My own personal drawing of the unnamed female character Rivet from the new Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart game, that's sort of taken the internet by storm. Though I personally have never played Ratchet & Clank, mostly because I've only ever owned Nintendo consoles, I have seen this character bouncing about on the internet. I found her rather cute, and a pretty cool design, but otherwise I didn't really care much about her. I actually didn't realize that her name hasn't been released to the public yet as of this submission until I tried to find official pictures of her for reference. Still, I saw enough fanart of her to be oddly inspired to draw her out.

But to me, the drawing also reflects my own personal failures as an artist. Or at least an attempt at being one.

For the most part I rarely do fanart, largely because of my own principles (for lack of a better word) that a true artist should strive for originality. Not that it's "wrong" to do fanart, especially if it's for fun, but I just don't see it as being "professional". As I said though, I rarely draw fanart, at most I've drawn Mangle/Funtime Foxy* from Five Nights at Freddy's. Even then it was more because I liked the character, rather than because of the game series. But I digress.

One thing of interest I've noticed with fanart though, that never really occurred to me that much, was that people usually draw characters in their own style, rather than the canonical look to the character. That is to say, even though the female lombax Rivet has a rather short stature, some people have drawn her in more human-like proportions. Under some exceptions, if I make a character not my own, I try to keep to the canonicity to the character's look and style, even though I'd often struggle, especially since I don't even have my own art style (which is largely the reason why I'm constantly "reinventing the wheel" with my own original characters).

Again, the idea is professionalism, in that it's more "professional" to keep to what the character looks like, even if the style or any details are outside your scope. I think it's because when people think "fanart," they may think about a crude character drawing in crayon (maybe because it's from personal experience?). But that's not completely true, there are very talented artists who do fanart. Some even make a living off of it. Depending on their art style, they will draw out the characters quite differently from the official art, though will still have specific details, enough to make the character still recognizable. Yet I don't think many would call the art "bad" because they drew out the character in their own style.

Mind you I'm not saying that drawing a character that doesn't look like any official art is "unprofessional" in itself, I just believe that it's amateurish to go outside the character's canonicity. You might ask me though, even if the person had a job at being a concept artist, if they drew a copyrighted character in a style that's not to the official art (and of course they drew in their own time), if such a thing really is a bad thing, I confess I would actually take a pause to think about that. I mean, almost by its own definition, being unprofessional isn't something to be prideful about. And yet, if one were to be really frank, if you saw a talented artist drawing, say, Rainbow Dash, who is animalistic, into an anthropomorphic humanoid (a “furry”) in good quality, even professional artists wouldn't call that person a "bad artist" just because they didn't draw Rainbow Dash as a pony. The world certainly isn't going to end because a character that officially walks on fours is reimagined to walk on twos by some fan.

But concerning the female lombax Rivet, I broke my own "rules" I imposed on myself, for better or worse. I drew out the character in human-like proportions that felt more right to me. To be quite frank, I just took a general "selfish" attempt with the drawing, putting more interest in what feels better for me, rather than worrying over if it looks "professional" or official. In this case, being very loose and messy, rather than doing meticulous details. Like inking in extremely thin, yet precise, lines.

Mind you the “rule breaking” is within reason, I still need to keep to some standards of quality (though I question if this "need" is good or not...). It's not necessarily fun to push yourself to high standards, but it is good to at least attempt something beyond a crude character drawing in crayon.

Still, say what you may about people who draw fanart of ponies, animatronics, hedgehog characters, etc., at least they're taking a more proactive approach to their art. They're actually drawing stuff, rather than twiddling their thumbs, waiting for that rare golden moment an "original" idea comes to them. Even then it might not really be that original. Such people are doing art more for the fun of it, and it’s a thought I wish I had years ago.