Interior art

[orangeandblue]

Why scan Interior art? I can understand the fanzine covers for reference and I can understand posting art which is already online. But posting interior art from zines I don't understand. Has anyone contacted the artists and gotten permission from them? Do you need to?
Why not start scanning the stories from all the older fanzines and posting them too.

Comments

[morgandawn]

I cannot speak for others but one of the reasons I focus on interior art is to offer a broader sampling of artists and art styles across time. I found that there is/was a concentration in who zine publishers were selecting as their cover artists so this is the way to give other artists a chance to be 'seen'. In zines with extensive interior art, I try to scan one piece per artist. Even then it's a lot of work, so I have to be more selective than I'd like to be. And of course, I only have a small collection of zines so I am under no illusion that I am going to be able to create a true cross-section of artwork on my own.

Another reason, is to showcase trends in fan art- shifts in how characters are depicted or how artwork has influenced stories (or vice versa). It is also a way to capture 'art fanon'. Without documentatation it will be impossible to see the patterns and trends, let alone discuss them because most fans do not have extensive fanzine collections.

And last, because some of the best artwork I've ever seen has been interior art. Interior art should not be considered more (or less) worthy of preserving. Art is art, they say. :-)

[sporangia]

I believe art should not be posted on-line unless permission is given by the original fanzine artists. If they do not want their work posted that should be honored by fans now. I understand the frustration of wanting to see some of the spectacular artwork made by fanzine artists, but their work should only be posted on-line after permission has been given.

[kass]

Thanks for your comment, orangeandblue! The wiki comm is working now on our Image Policy FAQ which should hopefully answer all of these questions fully; it will be posted here for comment when it’s complete, hopefully within the next few weeks. Meanwhile, here are brief answers.

Everything which is added to Fanlore is there because a fan thought it was interesting / noteworthy / awesome enough to record. This is as true for interior images as it is for zine covers.

Showing images of fanart in Fanlore is fair use. We always give credit to the image’s creator (unless that person asks us not to), and the images should be there to illustrate a point or a particular fannish trope or a particular trend in fanart. Or, if the page is about the artwork itself, the article should make note what is interesting or important or beautiful about it.

Generally speaking, a Fanlore article would not be an appropriate place to repost an entire story, since we’re not an archive; nor do we encourage uploading all of an artist’s body of art. Fair use of fanart includes using a limited number of an artist’s images to illustrate a point. The parallel, in the case of a story, would be to quote a section of the story to illustrate a point that the author of an article wants to make.

For more information, stay tuned; hopefully our Image Policy FAQ will answer all of your questions, and if not, that will be a great place for you and others to ask further questions for us to answer!

[ratcreature]

The parallel, in the case of a story, would be to quote a section of the story to illustrate a point that the author of an article wants to make.

Except for how this is not parallel at all, because one is the whole thing and the other a part. When you show the whole picture, you archived the whole picture, and to pretend a picture is not a whole work in itself but equivalent to merely a quote from a story is ridiculous, and frankly somewhat insulting too.

The equivalent to a section would be to do things like crop the Vulcan penis tentacle from a K/S slash art to illustrate fanon penises rather than showing the whole picture, or something like that. Obviously the whole body of work of an artist is not like only one story but equivalent to the whole body of work of an author. You don't archive three whole stories (say one PWP, one humor an one epic) of an author who wrote 50 as an example to illustrate writing style either.

The wiki should just be honest and say that it has been decided to treat art differently rather than to go to such contortions to pretend what's done with uploading this art is the same as quoting a paragraph or two from stories. In the end the wiki respects artists' rights to control distribution of their art less than authors' rights to control distribution of their stories because it is more practical this way. That's what this comes down to.

[sporangia]

Thanks for saying this. I was a Trek illustrator active in the middle and late seventies, and I'm finding many of my works have been reproduced in full. In most cases a full page drawing was my only contribution to the zine, so my work is 100% represented. I was a minor illustrator for the era so finding my work at Fanlore, at all, surprised me.

