Where is all the fanart?

garuffy

garuffy

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Hi there! I'm new here so I hope I'm posting this to the right forum (I assumed you can't go wrong with off-topic for any topic...) but anyway,
Since I got into BTVS (only a few short months ago) I noticed something about the fandom that's been bothering me a bit. There seems to be a distinct lack of fanart for BTVS as compared to other shows I've watched. Does anyone know why this is? Does anyone agree? I mostly interact with the BTVS fandom on tumblr and I had an awfully hard time finding any interesting fanart for the show, I'm not saying none exists at all, it just seems to be a little lacking. In comparison, I'm also a very big fan of Star Trek and Deep Space Nine. DS9 was airing around the same time as Buffy and I think it fits a sort of similar cultural niche, so I'd assume they would have a similar amount of fan works being created. But alas, I've probably seen like 20 times more fanart for DS9 then I have for BTVS, with plenty of active artists still posting today. Am I just completely mistaken on this point? Has anyone else noticed this? I'm not trying to be negative or anything, I'm just curious if anyone whos been in the fandom longer then me has any opinions!
 
If you open Forums then go down to Slayground and open Joyce's Gallery, there should be a load of fan art made from images in the show as edited in Gimp.
 
Did DS9 have a larger audience? I feel like everyone knows Star Trek, but less know or have seen Buffy. Star trek crosses more generations than Buffy does.

There is a bunch of fanart here as Ethan Reigns mentioned - Joyce's Gallery

I wonder how much fanart has been lost to old image hosting services. I used to use Photobucket for posting images on forums, but then they started charging and many picture links dont work after a few years. I have seen heaps of absolutely fantastic fan art over the years, and most of what I personally have seen was all Buffyverse stuff. Do algorithms come into it on tumblr? I've not been there in a decade.
 
November said:
Did DS9 have a larger audience? I feel like everyone knows Star Trek, but less know or have seen Buffy. Star trek crosses more generations than Buffy does.

There is a bunch of fanart here as Ethan Reigns mentioned - Joyce's Gallery

I wonder how much fanart has been lost to old image hosting services. I used to use Photobucket for posting images on forums, but then they started charging and many picture links dont work after a few years. I have seen heaps of absolutely fantastic fan art over the years, and most of what I personally have seen was all Buffyverse stuff. Do algorithms come into it on tumblr? I've not been there in a decade.
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I'm assuming that must be it, Buffy must be a very forum-centric fandom and its just harder to find stuff. Also it seems like btvs is more a words centric fandom, just from what I've seen, interesting.
According to google trends at least, Buffy is a lot more popular then deep space nine (though i don't doubt that trek as a whole has more cultural relevance then BTVS so idk. DS9 specifically just tends to be more forgotten the other star trek series)
 
I feel like there used to be a lot of BtVS fanart, especially on forums like this, tumblr, and livrjournal. (You’d have to go to the archive to scroll through tons of art threads and tutorials, though most art is probably gone due to webhosting difficulties)

However the past 5-10years the interest in fanart does seem to have waned (I used to spend hours on it but never anymore).

My theory is that many of us who used to do fanart just aged out of it (don’t have the time) or lost interest, and many just got tired of the franchise and moved on to other fandoms.

It might swing back and come back around, and I hope so, cause I love fanart and love the active art threads here (e.g. @RachM), so it’d be great if the boards were awash once more with art 😊
 
Taake said:
However the past 5-10years the interest in fanart does seem to have waned (I used to spend hours on it but never anymore).

My theory is that many of us who used to do fanart just aged out of it (don’t have the time) or lost interest, and many just got tired of the franchise and moved on to other fandoms.
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It’s probably this, honestly.

BTVS unfortunately doesn’t have the same flair that a lot of modern things do. I imagine a lot of people moved to Marvel or video games, since you get more to visually play with.

We do love some good BTVS fan art, though 🙂
 
DS9 v. Buffy: Good question. As far as I can tell, Buffy had higher ratings. But I do think niche is a good description for both shows. The WB made niche programing, and DS9 never reached the mainstream appeal of TNG.
 
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