Fan artists usually begin from a piece of commercial art or entertainment. They grow to love a particular movie, TV show, YouTube animation, product, boyband/girlband, popstar, sport, or sports star—all cultural products designed for entertainment and fandom. These works rely on fan engagement for sales and profit, backed by large corporations and studios with many producers and investors. If something doesn't generate profit, it doesn't get made. This is a fundamental difference between commercial art and fine art.

Fan art emerges from commercial art. Often, a fan artist begins by copying still images of favorite characters in sketchbooks or on digital tablets, reproducing everything exactly until it's hard to tell the difference from the original. Then they learn from tutorials, websites, YouTube videos, and discussion boards: "how to draw a certain kind of body."

Each piece of entertainment has a specific way that bodies are drawn. For example, Dragon Ball Z has a distinct style. Artists learn to draw in this exact style until they can create their own poses for fan art. They concentrate on shading, color, light sources, backgrounds (though many ignore backgrounds completely), hair, different items characters hold, and the outfits characters wear.

After this, many begin drawing Original Characters ("OCs"). They still use the body they learned from copying their fan art, but now they pick out new clothes, new hair, new items. They often leave the face exactly the same as they learned, aside from adding scars, tattoos, or eyepatches. Everything remains the same as the fan art, but they've created a "new" character. Often they make character turnarounds or short animations of this character.

This is not everybody's fan art story—it's a generalization so we can discuss a critical difference. One of the first places in college-level art where students might face a clash is in Figure Drawing class.

Many students look at a model—a real human who could be older, with a body shaped much differently (we humans come in all sorts and sizes)—and draw them in the style of their OC art. That is often the only way they have taught themselves to draw. This might also happen in Drawing 1 classes in college.

The professor will try to push the student to draw what they visually see and abandon the manner of drawing that the student knows best. Now there is a psychic crisis. Students need to risk drawing "badly" in front of peers in order to learn in the fine art tradition.

The fine art tradition of teaching drawing is extremely different than the fan art tradition. What something visually looks like is critically important to artistic training. Students may argue that Pablo Picasso draws in a stylized manner, so why can't they? The professor will explain that Picasso also learned traditional fine art methods first, and that his style is unique to him. If someone copied Picasso's bodies, people in the fine art world would judge that person less favorably—very different than fan art, where people praise someone when their work looks exactly like the object of the fandom.

In fan art communities, accuracy to the source material is celebrated. In fine art education, copying another artist's style is discouraged. The goal shifts from replication to observation, from polish to perception, from entertainment to investigation.

Naturalistic and varied depictions of the human body long predate contemporary art. Roman portraiture emphasized wrinkles, thinning hair, weight, scars, and individuality, intentionally diverging from idealized Greek forms. These works asserted lived experience, age, and identity rather than perfection.

In the nineteenth century, artists associated with Realism and early Modernism, including Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet, again rejected idealization. They depicted laborers, travelers, beggars, sex workers, aging bodies, and ordinary people previously excluded from high art.

Modern and contemporary art continued this expansion. Artists repeatedly challenged decorative norms in order to show bodies as historical, political, emotional, and mortal.

Fan art communities consistently circulate a narrow visual body. This body is typically young, thin, long limbed, large eyed, smooth skinned, and sexualized. Clothing often emphasizes exposure rather than function. Over time, repetition causes this body to feel neutral or natural.

As a result, many artists feel discomfort when drawing older bodies, fat bodies, disabled bodies, scarred bodies, or bodies shaped by labor, illness, or age. When students say their work looks wrong, they are often reacting to a violated internal template rather than actual failure.

This visual narrowing limits narrative range. Certain stories cannot be told convincingly using a perpetual youthful fantasy body.

Women artists have repeatedly challenged visual systems that reduce bodies to youth, availability, and consumption. Alice Neel painted aging, pregnant, ill, and emotionally complex bodies with psychological presence. Käthe Kollwitz depicted working class bodies marked by grief and labor. Judy Chicago and Hannah Wilke exposed how femininity and beauty standards function as control.

Contemporary artists such as Jenny Saville and Mickalene Thomas continue this resistance by reclaiming scale, flesh, power, and visibility.

In animation and moving image, women artists similarly reject fan art conventions. The animated work at this link presents bodies that age, strain, repeat, and occupy space without idealization. These works emphasize weight, vulnerability, gesture, and presence rather than polish.

Film theorist Laura Mulvey articulated how the male gaze conditions viewers to see bodies as objects. Feminist artists respond by reclaiming subjectivity and lived experience.

Fine art bodies may initially feel ugly, wrong, or unfinished to students trained in polished online aesthetics. This discomfort usually reflects conditioning rather than lack of quality. Fine art prioritizes honesty, specificity, and presence over attractiveness.

When bodies show fatigue, age, asymmetry, or vulnerability, they resist easy consumption. Learning to sit with this discomfort is a critical artistic skill.

Create a short animation focused on a body type you rarely depict. This body should not conform to fan art conventions. Use observational reference. Focus on weight, gravity, posture, repetition, and presence. Avoid anime or cartoon anatomy shortcuts.

The animation may be hand drawn, rotoscoped, stop motion, or hybrid. The goal is expanded perception, not polish.