I still have all my fanzines, and adding my collection to those of my friends, we have many of the zines published in the seventies. I am very interested in finding out what the official policies and guidelines for posting art will be. At the moment there are many errors in the wiki, and since I have the zines I can correct some of them, but I will not upload art without the permission of the artists nor will I post real names.

[scarface]

"Generally speaking, a Fanlore article would not be an appropriate place to repost an entire story, since we’re not an archive; nor do we encourage uploading all of an artist’s body of art. Fair use of fanart includes using a limited number of an artist’s images to illustrate a point."

But you are not an art archive either. Most articles I seen on the wiki has lots of art uploaded from fanzines, but the artiles talk nothing about the art at all. For me it just looks like it is there to make the whole thing look pretty. I could understand if it was there to illustrate something. Like how 'this' or 'that' has changed over the years or if an artist has a very distinctive style.
Another thing is how much of the art uploaded is in very high definition. If it is really just there to sample, wouldnt a sample size be much better? You can still see what the art looks like in the sample pictures just fine without making it bigger.
I really think that you need permission from an artist before posting there art. They may not want it on the wiki at all. Maybe it was not ment to be seen other places then where it is posted. It is not okay at all to steal art.
As for older zines the artists may be hard to contract but you can always try. Maybe in places like zinelist on yahoo groups. Much of the art in zines where never meant to be anywhere else but in the zine it was published.

[kass]

Most articles I seen on the wiki has lots of art uploaded from fanzines, but the artiles talk nothing about the art at all.

In that case, we should be adding text to those pages so that we're living up to this guideline! If that's something you're interested in doing, please feel free to dive in.

As I mentioned above, we'll be releasing our Image Policy FAQ for comment here soon. I think that FAQ page will make a lot of things clearer, and I ask you to bear with us while we put the finishing touches on that document. Thanks for your patience!

[ratcreature]

More often than not the art isn't even credited to an artist, because the covers were uploaded from zine sellers and the info is just not there. So there is *nothing* said about the art beyond that it is the cover of such-and-such, and *no* credit is given.

So the claim you made above that fanlore always gives credit to artists is just false for a vast, vast number of pictures uploaded, and does not reflect the reality of image use on the wiki at all. Which is that there are several thousand szine covers attributed only to some ebay seller, with no artist info, and only used to show the zine.

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

Which is that there are several thousand szine covers attributed only to some ebay seller, with no artist info, and only used to show the zine.

Only using it to show the zine is still a good use of the cover IMO. Zine covers and other pictures of zines don't just show the art, they give information about the zine format, the paper quality/color, the binding, show the exact spelling of the zine name which helps with identification in case of duplicates, show font size and shape which sometimes helps identify zines that belong together/were published by the same publisher/are part of a series, etc.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I can see the case being made there, and I understand why the policy is to upload without asking permission for every cover for practical reasons. Though I think even with those, if an artist explicitly objects later on to their art on the wiki it should be respected, because otherwise the site would be quite outside the fannish etiquette, even if the wiki just does the same as the ebay sellers.

But the image policy (or what we see here of it in progress according to the comments above) should not pretend otherwise, and claim that all art was credited when plainly very much of it is not, or say that art is only included to talk about the art, and if this isn't the case soon someone ought to come along and would talk about the art eventually. That is just silly.

[morgandawn]

"or say that art is only included to talk about the art, and if this isn't the case soon someone ought to come along and would talk about the art eventually. That is just silly."

Actually, that's a Wiki. It is built on collaborative editing and the hope that if you write something on something, someone else will come along and flesh it out further. It can be frustrating to see these huge gaps in content and fanzine pages sitting there with just an image and a title and nothing else. Fanlore is just starting to pull in more substantive content - up to this point, a lot of what I've been seeing has been bare bones documenting. But you have to start somewhere.

[ratcreature]

Of course someone will end up talking about some of the images (at least I sure hope so), but just as most stories that are listed won't be talked about further, unless they where remarkable in some way, most art won't be talked about in detail. Only while the stories are just represented with a title and author, plenty of the art, in particular covers, ends up being represented with an archived copy of the whole thing.

