and fanart, but the fanart is deemed to look better, do we prioritize the fanart or the official art?

What exactly do you mean by "official art" here? To use an example borrowing from The Elder Scrolls: Most of the Daedric Princes don't actually directly appear in the games, and you mostly interact with them through statues located in shrines and such, so, most of their pictures would be just awkwardly-taken screenshots of said statues' sprites, which doesn't really look good on profiles at all.

Official drawings and such would be okay by me, though, since most of those would be drawn with aesthetics in mind to begin with, so using fanart because you arbitrarily decided "it looked better" would be a bit pointless.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Using pictures that don't actually depict the character should IMO be avoided.

In the case of Unsong it's completely justifiable I think.

Quoting the Tosefta:

"The second big easter egg is that the book is a very, very loose reinterpretation of William Blake’s prophetic books and constructed mythology.

Blake’s pantheon centers around four male gods and their female counterparts:

URIZEN, the god of reason, and his counterpart AHANIA
LOS, the god of creativity, and his counterpart ENITHARMON (technically these are aspects of Urthona, but I’m ignoring this)
THARMAS, the god of the body, and his counterpart ENION
LUVAH, the god of chaos and passion, and his counterpart VALA

Urizen corresponds to Uriel; Ahania to Sohu.
Los is an ironsmith/storyteller god, and so corresponds to Aaron Smith-Teller; Enitharmon corresponds to Ana Thurmond
Tharmas corresponds to the Comet King’s supercomputer THARMAS, and Enion to Sarah (an NE-1 model MacBook)
Luvah corresponds to Alvarez, and Vala to Erica (I messed up on this one and confused Vala with another Blake character, Orc)

In the same mythology, Satan is messing with all of this, and so the poet John Milton descends to Earth in the form of a comet. He has the inherent poetic genius to sort it all out, but lacks the divine inspiration. Later, this is provided by his female counterpart Ololon, who takes the form of a bird, and who descends into Ulro (a sort of hell-dimension) to encourage Milton to do the same and redeem humanity.

Milton (in the form of a comet) = the Comet King. Ololon (in the form of a bird) = Robin. The Comet King tries to save humanity, but is powerless until Robin descends into Hell in a way that allows him to follow."

The entire story is an allegory for William Blake's Mythical Cycle. The main characters are direct parallels to Blake's Zoas and these parallels aren't only something that you could read into in a literary analysis, they are invoked within the actual text. The book quotes William Blake all the time, most all chapters are named after William Blake verses, Neil Armstrong declares that "William Blake was right about everything" and Uriel personally knew William Blake.

Moreover, the parallels between Aaron and Los, the Smith-God of Creativity, are also extremely overt. Aaron's narration references Los as the "Ironsmith Storyteller-God" at one point, an epithet that Blake personally never used, solely because it sounds very similar to his own name, "Aaron Smith-Teller". And in the end of the book all the other characters corresponding to the other Zoas merge together with Aaron's consciousness, paralleling the end of William Blake's mythic cycle, wherein all the aspects of the human soul come together to form the Perfect Being "Albion". And when this happens to Aaron, he is literally referred to as Albion and Uriel even explains what Albion is in Blake's mythic cycle.

So yeah, using a William Blake paintings of Los and Albion to metaphorically represent Aaron in the story is 100% valid and in-keeping with the Kabbalistic nature of the story.

 

[Agnaa]

What exactly do you mean by "official art" here? To use an example borrowing from The Elder Scrolls: Most of the Daedric Princes don't actually directly appear in the games, and you mostly interact with them through statues located in shrines and such, so, most of their pictures would be just awkwardly-taken screenshots of said statues' sprites, which doesn't really look good on profiles at all.

Official drawings and such would be okay by me, though, since most of those would be drawn with aesthetics in mind to begin with, so using fanart because you arbitrarily decided "it looked better" would be a bit pointless.

"Official Art" meaning anything released by the rightsholders. In-game models, album covers, drawings in books, stuff from art books, stills from videos, etc.

I can imagine the answer to this not being a black & white thing, like being okay with fanart if officially you can't get a great view of them, and not if the official art's "good enough" but you prefer the way the fanart looks.

IRT William Blake stuff: While I find the use of those pictures hilarious, I think it's weird due to the lack of visual similarity between those paintings and the characters in the story.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Metatron's profile picture is also a William Blake painting, particularly a painting of the Book of Job, "The Lord Answering Job out of the Whirlwind". The Book of Job features heavily in Unsong proper, to the point where there's an entire chapter dedicated to a Group Study section of the Book of Job where the characters bicker and debate about it. A huge chunk of the main storyline is dedicated to Ana wanting to solve the Problem of Evil and find the answer to Theodicy, which parallels Job asking God why evil and suffering exist in his book.

In the Book of Job, when God finally shows up to answer Job's questions (And give him a non-answer where he just gloats about how powerful he is and that Job isn't allowed to know the answer), God appears "out of the whirlwind". At the end of the book, when Ana speaks with Metatron who gives her the Answer, Metatron speaks "out of the whirlwind" also and then he shows Ana a vision of how the events of Job actually transpired, where Metatron answered Job out of the whirlwind but then forbade him to ever share his answer with anybody else.

So using a Blake painting of God speaking with Job out of the whirlwind to represent the character who actually spoke to Job out of the whirlwind in Unsong is justifiable in my eyes.

 

[Agnaa]

Now that you mention it, that is another interesting extra question. Should we allow other artwork of religious/mythological beings to be profile pictures for one verse's depiction of it? If a series describes Jesus without providing any official artwork, can one use other paintings of Jesus?

