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All About Fan Art Friday

22 replies [Last post]
Tue, 03/12/2013 - 13:31
Eurydice's picture
Eurydice
Community Manager

As many of you know, most Fridays are “Fan Art Friday” on the Spiral Knights Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ outposts. With some regularity, players ask what factors we consider when deciding which pieces to feature. That’s a fair question!

How we gather Fan Art Friday candidates:

During the week, Aphrodite does a basic sweep of the main sites where SK fan art is commonly found--deviantArt, Tumblr, the Treasure Vault section of the SK forums, and Reddit, usually. Links to 10-20 candidate pieces are gathered into a document for consideration.

In addition to Aphrodite’s efforts, any member of the SK team can bring stuff to our attention, and players can post about pieces on the SK forums and social media. On top of that, on Friday mornings, I do my own search to see whether anything brand new has popped up.

By the way, by “fan art,” we really mean any Spiral Knights-related thing created by a player--videos, homages, fun screenshots, mashups, music, master’s theses, cosplay, podcast episodes, etc. qualify.

Factors we take into account:

  • Does it appear to have taken considerable effort, skill, talent, determination, creativity, or a mix of the above?
  • Is it nicely presented--is it scanned in well, or does it have a neat “Here’s how I made this” section? That sort of thing. If you create something totally amazing and then post a blurry photograph of it, well, we might post it anyway. But presentation does help.
  • Is it hosted on an appropriate website? There are certain sites we can’t/won’t link to: sites that summon a bunch of popups, that make you click through a bunch of pages to get to the art, that have inappropriate ads, that require signup to see the art, that contain malware, and the like.
  • What’s the artist commentary like? Comments that are amusing, insightful, touching, useful, intelligent, are a plus. Verbiage of any type we couldn’t post on the SK forums is a definite minus. This includes categorization tags, btw.
  • Did we already post something from this artist recently? We try to mix it up, adding in fresh faces without leaving established folks in the dust. On occasion, we do post the same artist a couple weeks in a row. However, we consciously aim for variety.
  • Is it currently entered in a staff-run contest? To avoid the appearance of impropriety, we may leave it alone until the judging is over, or we might post it in a separate post about contest winners. No hard feelings, eh?
  • Is it a proposed addition to the game? We have to be careful about appearing to endorse or commit to specific proposals. Yes, that is a bummer.
  • Is the artist credited? We want artists to get credit, recognition, and web traffic for their work. A post consisting solely of an uploaded image, with no indication of who made it, is not helpful.
  • Is it stolen? We don’t encounter much stolen art, but if we see something we remember from elsewhere, we will check that out to the best of our ability before posting.
  • Is it PG-13? Yeah. :)
  • Is the piece, you know, good? Is it awesome, even? (You bet this is subjective. No point in denying that.)
  • Will the SK community probably appreciate it?

Facebook and Google+

  • We post one piece per week, on Fridays, unless something we can’t ignore comes up during the week. Facebook users don’t tolerate much in the way of frequent posts. On days when we post more than once about anything, we see more “unlikes” than on days with single posts. We mirror our Facebook posts on Google+.
  • Google+ is not an official social media outpost for SK. We’re in a trial phase with it. Still, if you wanna follow SK there, please do!

Twitter

On Twitter, we have the luxury of being more spammy, so we select between three and eight pieces to tweet out 10-15 minutes apart on Friday afternoons.

How do I get my creations noticed as candidates for Fan Art Friday?

Lots of you get noticed just by doing what you’re already doing. But you can also:

  • Post your creations on the intertubes, ideally on one of the sites mentioned above as the ones we regularly search. If you hate those sites, do post somewhere else where you are credited as the artist, and then post a link in Treasure Vault. Or, you can get on Twitter and tweet the link and a short description at @SpiralKnights.
  • Twitter is preferred over Facebook or Google+ for getting our (and other players') attention directly. Anyone on the internet can see your tweet, but Facebook requires a login and certain profile settings for everyone to be able to see your art post.
  • Tweeting it at us has the added benefit of giving us the option to retweet you directly to all of @SpiralKnights’ followers.
  • On Twitter, we use the hashtag #skfanart for our fan art tweets, and so should you! It’s a bit of an echo chamber in there right now. We’d welcome more people tweeting to that tag.
  • Be sure to tag your work with “Spiral Knights” wherever you host it.

For any of you who have been diligently creating away and have not yet been featured on Fan Art Friday, please don't take that as a condemnation or a criticism of your hard work. We may not have seen it, or we may be holding it to post with others of a certain theme, or who knows? We love that people find Spiral Knights inspiring. Thank you, thank you, thank you forever for making cool SK stuff.

Got questions? Please ask.

