Donmai

Pool or Tag for R-18 works by a non-r18 copyright's official artist?

Posted under General

As the title says, would this perhaps be a good idea for a pool or a tag? ohisashiburi's recent R-18 works of duca_degli_abruzzi_(azur_lane) immediately comes to mind, and though my memory's fuzzy, I'm fairly certain warship_girls_r has gotten this treatment more than a few times.

I acknowledge that this isn't something that happens all too frequently, but sometimes I just find myself curious about artists that have crossed that line with their characters, but would rather not go through the individual tags of every artist of a series to see who has lewded their characters or not. Also, I'm not sure if it'd include works where another artist that worked for the same franchise has drawn R-18 (or especially spicy rating:questionable works) of their franchise's characters, nor am I really quite certain what the name for such a pool or tag would be.

In the past I have raised a bunch of times the proposal to use a meta tag named official_artist in the Discord server. Most people were in agreement, but the problem raised was that official_art is sometimes not tagged.
Around a year ago, I had been given a list of posts which were drawn by an artist who has already drawn other artworks for that copyright tag, and whose other works in that copyright tag contained the official_art tag. (I'm sorry if this sounds confusing, i'm not really sure how to put it into words, but i can probably make a scheme if needed)
I had started cleaning up, but after around a thousand artworks i stopped working on it, mainly for lack of time.

Since a lot of artworks have been uploaded since then, a new, updated list should be made.
After gardening the official_art tag, we can start to garden official_artist in a fairly easy manner.

Username_Hidden said:

In the past I have raised a bunch of times the proposal to use a meta tag named official_artist in the Discord server. Most people were in agreement, but the problem raised was that official_art is sometimes not tagged.
Around a year ago, I had been given a list of posts which were drawn by an artist who has already drawn other artworks for that copyright tag, and whose other works in that copyright tag contained the official_art tag. (I'm sorry if this sounds confusing, i'm not really sure how to put it into words, but i can probably make a scheme if needed)
I had started cleaning up, but after around a thousand artworks i stopped working on it, mainly for lack of time.

Since a lot of artworks have been uploaded since then, a new, updated list should be made.
After gardening the official_art tag, we can start to garden official_artist in a fairly easy manner.

I'm... confused, but anyhow, I don't think artworks drawn by the "official artist" should be tagged official art if they're not drawn in an "official capacity".

Same probably goes for original 'amateur' doujin work for series that were drawn before the artist was "officially" serialized as a pro. Like the Nagatoro ones.

So... while an artist may indeed have some of their works tagged official art for a particular series, those art should be drawn within their "professional capacity" as the "official artist" working for a given company (or an author going pro and serialized by a company). But this doesn't mean that all their other art (for the same character) for the same series should be automatically tagged official art, as they may not necessarily be drawing those within their "official capacity", so to speak. These may just be fanart. Especially if it's self-posted on Pixiv/Nico/Twitter.

So actually tagging official art would need the tagger to actually confirm that they are "official art" (produced in the "official capacity" of working under or with a given professional company), and not just blindly tag official art just because they are drawn by the so-called "official artist". Usually this can be confirmed by the presence of a watermark containing the company name. Or the image source being from the company official website. Or an 'emblazoned' series name styled in a manner similar to those used in other official works, or a printed (i.e. not cursive) artist 'signature' also used in the same (these tend to be different than actual artist signatures used for fanart and self-published works). Without these the tagger will have to manually confirm using other sources (e.g. whether the company actually commissioned that art).

That's why they are undertagged, probably. Because if the tagger isn't sure, they shouldn't blindly tag official art.

Edit: As for the proposed "official artist" tag... yeah, don't think it's a good name, for the reasons nonamethanks mentioned. If we're going to make this a tag... maybe something like self_fanart. Or official_artist_fanart.

(Or maybe non-official art, but this one might be misused as tag padding for all examples that don't qualify for official art, even when drawn by unrelated people.)

Edit2:

TL;DR:
  • I'm overall ambivalent about a dedicated pool or separate tag, though I see no harm.
  • I'd suggest 'Canon' Lewds as a potential pool title (with the 'scare quotes' apostrophes), to be used when an "official artist" (original author or commissioned artist/illustrator) draws lewd 'fanart' of their otherwise "non-H" work.
  • If we are instead going with a tag, I'd instead propose official artist fanart, to be used when an "official artist" (original author or commissioned artist/illustrator) draws non-official art of their characters in an amateur/non-professional capacity. This shouldn't distinguish between lewds and nonlewds, because it adds another subjective element to the tag, overloading it (it would be fine for a pool, but not a tag).
    • Searchers should instead qualify the search using -rating:s if they want lewds.
    • This tag version can also include per-serialization artwork, for doujin/amateur original works that later went pro. "Fanart" might seem a bit of misnomer, but it's kinda hard to translate Japanese "doujin" without using longer terms like "non-professional" that may be even more misleading.

Edit3:

Pixiv's 本家 and プロの犯行 tags

Speaking of, official_art also had 本家 ("original maker") added under the "other names" section, but it was potentially problematic because 本家 is used all over the place on Pixiv, covering OCs (Vocaloid ones, especially), official artist fanart, official-artist-self-released-semi-official 'promotional art', Bemani 'record label' art, Bemani 'record label' mock fanarts, other-company-arcade-music-game-'record-label'-that-people-also-tag-本家-for-some-weird-reason, TCG/Gacha illustrations that were rejected by the company (like nagato_(azur_lane)_(old_design)), and finally... actual 'official art'. Including some doujin game one-person self-published ones.

This entire mouthful above? It's basically a summary of Pixiv Encyclopedia entry's for 本家. So yeah, it's one of those crappy garbage bin ambiguous-sounding Pixiv tags where people just put everything and the kitchen sink under, including things that just flat out contradict the literal wording of the tag (i.e. things that obviously have nothing to do with the "original maker" at all). So it shouldn't be listed in our wikis, as it will link this 'garbage' tag into our autotranslated tag suggestions. As such, I have removed 本家 from the official art wiki.

Interestingly, the 本家 wiki also lists a プロの犯行 tag ("Professional's Offense"), which is used somewhat semi-consistently on Pixiv to tag "official artist fanart". It also contains some examples of you're doing it wrong (i.e. "you fail as a professional"), though overall I'd say it currently can still be used as an "other name" entry for a proposed official artist fanart tag. Nico also has a similar tag, where it is also used in a similar way tagging illustrations (i.e. Nico Seiga). It has a different meaning for Nico Douga videos though, but those don't usually get uploaded so it shouldn't be a problem yet.

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