Fanart - Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer)
A fanart is a concept that is often used to refer to unofficial art of a given series or franchise that is created by a fan. This art can take many different forms, including illustrations, comics, drawings, digital paintings, and photography. Fans of television series, movies, books, music, or anime create works of art based on their favorite heroes and heroines in various styles and techniques. It is a medium of varied and creative expression that enriches the original product with numerous creative artistic works, even though they may not be recognized by the original artist or publisher.
Fanart Origins
Originally, the term “fanart” was used to describe a work of art of someone that wasn’t a professional artist or illustrator who created the piece simply out of passion for a given character or TV series, film, book, comic, and so on. This type of artistic creation was established, above all, in the genres of fantasy and science fiction, where magazines for amateur audiences called “fanzines” later emerged.
Fanart became increasingly popular in the 1970s, when Star Trek fans began to create the first popular culture conventions, where they would produce and share their own works based on the TV series. The many fanzines created by various Star Trek fans contained their pieces of amateur art and were shared with equally enthusiastic people. These fanzines included news and comments that needed art and illustrations to help improve their commercial appearance.
At the beginning, fanart was mainly done in simple black ink because it was easier to make copies and reproduce. Color illustrations were reserved for the covers and special editions of fanzines, as they required a four-color reproduction that implied more costs.
Nowadays, technological advances have played a decisive role in the fanart phenomenon. Artists can now simply share their works online through websites, forums, and mailing lists instead of waiting for them to be published in a fanzine. In addition, through digital painting and image manipulation software like Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop, they can create new images and illustrations of their favorite characters.
However, something that fans need to take into consideration is that, according to the intellectual property laws in most countries, fanart -- whose creation is inspired by copyrighted intellectual properties (such as comic characters, anime, video games, television series or movie actors) are considered derivative works and their distribution or publication is often considered illegal without the author’s consent.
Kimetsu no Yaiba Fanart
Due to the worldwide success of the Demon Slayer series written and illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge, there is a great amount of artwork made by fans of this series. Although artwork is quite popular, other creative works like merchandise and cosplay are quite common as well. There are also websites dedicated exclusively to find fanart of all kinds. One such website is Pixiv. This website is often used by amateur Japanese artists to upload their works of art. Since the site is accessible to anyone with an account, works can be shared very easily. Although artwork is certainly more common, other types of creative media are available as well, including fan-made manga and novels.
On Pixiv alone, there are approximately 76,000 pieces of artwork, 20,000 individual novels, 6,000 fan-made chapters of manga. These works can all be viewed for free via the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba tag, though users without a Pixiv account can only view works sorted by “Newest”. An option to view the most popular works is available, but can only be accessed by users with a premium account.
Although there is a tag for the overall series, there are also tags for specific characters as well. Many characters have thousands of unique works devoted to them, with some of the more popular characters reaching nearly 15,000 in total. The protagonist of the series, Tanjiro has just over 15,500 pieces of fanart that feature him. However, even the protagonist of the series is beaten by his fellow companion, Zenitsu, who has nearly six hundred more works devoted to him.
Another platform that features a lot of Demon Slayer fanart is Pinterest. Fanart on Pinterest is divided into multiple tags as well. Although tags on Pixiv were simply separated by some of the more popular characters from the series, tags on Pinterest are much more plentiful. There are tags for nearly every character, including the main characters, other members of the Demon Slayer Corps, the Twelve Demon Moons, and more. There are even tags for specific image formats (like wallpapers, GIFs, and comics) and other tags like “Memes”, “Funny”, and “Aesthetic”.