A Guide to the Subcategories of Fan Art

Hello and welcome to the Fan Art section of the galleries description month  Basically, I'm here to give you a play by play of how the Fan Art sub categories are structured and what belongs in them.  On August 30th, STelari will be giving you a guide to Traditional Art and Fan Art miscategorizations and VelCake will be giving you a guide to Anime/Manga and Fan Art miscategorizations, so I will not delve too deeply into those here.  So let's delve into the wonderful world of Fan Art!

What is Fan Art?
Fan Art is the Level 1 category found on the category tree.  Fan Art is currently defined as art containing copyrighted characters or concepts.  This basically means art of characters, creatures, locations, items, etc that are under copyright and were NOT originally created by you.  But the word concepts is also important here; characters created for a specific fandom also have a home in Fan Art, since they build on the existing copyrighted world, concepts and ideas.  Fan Art has also recently begun allowing art of bands and celebrities as it is art done by their fans, so it does make sense to house them in this category

What are the main subcategories and why are they set up this way?
I will be the first to say it: Fan Art's layout is not intuitive.  But I'll do my best to explain.  After selecting Fan Art as a submission category, you are brought to the following menu, which I call the level 2 categories:
Anthro
Cartoons and Comics
Digital Art
Manga and Anime
Skins
Traditional Art
Wallpaper

These subcategories are the media/genre in which the piece was created. So to go into a more detailed break down:

Anthro: Fan Art created in the style of anthropomorphic art (animals/objects having human qualities).  All Sonic Fan Art belongs here, for example, or Fan Art of your favourite character as a werewolf or what have you.

Cartoons and Comics: Fan Art drawn in the style of Western comics and cartoons.  So Fan Art emulating the style of Marvel Comics or Disney belongs here.

Digital Art: Fan Art created using digital software that does not fit into Anthro, Comics/Cartoons, Anime/Manga, Skins, or Wallpapers.  Digital software being programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, Gimp, MS Paint, Paint Tool Sai, etc.  Realistic Fan Art created digitally would most likely end up here.

Manga and Anime: Fan Art drawn in the style of Eastern comics/manga and cartoons/anime.  Art emulating the styles of Studio Ghibli or Sailor Moon, for example belongs here.

Traditional Art: Fan Art created using traditional media such as paints, pencils, pens, ink, markers, pastels, crayons, chalks etc.  Computer programs are used to create minor adjustments only or not at all!

Wallpaper: Fan Art created to be used as desktop backgrounds for your computer.  These tend to come in a variety of standard desktop sizes for easy use.

Level 2 Examples:


Level 2A categories
Anthro, Comics and Cartoons and Anime and Manga have level 2 bonus categories after their selection: traditional or digital.  Since these three are stylistic, the choice for digital or traditional denotes the media used.

Likewise, Digital and Traditional have further breakdowns by media to choose from.  For Traditional Art these choices are: Drawings (work done in pencils, chalks, pens, etc) and Paintings (work done in water colours, oils, acrylics, etc).  
For digital the list is a bit more hefty: 3-Dimensional art (art sculpted in 3D programs like zbrush), Drawings (digital work simulating traditional drawing methods (cell shaded work and sketches typically end up here), Other (work containing both traditional and digital media OR digital work that fits no other level 2A category), Painting and Airbrushing (digital work simulating traditional painting techniques), Vector (digital art created in vector programs containing only vector (infinitely scalable) elements), and Vexel (digital art containing a mix of vector and other digital techniques).

Final Level Categories
These are the last categories that you will have to choose from when submitting Fan Art to dA.  Did the character you drew come from a movie, a book, a game, etc?  These sub-categories tell your audience what your Fan Art is of.

Books & Novels: Fan Art of characters, concepts, places, creatures from books, novels, short stories, comics, web comics, manga, or fan fiction belongs here.  Fan Art of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, or Marvel's Dr. Strange or Tolkien's Silmarillion or the comic Lumberjanes for example, go here.

Games: Fan Art of characters, concepts, places, creatures, from games; this ranges from table top games to card games to video games and everything in between.  Fan Art of Dungeons and Dragons, Legend of Zelda, Magic the Gathering, Angry Birds for example, belong here.

Other: Fan Art that does not fit the other categories belongs here.  Fan Art of celebrities not in a character role, or of a song or any other fan art that does not fit would go here.

TV & Movies: Fan Art of characters, concepts, places, creatures from television series, anime series, movies, docudramas, etc goes here.  So Fan Art of Disney Movies, BBC's Sherlock, Spirited Away, the Simpsons, for example, go here.

I hope this makes the Fan Art category make more sense for everyone  If you have any questions, feel free to ask!