Profile Pictures - Official, Fanart, and Unrelated

[Antvasima]

I am a diehard perfectionist, and my relentless work ethic has paid off in constantly drastically increased visitor statistics.

 

[Antvasima]

For that matter, you have also helped out a great amount with improving the wiki over the years, such as your massive work with better category organisation, which is greatly appreciated.

 

[Antvasima]

If I remember correctly we currently have over 70 times as many visitors per month as when I first came here, so our dedication to quality is appreciated.

 

[Antvasima]

Anyway, can we please leave the issue of entirely getting rid of all fan art now, and focus on the intended main topics instead?

 

[Agnaa]

Yeah I don't expect a quick turnaround on the fanart issue. 18 out of the 26 votes (70%) are for using fanart in some way, 4 (15%) are for never using it, and another 4 (15%) suggest some somewhat strong restrictions.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, as I mentioned, perhaps we can return to the main topics regarding whether or not we should use fan art images that are unrelated to the relevant verses in question then?

Also, would it be a good idea to start a wiki management thread for adding artist credit links to header images that lack them? Our staff members would need to commit to helping out with this ongoing task though.

 

[Starter_Pack]

I feel that would be a good idea, yes.

 

[Promestein]

Well, as I mentioned, perhaps we can return to the main topics regarding whether or not we should use fan art images that are unrelated to the relevant verses in question then?

Let's not use them. Why would we use them?

 

[Agnaa]

Let's not use them. Why would we use them?

Even though I'm neutral on or disagree with all of these cases, I'll try to provide a good positive argument for them.

Conditional on there being no official art or fanart, can pictures/art that match the character's described appearance be used?

They should be used, since we know from the text that's what they're meant to look like. If a character is meant to be George W. Bush, putting up a picture/painting of them is fitting. Even if they're not literally that human, there's many cases of robots/aliens explicitly taking on the appearance of known IRL humans. On top of that, there's a few more obscure examples (mainly residing in SCP) where a profile refers to a fictionalized version of a location in the real world, which should look like that location actually does.

Unsong's specific weird case

They're associated with William Blake paintings, and this is both acknowledged by the author, and acknowledged in-universe. The entire story is an allegory for William Blake's Mythical Cycle, the book quotes William Blake all the time, most chapters are named after William Blake verses, and the parallels between many of Unsong's characters and William Blake's works are extremely overt. So in lieu of better options (this being the only official art of two of them, with them having no fanart), this is a good choice.

Conditional on there being no official art or fanart, can pictures/drawings/diagrams of the cosmology/concepts associated with it be used for supreme beings?

Since supreme beings tend to embody their cosmology, and also tend to lack actual physical representations in any art, it's fitting to provide pictures/drawings/diagrams of the cosmology or concepts associated with it.

Conditional on there being no official art or fanart, can other artwork of religious/mythological beings be used for one verse's description of it? (i.e. using Renaissance-era paintings of Jesus for a profile)

This one feels pretty much self-explanatory to me really.

 

[Antvasima]

Agnaa made some good points.

 

[Agnaa]

Well my own views would rebuke those points by saying:

Even if they're likened to a character, there's issues like verses have their own artstyles, characters appearing at certain ages, and potential subtle physical differences (a robot/alien taking on the appearance of someone often in fiction doesn't perfectly replicate how they look), that make just plopping up a picture of that character a bit unreliable.

Even if they're associated with William Blake paintings, that doesn't have much relevance to how they actually look, which is what a profile picture should convey. Sure, I find it funny, but it detracts from the usefulness of the profile.

Even if they embody their cosmology, they are not some part of it or a diagram of it. A diagram of the entire cosmology, especially one officially-provided, is the most fitting, but then we get to unofficial diagrams, diagrams of only a part of the cosmology, or pictures of associated concepts. Each step along the way, the picture chosen becomes less and less representative of the character in question.

For artwork of religious/mythological beings, this pretty much takes the "interpretation" issue up to 11. There's many ways to interpret how the vast majority of religious and mythological characters look, that it'd be very unlikely for this to capture what the series' creator has in mind.

 

[Antvasima]

Those seem like better points, yes.

 

[Antvasima]

Also, would it be a good idea to start a wiki management thread for adding artist credit links to header images that lack them? Our staff members would need to commit to helping out with this ongoing task though.

Anyway, this seems quite important...

 

[Bobsican]

Bump.

 

[Antvasima]

I would appreciate helpful input here.

 

[AKM sama]

If we are talking about giving proper credit to all fanarts, this is not urgent at the moment. It should be a gradual process where people should simply do that whenever they come across any page with fanart. And in case they are making a new page, perhaps a note in Standard Format for Character Profiles regarding this can work.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, an ongoing wiki management thread is not remotely the same as an urgent wiki-spanning sudden project.

 

[Bobsican]

Is there anything left to do here?

 

[KLOL506]

Well, an ongoing wiki management thread is not remotely the same as an urgent wiki-spanning sudden project.

Agreed. People should do this in their free time if they happen to spot it.

 

[Spinoirr]

Dbs manga Vegeta and Goku need official renders for their profiles as most of their image's use fan coloring instead of the official colored manga

So useing fan coloring doesn't represent the actual colors the characters are

 

[Antvasima]

Also, would it be a good idea to start a wiki management thread for adding artist credit links to header images that lack them? Our staff members would need to commit to helping out with this ongoing task though.

