Team Human has its first piece of fan art and it hasn’t even been published yet! I am beside myself with excitement. Seriously, I screamed when Sarah Rees Brennan tweeted it.
Unlike many of my YA author friends, my books do not attract a lot of fan art. It would be more accurate to say that they attract almost no fan art at all. Seriously click on the fan art category for this blog and see how little there is. Now go over to Scott’s blog and check out his Fan Art Fridays. Or check out the paucity on deviantART.1
I’ve put it below the cut because it’s spoilery and if you’re anything like me you don’t want to read anything that might even possibly lead to the vague chance of spoilification. So really don’t look at it!
Now it’s true that Scott’s books sell way more than mine do. But there is not, in fact, a direct correlation between popularity of books and amount of fan art. There are many bestselling authors who get almost no fan art at all. Part of this is because of the genre they write. Realism attracts way less fan art than fantasy or science fiction. But I write fantasy and get hardly any. And I know many writers whose books sell less well than mine who get huge amounts of fan art.
Whatever it is that inspires readers to produce art—and I’d love to hear your theories—thus far my books have not had much of it. But I had a feeling that teaming up with SRB would change my fan-art luck. Everything she writes inspires so much fan art it’s ridiculous. Surely, I figured, her book with me would also produce lots. I was right! Well, I might be right. The first piece appearing before Team Human‘s publication in July has got to be a very good sign. And it’s fabulous. Street Angel has surpassed herself. There’s never been a manga version of my work either. I may die.
Yes, the dialogue comes straight out of the book:
Isn’t that fabulous?
I’m serious about wanting to hear your theories on what kinds of books generate the most fan art. Tell me so I can write such books!
- Not that I do that and not that I weep salty tears when I don’t do that. [↩]
Unicorns. People draw unicorns.
Also, I want to know more about who’s doing all of this in the first place, because maybe the question isn’t what kind of books generate fan art, but what kind of readers do, and then why they do.
But ALSO also– this is awesome.
Meg: Oh! You are so right. I’m an idiot. I’m asking the wrong question. Oh! I shall have to think about this more. Thank you!
Holy cow, that just made me want to read the book even more. *swoons*
Also, the art is awesome. 🙂
Miriam Forster: I know. I’m still pinching myself. She’s a wonderful artist.
That is so awesome! they are cute
I think the novels that get a lot of fan art tend to be the ones that try to get you to picture something for yourself. Justine, I think your books paint a really definite mental pictureof characters and locations, which isn’t the goal of all authors (but is totally awesome). Even Scott’s Leviathan books, which had illustrations, didn’t fully describe the characters and events IN THE TEXT…so people get their own image stuck in their heads of what a scene looks like. And then they just have to draw it! (But that’s just my theory…)
Liana: Cuteness was our aim. Team Human is the cutest book ever written. I promise!
Emily: Good theory. Maybe what you’re describing is why you produce fan art? So that your theory actually lines up with Meg’s above that the important question is not what books inspire fan art but why readers produce it? Or maybe not. Like I said I honestly don’t know.
I have done, and sometimes still do fan art. I used to think it was all about the pretty pictures in my head (Lewis, Tolkien, John Wright’s RPGs) But what makes me draw it though, is a bit of a mystery at the moment. Right now,I pretty much draw only on my daughter’s daily lunch box note so the fan art is about books we’re reading. But Oz,The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, The Borrowers and Flora Segunda got fan art, whilst The Mysterious Wossname Society: nada.
Hmm… Maybe it’s just the girls in cool costumes thing…
I was just looking for a link to this fanart, to add it in a comment to the Booksmugglers review and I wanted to point out that streetangel has uploaded a whole lot of Tumblr works in progress on Team Human here http://streetangel8.tumblr.com/
Well I know for me it’s usually a line, sometimes even just a word or a scene that strikes me, either as funny or produces a vivid mental picture in my head that I feel I want to illustrate. Sometimes it’s a concept, like the Awesome Foursome picture inspired by the book as a whole.
Sometimes I’ll see a picture or pose in something completely unrelated that will make me think of certain characters and inspire something entirely new.
I can’t say whether fantasy generates more fanart than fiction by default as I mostly stick to reading fancy. My strays into fiction have often had me running back to the fantasy isles to relieve the boredom. That said I did love The Undomesticated Goddess so there is yet hope for fiction.
I think perhaps it is the younger readers who are more inclined to produce fanart and perhaps they gravitate towards fantasy?
I know I only make fanart for series or books I like but the amount of fanart per series isn’t directly correlated to how much I enjoyed the book.
Team Human was awesome. Enough said XD