Greetings, Deviants! My name is Tania and I'll be your pilot Fan Art Gallery Director for the next twelve months. After a couple of whirlwind days I reckon I'm about ready to answer all the questions you can throw at me - in fact, let me see if I can answer a few before you need to ask.

Your Gallery Director
I'm Tania Walker, age 26, enjoys cats and jumping and hails from Brisbane, Australia. I'm a former Disney animator who started out as a starry-eyed teenager doing fan art for some pretty embarrassing fandoms, so believe me, I'm with you guys all the way.

If you need anything at all, you can reach me via Note, or email me at animator@deviantart.com. Feel free to lure me into the DA chatroom of your choice anytime you like. I respond well to offers of iced green tea and all forms of chocolate.

Our Gallery

The Fan Art gallery has been the subject of a bit of pointing and giggling over the years and, let's be honest, we deserve everything we get. Nevertheless, Fan Art is the heart of dA. There's a bundle of fabulous artists on here who got their start doing Fan Art, and a bundle of 'em who never stopped.

Whether you're into sea pirates or space pirates, Dragonballs or Pokéballs, Simba or Kimba, Lewis Carroll's Alice or American McGee's, you're part of the overreaching Fan Art community here on DA and we're united under the umbrella of our geeky fascination with worlds created by minds other than our own.

Over the coming year I hope to see us really band together as a community here on DA - and I've got some cunning plans in the works that might just help us along a bit.

For now, we can keep the Fan Art Gallery running smoothly by remembering the following points:

Daily Deviations

If you see something fantastic under Fan Art that deserves some serious props, please send me a Note! Anything goes, but please keep the following in mind:

1. There are only 365 days in a year. I do what I can, but not every suggestion can be chosen for DD.



2. It's cheesy to nominate yourself.



3. I aim for impartiality, but you might not always agree with my choices. My goal is to make DD selections from as many different fandoms and styles as possible, so if you see a DD that makes you go "whut?", give me the benefit of the doubt: you might just see something you love the very next day.



4. If you have a question or complaint about the DD, send it to me in a note - don't take it out on the original artist.



5. Finally, dA had a policy that DD's should be awarded to lesser-known artists. Eventually the pendlum swung too far that way, and quite a few accomplished artists were missing out simply because they were accomplished. That policy has been changed; the popularity of an artist has no bearing whatsoever in their consideration for a DD.

So what are you waiting for? Bring on those suggestions! *goalie stance*

Reporting Miscats

This one is pretty simple: If you see something under Fan Art that shouldn't be there, file a report. If you see something elsewhere that should be under Fan Art, file a report. I ran a search for 'Jack Sparrow' today and half of what came up wasn't in Fan Art at all, and that's just one character from one fandom; there's a massive amount of art tucked away in the wrong galleries on here.

We've got a few really dedicated Miscat-hunters out there, changing DA one Report at a time. If you've got a few spare minutes, why not run a search for your favourite fandom and see how you can help out too?

Prints

This one is peculiar to Fan Art: We don't get to do prints. It should be pretty obvious, but making a profit from selling your Fan Art is a big fat copyright violation.

Contests

Well now, I've got a few Ideas here, but that would be telling... Stay tuned to the News and you'll find out soon enough. In the meantime, if you've got an absolutely, head-explodingly awesome idea for a Fan Art Contest, don't keep it to yourself! Drop me a note and your contest just might end up being the Next Big Thing.

I'm really looking forward to the year ahead, guys. As a big blue guy once said: "Let's make some MAGIC!"