How to Ask Japanese Artist if You Can Use Their Art

The beginner'southward guide to finding fanart on pixiv

Specific tips hither will be mostly for finding fanart for the Cable & Deadpool and Shingeki no Kyojin fandoms, simply the general tips should work for more or less anything.

If it's only cablepool art you're after and you lot've got the basics down, I've posted a quick list of useful tags here.

Pixiv is Japan's unmarried biggest multi-fandom fanart archive, though fans of other nationalities sometimes mail service there as well. It can be pretty daunting for beginners – it'due south mostly in Japanese, and it doesn't let you see more than thumbnails until you lot've signed up. Regardless, there's a lot to recommend the style it's set up for tagging and searching, and there'southward some truly amazing work to be plant over at that place.

1 large etiquette issue I want to embrace up front: if yous do find art you like on Pixiv, please DON'T repost information technology on tumblr or other sites, This is a major false pas in Japanese fandom, even when reposted art is correctly credited and sourced. Many fanartists will react to seeing their art reposted by deleting the original off the web altogether. Linking is fine, but reposting is a big no-no. (More than on this at the end)

1. Signing up
2. Finding art: the basics
3. Bookmarking
4. Searching a user's folio by tag
5. Advanced search/tagging notes
6. A final word

A few (non-essential but very useful) things worth doing before you starting time:

• Install Japanese language support: How you do this will depend on what Bone y'all're using, just wikipedia has some good info to get-go you off. Plenty of pixiv is bachelor in English language that this isn't completely essential, only you lot'll miss a lot of good stuff if you can't see and search by Japanese tags.
• Install Rikaichan: Rikaichan is a fantastically useful browser app that volition provide an English translation for Japanese words when you hover the mouse over them. Similar all translation software, it'south far from perfect, and you'll need at least a basic grasp of Japanese grammar to get the most out of information technology, but it's still far more than user-friendly than having to copy-paste every word you don't recognise into Jim Breen's WWWJDIC.
• Larn Katakana: Okay, probably more try than nearly of us are going to bother with, but if you're going to learn any Japanese, katakana is past far the most useful to the casual English language speaker. This is the alphabet used to write out English language loan-words – of which there are many in mutual usage – then if you lot manage to sound it out (which is a trivial tricky) there'southward a very adept run a risk it'll be a word y'all sympathize. More than importantly, many character names are written in katakana – especially those from Western canons – and business relationship for a lot of the words Rikaichan is virtually likely to stumble over.

one. Signing upward

The first step in really using pixiv is to sign upwardly for an account. You tin scan some parts of pixiv without one, but yous won't be able to see full-sized art. For what information technology's worth, I've had very petty problem with them sending me obnoxious spam, and having your own account and bookmarks has its ain rewards (run across below). Better nonetheless, you can now sign up in English, so this step is much easier than it used to be. There's a paid account option too, which provides more features but really isn't essential.

Now might also be a skilful fourth dimension to fix your preferences regarding age restricted content (R-18 on pixiv). Yous can get to this from your user settings.

2. Finding fine art: the basics

Like many mod websites, the search on pixiv works based on how artists have tagged their piece of work. Enter a term into the search bar, and you'll become results for everything tagged with that term, sorted and so the virtually contempo stuff shows upwards first. (If it's Deadpool or Cable/Deadpool art you're looking for specifically, I've already posted a quick list of useful tag links to pixiv here.)

From the search page, click a thumbnail to see a larger thumbnail at the artist'southward gallery, click again to see the full sized image (if in that location is 1) which y'all tin right-click and save if you desire to – all very basic. (I tend to get pretty compulsive about saving copies of Japanese fanart myself – information technology'south non at all unusual for artists to delete quondam work for various arbitrary reasons, but YMMV.)

One thing worth looking for: some of the images will have a set of lines at the lesser of the thumbnail, like and so:

This means the artist has uploaded several images nether the same entry. Click on these images twice to expand them to full size, and y'all'll get a whole series of pics as you scroll downwards the folio. The spacing on these tin can be a little weird, but clicking on an prototype volition whorl you straight to the next one. Sometimes these images can be expanded further past clicking the double arrow icon in the pinnacle left-hand corner, but most will generally already be at full size.

Pixiv artists use this feature for various different purposes, including multi-page comics, in-progress shots and massive sketchdumps of dozens of pictures with little or nil in mutual. Oft, the showtime page may comprise text describing what sort of art you'll detect below with only a rough chibi sketch to illustrate, or no art at all. Surprisingly frequently, what looks on the thumbnail like merely some random bullshit tin actually be well worth checking out.