[morgandawn]

Again, I cannot speak to how others are handling their image uploads. But if I have artist info (and keep in mind I may not have that info when I am uploading the image - many zines or publisher websites fail to give any artist credit!!), I will credit the artist.

Ex: http://fanlore.org/wiki/A_Kingdom_by_the_Sea_Revisited

I think what ratcreature may be saying, is that she is seeing that some of us are listing the source of the image (ex. did I scan it? did I get it from an ebay seller (and who)? did I pull it off a website - if so, a link) only on the image upload pages.

But the artists are being credited. They are being credited on the more important place - the actual display page (zine page or artist page) where people will be seeing the image.

And to chime in on what someone said upthread - yes, we do need more art discussion. I know so little about art and I don't have the vocabulary to discuss it at the level where I can make intelligent comparisons. I have a hard time even seeing the difference between ink and pencil styles. So please, dive in and help flesh out the pages. There are thousands of zines, some with cover art, some with interior art and they all need more info on the artist, the artwork and their places in fandom history.

PS. I know nada about Beauty and the Beast fandom so if I've made any errors on the Kingdom fanzine page, please let me know.

[ratcreature]

I didn't just mean on the image file page, though I think if the artist is known it would be good to add it there too, because for example if you browse the recent file gallery because you enjoy looking at the art, you come from there to the image page, and may not even click to the zine article, so seeing the artist associated with the file would be cool. But that is secondary.

I did mean also on the zine pages, because as you say, often the information is just not known to editors who add a zine that they find listed somewhere (or even own if the zine neglected art credits). I didn't mean that as some kind of accusation that editors would intentionally not credit artists, just as a statement of fact. Quite often there is a cover of a zine, with fanart, and no indication who did the fanart, unless someone who was involved with creating it came by and added that info.

But IMO it's no use when the official image policies end up just talking about some kind of ideal (all art is credited, art is uploaded because the article talks about it etc) that is rather removed from the practice of many of the image sources that are there, and pretend that is what is done on the wiki, rather than acknowledge the reality, and handle the potential conflict that comes from uploading images like that.

[scarface]

That doesnt really answer my questions, but hopefully the new Image Policy FAQ will. And hopefully it will change for the better, because taking art without permission = not cool.

[scarface]

Also, are you going to remove art from the wiki if an artist doesnt want it there? With the current art rules it doesnt seem like it?

[ratcreature]

I've had real trouble with that (and ranted about it in my journal). The wiki committee refused to remove the versions of my art that had been uploaded when I pointed out that I prefer to get the traffic to my art myself (and it were really large versions in some cases too, over 1000px wide), only the original art piece that had also been uploaded was deleted when I complained to the committee via email.

They didn't actually change it to different versions either (the mail said they'd make the art smaller at least), though a regular editor uploaded cropped preview thumbnails over the full pictures, which is okay with me. There can be sample of the art seen, but it is only a teaser and people then can visit my own site to see the real thing and I get the traffic and maybe even comments. But that wasn't the committee response, which just offered smaller full pictures even though I wasn't in favor of that, and actually the full art has not been deleted from the wiki either and can still be seen and accessed through the file history (like you can see in this image file on the wiki), because regular editors don't have deletion right, and the newly uploaded thumbnail is only the newest version.

Anyway the committee refused to delete, saying it was "fair use" that my art was uploaded. So in my experience, no, they won't delete just because you don't want your art archived, though I guess the versions might have been made smaller by someone official eventually.

[scarface]

Looking at 'Choices' here:

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Choices_%28Star_Trek:_TOS_zine%29

All the art in the fanzine has been uploaded. and too what purpose? certainly not to illustrate a point. Why not just upload all the stories in the zine also? Why is it okay to show all the art but not the stories? Pretty double standard.

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm aware, the people uploading their scans featuring the zine artwork of that artist have permission to do so as long as it's displayed in a size preferred by the artist (see the artist's talk page).

[scarface]

Thank you for clarifying that, as long as the wiki has permission from the artist, I'm glad.