Fan art

Fan art, also known as fanart, is often the artistic equivalent of fan fiction and is defined as a work of art that is based on a character, costume, item, or story that was created by someone other than the artist. In furry, this is often applied to cartoon or video game characters.

Fan art may be erotic, depicting characters in sexual situations. Fan art may depict just the canon universe or with the artist's own fursona, in a type of Mary Sue artwork in which fan-created characters are inserted into existing universes, often as a love interest for the main character. Pornographic fan art is often referred to as Rule 34.

It is almost always created for free; artists will rarely include other people's characters in other people's commissions without their creators' explicit permission, and the use of trademarked characters for profit (which extends to the use of such images to solicit original commissions) has a long history of prosecution.