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I recall a multitude of discussions regarding this, but it's preferable to use official art because if that exists; it's the image that comes to mind first. Plus it is the more canon art and also doesn't have copyright issues with people from DeviantArt or other communities. The only time we use Fanart is for like novel characters who have no official appearance and it's preferable to get permission from the artist before using it.

 

[KLOL506]

Me naturally I'd try to go for official art as much as possible, of course like with everything else, exceptions will always exist, especially with regards to profile pictures so if there is no real way to get official art for the dudes and fanarts are your only option, then hey, what else are you gonna do? (Just don't forget to credit the artist).

 

[Agnaa]

Do y'all have any thoughts on the situations I outlined where there isn't official art or fanart?

 

[Planck69]

I just forgo the image if there's no fanart or official art when I make profiles. Of course, I'm not sure if we allow use of closely fitting but unrelated art on pages but I personally have no issues with it.

 

[QuasiYuri]

If there's no official art depiction of the characters, then the best is to not have pictures imo.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

disagree

 

[Planck69]

Fanart should still be fine though, the way I see it. And an image close enough to the character or object in question, I have no issue with.

 

[SamanPatou]

Imho official images are always good, but fan arts can be a good options if there are no official stuff or the existing one is bad or poorly made.

Having the autor's permission is always preferrable, or at least placing their name and website link under said image.

I'm against using photos of real people, but places and objects should be fine as long as the character is described as looking like said thing (just as the SCP do).

Diagrams and drawings of the cosmology is also fine, to me.

But leaving a profile without image isn't an issue, some novels profiles already do it because there are no reliable images.

 

[Planck69]

Indeed. I leave quite a few of the Ergenverse profiles without images and just place a quote since art, official or fan made, is unavailable.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, generally speaking we do tend to prefer official images, but have used fanart images for various verses, particularly Dragon Ball, if those images look better. Credit should very preferably be given to whoever created the images though, including a link to their homepage or Deviantart profile if possible.

Regarding Unsong, if the characters are officially closely related to classic paintings, I suppose that it is fine to use them if there are no better available options.

Controversial drawings of religious figures should very preferably be avoided though.

 

[Bobsican]

There's also cases where an stock picture is added even if there's absolutely no description in appearance to recall to see if it even fits, such as the Goddess of the Manifold, and I think it would be best to just leave no picture at all if we don't even know if they're humanoid or the like.

Speaking of which, the Ancients from Kirby (in the Kirby verse page) also hold a similar issue, using an stock image of humanoid creatures that heavily clashes with the rest of the pictures on the series and isn't even an official thing to use as a picture either, there's also a heavy amount of unsourced fanart now that I'm looking when there's official art for nearly everyone.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I am uncertain what to do in general. It probably has to be decided case by case whether or not it is appropriate.

 

[Damage3245]

Case by case makes sense.

 

[Bobsican]

Bump.

 

[Antvasima]

We have talked about this subject in one of our wiki management threads, and lean towards not allowing speculative art that has nothing to do with the original work, such as for The Goddess of the Manifold.

 

[Agnaa]

Does that mean that Anu's picture should be removed too?

 

[Antvasima]

I suppose we might have to do so, in lack of better options, yes.

 

[Agnaa]

From a quick search of the site, Padomay's picture would also need to be removed.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay.

What do the rest of you think about this, and should I call the higher ranking staff members here?

 

[Damage3245]

I think that the ones listed above should have the images removed.

A generic picture of some stars / nebula is not useful for illustrating the articles. We don't need an image, if there is not a suitable image available.

 

[Antvasima]

True enough.

 

[StrymULTRA]

So, removing the pics of

• The Goddess of the Manifold
• Anu
• Padomay

Is this was was agreed?

 

[Bobsican]

Can we also remove the picture of the Ancients in the Kirby verse page? Unlike the fanart featured, this is just an stock picture, for a civilization which is hardly known anything about physically speaking, let alone it heavily clashing visually with the rest.
As it's only used on the verse page, it can just be replaced with a line of text that just says the name and links to that page.

 

[StrymULTRA]

Can we also remove the picture of the Ancients in the Kirby verse page? Unlike the fanart featured, this is just an stock picture, for a civilization which is hardly known anything about physically speaking, let alone it heavily clashing visually with the rest.
As it's only used on the verse page, it can just be replaced with a line of text that just says the name and links to that page.

That can work

 

[Antvasima]

So, removing the pics of

• The Goddess of the Manifold
• Anu
• Padomay

Is this was was agreed?

Well, I would still prefer more staff input first.

Is it a good idea to call them here?

 

[StrymULTRA]

Well, I would still prefer more staff input first.

Is it a good idea to call them here?

Damage and Starter Pack already agree and Agnaa conceded too, so you can already remove them.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay.

@AKM sama @Promestein @DontTalkDT @Ultima_Reality @SomebodyData @The_real_cal_howard @Dragonmasterxyz @Celestial_Pegasus @Soldier_Blue @Saikou_The_Lewd_King @Andytrenom @DarkDragonMedeus @Wokistan @Mr._Bambu @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Ogbunabali @Abstractions

What do you think about this?

 

[Ogbunabali]

Well, I personally think we should exclusively use only official art, and disregard fan art. So I agree with the removal of random stock images of profiles.

 

[Starter_Pack]

Fanart is only ever used whenever it is not feasible to use the original artwork due to poor aesthetics or other topical reasons, if it even exists at all.

Anyway, yes, removing images that has nothing whatsoever to do with the content involved can and will work for me.

 

[Ogbunabali]

Fanart is only ever used whenever it is not feasible to use the original artwork due to poor aesthetics or other topical reasons, if it even exists at all.

I still don't think we should use fan art in those cases either. But I'm in the minority.