There is this issue. It seems important to me, but we preferably need more staff input, along with a draft text of what the first post in the new management forum thread should say.

 

[Bobsican]

Bump as this is clearly unconcluded.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I still plan to create a new wiki management thread for fan images without credits to the artists, but don't know what else that we should do here. It seems like there are too many different opinions to reach a conclusion for any changes.

 

[Antvasima]

Just a note that I created a thread for this a while back:

https://vsbattles.com/threads/adding-credit-texts-to-fan-images-in-the-wiki.120249/

 

[Antvasima]

Is there anything left to do here, or should we close this thread?

 

[Agnaa]

Going back to the earlier vote...

There isn't a clear consensus on "Conditional on there being no official art or fanart, can pictures/art that match the character's described appearance be used?" 4 people are okay with it with varying degrees of limitations, and 3 people are against that entirely.

Unsong's specific case has 4 votes in favor of it staying, 2 votes against, and 2 neutral votes.

Cosmology diagrams is kind of close, 5 votes in favor of them being allowed, 3 votes against.

For the question of "Conditional on there being no official art or fanart, can other artwork of religious/mythological beings be used for one verse's description of it? (i.e. using Renaissance-era paintings of Jesus for a profile)" 2 people are for, 4 people are against, and 2 people are for only in the case of mythological figures, not religious ones.

On the question of stock photos for abstract beings, there's a near-universal consensus against using them. They should be removed from these three pages.

The other four questions should preferably have some more input.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I personally think that the Unsong profile pages look nicer with the current images, but that's me.

 

[Bobsican]

Bump.

On another note it seems @Ultima_Reality wants to promote fanart over official art if it's "uglier" or the like. While this fan-art has explicit approval by the owner, that makes the site arguably less professional out of giving more priority to a fan-portrayal than a official one.

Also, I apologize for assuming that standards over this already existing on the link above, but we still need a proper conclusion.

 

[Agnaa]

According to my old vote-count, Ultima's stance seems to be agreed upon.

1. 4 people voted to always use official art, and never use fanart.
2. 4 people voted to always put official art above fanart, with fanart or no image both being options if there's no official art.
3. 3 people voted to only use fanart if there's explicit permission from the artist.
4. 1 person voted to use fanart if the author considers it an accurate representation of their characters.
5. 14 people voted to prefer official art when it's good, but that fanart is an option if the official art is bad.

14/26 of those who weighed in think that's fine.

 

[Damage3245]

What really need to be done here?

To me it seems rather simple that we should use official depictions of character where possible, but if no such art exists, or if it exists but it is impossible to make renders of it (or if the official art is incredibly inferior) then using fan art or fanmade renders (while giving credit where we can) seems absolutely fine.


Anything else just needs to be looked at case-by-case and debated in their own threads.

 

[Starter_Pack]

My thoughts exactly.

As long as the art is credited properly, I don't see why we can't use fanart if the only option we have is a bad, low-res render, if any is available at all.

 

[Agnaa]

@Damage3245 @Starter_Pack I listed the remaining issues a few posts back. Those questions involve cases where there is no official art or fanart. Such as whether "Unrelated art of a character who matches the description" can be used, whether classic paintings can be used when many characters in a story are officially related to those classic paintings, and whether superme beings can have out-of-text artwork/diagrams associated with their cosmology used as a profile picture, whether any artwork of religious/mythological beings can be used for specific verse's depictions of those beings.

I think this thread is the exact one these things should be debated in. Given how split the votes on those things have been so far, if we leave them to their own threads then we'll have inconsistent results across profiles. One verse will have 2 people who are okay with it, so it'll get added, another verse will have 2 people who aren't okay with it, so it won't. General threads like these are meant to resolve those sorts of inconsistencies.

 

[Damage3245]

Using completely unrelated art sounds a bit dubious to me.

There's nothing wrong sometimes with just leaving a profile without images.

 

[Antvasima]

What really need to be done here?

To me it seems rather simple that we should use official depictions of character where possible, but if no such art exists, or if it exists but it is impossible to make renders of it (or if the official art is incredibly inferior) then using fan art or fanmade renders (while giving credit where we can) seems absolutely fine.

Anything else just needs to be looked at case-by-case and debated in their own threads.

This is fine with me as well. However, there is a problem with that our members usually do not properly give credit to fan artists, despite that I have tried to encourage them to do so, and it is very hard for others to find those artists with no clues to go by.

 

[Damage3245]

This is fine with me as well. However, there is a problem with that our members usually do not properly give credit to fan artists, despite that I have tried to encourage them to do so, and it is very hard for others to find those artists with no clues to go by.

That is an issue but it doesn't seem like something that can be easily resolved here.

 

[Starter_Pack]

Agreed. The most we can do is try to emphasize it in the Editing Rules, and hope people follow it, on top of likely creating a thread to deal with any fanart the community may point out to credit.

It really is out of our hands what happens outside of this.

 

[Antvasima]

That is unfortunately true.

 

[Bobsican]

...Is there anything left to do here?

 

[Antvasima]

I do not think so at least.

 

[Bobsican]

From a quick glance it seems we've yet to write an standard over what was concluded, unless that was done already.