3. Bookmarking

Pixiv doesn't have a 'like' role, but it does accept a bookmark function, which is well worth playing with.

You tin can see how many times a picture has been bookmarked before from the trivial blue number next to the star under the prototype. Y'all can't sort by bookmark count on a standard pixiv business relationship (though there are some handy alternatives – see the 'finding the popular stuff' section below), just it'south in that location to be seen.

Bookmarking is easy – just click the 'add bookmark' button on any paradigm. Pixiv lets you tag your own bookmarks so you lot can sort them in your own drove, and I'd recommend doing it (it may besides influence what pixiv recommends to you, but I'm less sure on this bespeak). Pixiv helpfully displays a listing of both the artist'south ain tags and all the tags you've used before on the 'create bookmark' screen, and you can add whatsoever of these to your ain tags on the new bookmark past clicking the discussion (which I notice peculiarly handy when I want to tag in Japanese without having mess effectually with alphabet support options).

And here'due south where the whole pixiv experience can become badly addictive very fast: once you've bookmarked a motion picture, the interface will 'helpfully' supply you with a list of other pictures bookmarked by other people who liked that image, but which you oasis't nevertheless bookmarked yourself. Or to put it another mode, by paying a little attention to who among their users tend to bookmark the same sort of things, pixiv can go frighteningly good at offer you good recommendations for more stuff yous might like.

Worse, that handy recommendation page will redirect to an error message if you lot close and reopen your browser, so if you're going to make whatever apply out of those recs, you've got to do it more or less right away. Which volition probably lead to you finding more than pictures you like enough to bookmark, which will lead to more recommendations… and you tin can see where this is going. (It'due south non unusual for me to air current up endmost the browser on a number of tabs containing pixiv fine art I intend to bookmark but haven't notwithstanding, because we all accept to sleep erstwhile and I have no thought how much deeper tonight'southward rabbit pigsty might go before I legitimately run out of stuff I want to save.)

I actually can't overstate how useful I've found this office. Y'all can spend hours hunting through pages of tags chronologically, just pixiv'southward recommendations will send you straight to the proficient stuff. When I starting time discovered it, my success at finding art I liked quadrupled overnight.

Pixiv will besides exercise it's clever recommendation schtick at the lesser of the page any time you're looking through your own bookmarks by tag, though for the true addict information technology'south simply not quite the aforementioned.

4. Searching a user'due south page by tag

This one always annoys me. Say y'all've plant a moving-picture show you like, and you want to observe out the artist has washed any more fanart for the same serial. This means searching their own gallery by tag, which can be a petty trickier.

You can see what an artist has tagged their own film with in the box above the paradigm (outlined in pinkish below), but clicking on whatsoever of those will take yous to the site-broad gallery page for that tag. To run across only pictures by that artist and that tag, you'll want the list on the left (outlined in bluish), which lists the xx or so tags they've used the most. If that doesn't include the one you're looking for, you'll take to go to the 'view listing' link at the lesser, which takes you to a list of every tag the artist has ever used, ranked in decreasing social club of # times used past default. Ordinarily this means dozens of tags.

I don't know about the rest of you, but my ability to skim-read for katakana in a paragraph-long bucket of word salad isn't that bang-up. Ctrl-F is usually required here. (You can sort tags alphabetically, but this doesn't necessarily make finding the one y'all want much easier.) Clicking whatever tag and re-create/pasting the ane you desire into the appropriate part of the address bar may really be the easier pick.

If at that place's a faster way to search for both user+tag simultaneously, I have yet to find information technology.

5. Advanced search/tagging notes

Unlike artists may tag their art in English language, Japanese or both. While yous'll get some hits searching for 'Cable' in English, y'all'll get more than by looking for the katakana version 'ケーブル' (lit: ke-buru) – though you should too be prepared to get a bunch of pics of android girls covered in beefy wiring, considering that's what you get for picking a random noun every bit your superhero name.

Same goes for 'Deadpool' and デッドプール (katakana lit: 'deddpu-ru') – though the experimental android AI that drives pixiv is clearly learning at a worrying rate, because if you type that into the search bar now, pixiv will at present automatically return you results for 'デッドプール OR ( deadpool )'. For the record, the same matter doesn't happen when you enter 'Cable' yet – he evidently just doesn't have the sort of popularity that warrants that much recognition.

