Fan art
From Webcomic Wiki
Fan art or fanart is unsolicited artwork that is based on a character or property that the artist did not create. It is commonly produced to express enthusiasm and admiration for the original creator and/or creations, and sometimes as a way for young or inexperienced artists to practice and improve their artistic skills.
A stricter definition of "fan art" would include only art inspired by visual media, such as comics or movies, which make use of existing artwork - as opposed to "book illustration", which uses no visual reference but the artist's imagination of characters described by an author. Thus, artwork depicting Wolverine from the X-Men (either the comic or the movie) or Orlando Bloom as Legolas would be fan art, while a picture featuring a non-movie-inspired Legolas would be called a "book illustration". This is the definition followed by the online gallery site Elfwood.
Fan art is technically a violation of the original creators' copyright, but since it is usually intended as a tribute the copyright holders tend to tolerate it as long as the fan does not try to make money out of it. Additionally copyrighted characters used as fan art can appear in money making ventures as spoof of the originals.
In the webcomic community, many creators welcome fan art from their readers and will post it on a special section of their website. Some artists even post fan art as guest strips, or use fan art to fill in for a dead Piro day.