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 14:50
#1
Stoneth's picture
Stoneth
You mentioned Deviant Art.

You mentioned Deviant Art. What about other online galleries that don't have pop-ups, malware, excessive clicking, required signups and such? Assuming the image is SFW, do you consider other galleries like Elfwood, Fur Affinity or Pixiv?

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 14:39
#2
Eurydice's picture
Eurydice
Community Manager
We don't normally sweep those

We don't normally sweep those sites, no. If you've got something hosted there that you want us to see, please link it here in Treasure Vault or tweet us a link. I'd also be reluctant to post a link to Fur Affinity--I've seen some pretty iffy ads on that site, and I can't risk linking people to those by accident. No judgment intended there, it's just a restriction I have.

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 14:46
#3
Stoneth's picture
Stoneth
Okay, thanks for the info. I

Okay, thanks for the info. I will keep that in mind.

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 15:10
#4
Njthug's picture
Njthug
=0

Very Nice post Eury I will be sure to share this with all of our tumbler followers =)

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 15:47
#5
Snowdusk's picture
Snowdusk

Soon the Treasure Vault would be filled entirely with stickies, haha xD (Kidding)

I assume that posts made in "Fan Art Ahoy!" are accounted for too, probably? After all, it's in the official Spiral Knights fandom forum page.

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 15:53
#6
Eurydice's picture
Eurydice
Community Manager
@Snowdusk: Correct, we look

@Snowdusk: Correct, we look at the Fan Art Ahoy thread routinely.

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 16:04
#7
Artistbma's picture
Artistbma
Cool, now I know what to

Cool, now I know what to do...

Art's art time go!

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 19:26
#8
Ssosme's picture
Ssosme
Hey sounds fun!

Hey look one of my favorite things to do! I'm a artist and a animator this is where the fun starts :)

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 19:29
#9
Happyapathy's picture
Happyapathy
I have to ask, is Spiral Spy

I have to ask, is Spiral Spy creations considered a form of Fan Art (I will take a 'No' as a personal insult)?

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 20:23
#10
Tantarian's picture
Tantarian
Somewhat related

I still want Treasure Vault to be separated into subsections for fanart, fanfiction, etc, so it's easier to search.

Wed, 03/13/2013 - 15:53
#11
Callis-The-Wicked's picture
Callis-The-Wicked
Mmmm

@Tantarian Indeed. But if that were so, it would be considerably smaller-looking. And I'm sure by how everyone labels their thread it's already as easy as it's going to get :)

Thu, 03/14/2013 - 05:10
#12
Hyiaku's picture
Hyiaku
Why won't it post?

Why won't it post?

Mon, 04/01/2013 - 01:19
#13
Xxpapaya's picture
Xxpapaya
The papaya giggles

Will there be a Fan Poetry [Insert day here]? :3

Fri, 04/05/2013 - 11:25
#14
Nuntis's picture
Nuntis
How about plain text?

I was interested in writing up some fanfics or anything of the sort. Would that suffice as well?

Tue, 07/02/2013 - 07:15
#15
Coolbluex's picture
Coolbluex
is there any chance that a

is there any chance that a commissioned piece of artwork will be featured?

Mon, 07/08/2013 - 11:25
#16
Snowdusk's picture
Snowdusk
@Coolbluex

Every piece counts ;)

Mon, 07/15/2013 - 18:46
#17
Autofire's picture
Autofire
You are experiencing a PICNIC ERROR!

Question: If I enter my thing in a fan contest, will there still be a chance of the picture showing up FAF? (Fan Art Friday) Would there be after the contest finishes?

Sat, 07/20/2013 - 20:49
#18
Snowdusk's picture
Snowdusk
@Autofire

I think that no matter what, if your work gets attention, be it in your web profile or as an entry in the forum contests, you will stand a chance :)

Fri, 08/09/2013 - 05:21
#19
Theoncomingfire's picture
Theoncomingfire
Question?

Does it have to be Art? I'm organizing this Community event called the Spiral Knights Olympics 2013 which was recently moved by a Game Master from General Discussion to Treasure Vault. We will be hosting some Art competition to do with the Games as well from today to Thursday 15th August when the Games End.

Sorry if this question sounds really Dumb. Just getting the Hang of Forums after 2 years xD

Mon, 08/19/2013 - 06:48
#20
Mega-Mariam's picture
Mega-Mariam
Fun

this sounds fun and healthy i love treasure vault!!!!!

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 09:39
#21
Malkalack's picture
Malkalack
Swag IS a virtue

I once tried to sing a love song to the Snarbolax. He bit my leg off. :(

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 07:14
#22
Xaurian's picture
Xaurian

Do you regularly scan Tumblr? I tend to post my art there most of the time.

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