Pairing tags
Japanese fans are as fond of namesmush pairing tags every bit their western counterparts, but they go about them a little differently – normally past taking the beginning i-2 kana of each name and jamming them together. At that place's some content under the 'cablepool' tag, just more under 'ケブデプ' (lit: kebu-depu), which is the Japanese equivalent. And because Japan remains mired in the mindset where the order of the names is serious business concern, you'll also observe a couple of results nether the depukebu tag: デプケブ

Over in some native Japanese fandoms like SnK, tagging past the m/m shipper side of fandom can go even more impenetrable to the anglophone. If you want Eren/Levi art (the fandom juggernaut), that'll be EreRi: エレリ (or RivaEre: リヴァエレ), but if you'd prefer Erwin/Levi, that'll be EruRi: エルリ (or RivaEru リヴァエル). English language equivalents of those all exist, but are much rarer. You can also search by character names, which may exist easier.

The main Shingeki no Kyojin tag is this one: 進撃の巨人 but if you're looking for slash-related material, you'll be meliorate off trying this one: 進撃の腐人 – a widely used fandom tag that reads 'Shingeki no Fujin'. Yep, that would be 'fu' as in 'fujoshi', then the term roughly translates to 'attack of the pervs'. Japanese fangirls are out to own that shit for all it's worth.

Avant-garde Boolean matters
You can besides exclude tags by adding a '-' earlier them. I'm not big on the spideypool ship, and so I get proficient use out of a search like "( deadpool OR デッドプール ) -デプスパ -spideypool" (in English: Deadpool -[japanese spideypool tag] -spideypool". On the flipside though, it'southward not at all unusual for pixiv artists to post a giant sketchdump including both Cable/Deadpool and Spidey/Deadpool in the same batch, and I generally don't desire to filter those out.

Finding the popular stuff
Dissimilar many other platforms, Pixiv won't let you sort or filter by favourites organically. What they do do instead is create sub-tags for art already tagged with a common fandom tag, and with over X number of favourites. Then, for instance, in addition to the 'デッドプール' tag, y'all can filter down to only Deadpool art with more than a 100 favourites by searching instead for the デッドプール100users入り tag (lit: 'Deadpool 100 users [entered/looked at]'. Why the Japanese accept used a kanji for 'views' to mean 'bookmarks' I accept not the least thought, only the tags themselves are at least used adequately consistently).

Tags like this go up in units of v or x – so y'all get tags for something like 'Deadpool' equally follows:

デッドプール100users入り
デッドプール500users入り
デッドプール1000users入り

And and then on, though Deadpool hasn't qualified for the 5000 tag nonetheless. Over in Shingeki no Kyojin fandom though, the primary tag goes all the way upwards to l,000 (進撃の巨人50000users入り), while the fangirl tag tops out at the lower but still very respectable 10,000 mark.

How X00users入り tags come to exist remains faintly mysterious to me –  most ship names or character names don't become them, no matter how widely used and bookmarked they may be. Also, pictures seem to need to exist at least a calendar month or 2 old to become them, even if they're style over the threshold within a week. Equally far equally I've seen, English linguistic communication tags don't get them at all though, which is all the more reason to make use out of the Japanese tags where you can.

vi. A final discussion

For more than on Pixiv etiquette, Fanlore has a link or two to tips and by discussions, but the matter well-nigh not reposting art that doesn't belong to yous remains the big one. Re-using someone else's art is so taboo that virtually Japanese fans won't fifty-fifty apply official anime art or screencaps to decorate their fansites. Plenty of Japanese artists will have a note in English language on their contour request people not to steal or repost (even with clear credit). Some don't mind, simply it's all-time to check, and if you're not sure, best to err on the side of caution.

Some Japanese fanartists practise cross-post to tumblr themselves, and of course it's fine to share those copies, but please don't share Pixiv art y'all didn't create, it doesn't get down well.

(Owning my own hypocrisy on this bespeak, I accept sometimes reblogged Pixiv art at @cablexdeadpool, since by the time major players similar @fuckyeahdeadpool have got hold of information technology, the harm is done and the original may no longer be available for people to find at all, simply I'd much rather non meet it spread around on tumblr at all.)

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Source: https://rallamajoop.tumblr.com/post/148591310462/the-beginners-guide-to-finding-fanart-on-pixiv

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