Anime and manga fan art, posted by the artists who draw it
All the fan art here is uploaded by the person who drew it. Expect your favourite characters in new outfits and new scenes, rough sketches, character sheets, process videos and drawing tutorials, with subscriber packs and commissions on top, all tagged by series and character. Do you draw? Then this is somewhere you can get paid for it.
What counts as fan art, and why it gets its own corner
Fan art (often typed as fanart) starts with a story someone can’t let go of. It might be the lead of a seasonal anime, a single manga panel, the party from a JRPG or the heroine of a light novel, redrawn by a person who has studied every frame. It isn’t tracing. The character passes through an artist’s own hand, habits and interpretation, so one character from one series can come out soft and pastel in one portfolio and sharp and gritty in the next.
None of this is new. Japanese doujin events such as Comiket and Comic City have long given whole sections of the hall to fan-made illustration, and Pixiv, Japan’s largest illustration community, now counts well over 100 million registered accounts and sorts its uploads by series, character and tag. In Britain you see the same thing in the Artist Alley at MCM Comic Con London, where illustrators sell prints of their own work. What once lived on old forums and personal blogs has quietly become a living for a lot of artists.
OtakuOshi treats that as proper work. Artists upload polished illustrations, roughs, character designs, concept pieces, timelapses, tutorials for digital and traditional media, subscriber bundles and made-to-order commissions. Fans pay through a subscription or a single purchase, and the income goes straight to the artist (full terms on the payouts page).
What artists actually post
Some upload a single drawing a week, others put together whole themed collections. These formats come up again and again.
Polished illustrations
Finished illustrations with colour, lighting and a background. Think characters in a new costume, a familiar scene redrawn, a Christmas or summer variant, or an original composition that drops a character into a world their series never showed.
Roughs and sketchbook pages
Loose pencils, gesture drawings, anatomy practice and expression doodles. Collectors love these because you see the artist’s natural line before any clean-up happens.
Character sheets and concept work
OCs, or a full redesign of a character you already know, laid out with model sheets, turnarounds, outfit studies, palettes and expression sheets. Perfect territory for anyone inventing characters of their own in an anime or manga style.
Timelapses and making-of posts
Watch an illustration come together. Sped-up recordings, a screenshot at every stage (rough, lines, flats, shadows, light, final polish) and a few words from the artist on the decisions behind it.
Tutorials and downloads
Anime eyes, hands, hair, the way fabric folds, lighting a night scene, keeping your layers tidy in Clip Studio Paint, Procreate, Photoshop or SAI. Some artists throw in brushes, palettes and other files to download as well. If learning is your main reason for being here, the tutorials and templates section has more.
Commissions
Send a brief with the character, pose, style or setting you have in mind and get an illustration drawn only for you. It can be anything from a profile icon to a full scene with a background. You agree the price and the turnaround with the artist directly, by private message.
For fans: getting hold of your favourite artists’ work
A subscription opens up the part of an artist’s page kept for subscribers. What sits in each tier is the artist’s call, though it commonly includes full-resolution files with no watermark, sketches nobody else sees, complete process recordings, tutorials, themed bundles, new work before it goes public and a place near the front of the queue when commission slots open.
You won’t be buying blind. Every listing shows a preview, the character and series, the resolution (most sit somewhere between 3000 and 6000 px), the file type (JPG, PNG, PSD or CLIP), how many files a pack contains, its content rating and which licence applies. As soon as you subscribe or pay, you can download, and everything stays in your own library.
Choosing who to support is mostly gut feeling. If a style doesn’t move you, flawless rendering won’t fix it. After that, check the basics (anatomy, colour, composition), whether the portfolio has range, how regularly new work appears and whether extras like recordings or tutorials are part of the deal. Billing is explained on the payouts page, and how it works walks you through the rest.
For artists: sell your fan art without the faff
Digital, traditional or somewhere in between, you get a proper home for your work, an audience that notices good drawing and payment from fans with nobody taking orders on your behalf. If original manga illustration or your own comics are closer to what you do, the pages for manga artists and doujinshi artists are a better fit.
Uploads cover pretty much everything: JPG or PNG illustrations, working files (PSD, CLIP, SAI), roughs, character designs, themed bundles, tutorials mixing text, images and video, MP4 timelapses, and brushes or other resources zipped up. For each one, you decide whether it’s free to view or locked to a particular tier.
Each post can carry the character and series, the medium (digital, watercolour, ink, pencil or mixed), the software (Clip Studio Paint, Procreate, Photoshop, SAI, Krita), resolution, file type, file count and any variants, for instance with and without a background, recoloured versions or a no-lines edit. The content rating and licence type go on there too.
The way you earn is your decision. Sell packs one at a time, set up a monthly subscription with a few tiers (perhaps a basic one for finished pieces and a top tier with PSDs, recordings, tutorials and first pick of commission slots), take tips and open commissions. For a lot of illustrators, commissions bring in more than anything else, and combining two or three of these income streams tends to steady things from month to month. For a bit of extra income there’s the affiliate programme, and the money side is set out on the payouts page.
How to draw fan art: the usual route from idea to upload
No two artists work quite alike, yet most drawings go through roughly these steps.
Pick a character and gather references
Decide who you’re drawing, from which series, and what the image is about. Pull together official designs, key visuals, screenshots and concept art, then choose your angle: faithful to canon, a new outfit, a scene that never happened or a total style swap. Whatever’s airing this season, and whatever the fandom is shouting about, tends to drive requests.
Thumbnail the composition
Tiny, fast thumbnails help you test layouts, poses, proportions and framing before you commit. It’s the freest part of the job and runs mostly on instinct.
Lines and clean-up
The rough turns into final lines, steady in weight across the face, hair, costume and props. Artists who prefer a painterly look let the lines dissolve into the colour until you can barely spot them.
Flats, then shadows
Base colours go down flat, either from the character’s official palette or a fresh one for an alternative take. Volume follows: form and cast shadows, ambient occlusion, and soft blending or crisp cel shading according to taste.
Light and final polish
With the light source fixed, in go the highlights, rim lighting, catchlights in the eyes and the surface feel of every material, from metal and cloth to skin and glass. Sparkles, bokeh and glow add the atmosphere.
Export and upload
Export at high resolution in sRGB, prepare any alternative versions (no background, a different palette) and complete the listing with character, series, resolution, file type and rating. Hit publish and your fans see it straight away.
Styles and techniques you’ll come across
Fan-made art takes many shapes. On OtakuOshi, these turn up most.
Anime/manga. The classic: big, expressive eyes, elongated proportions, clean lines, saturated colour and either cel or semi-realistic shading. Semi-realistic. Stylised faces paired with careful work on texture, light and anatomy, halfway between anime and photography. Chibi. Pint-sized, big-headed versions of characters, made for stickers, icons and merch. Painterly. Brushstrokes, mood and colour lead and the line takes a back seat, sometimes borrowing from classical painting or magazine illustration.
Pixel art. Old-school game graphics placed one pixel at a time, with a tight palette. Traditional. Done by hand in watercolour, Copic markers, ink, coloured pencil, gouache or acrylic, then scanned or photographed in high resolution. Mixed media. Pencils or inks on paper, with colour, light and effects finished on screen.
Digital artists mostly reach for Clip Studio Paint, Procreate on iPad, Photoshop, SAI or Krita, the free option. Traditional kit runs from graphite to artist-grade watercolours, with Copics and inks along the way.
Fan art file types and sizes
The standards you’ll see most often across the artwork posted here.
Images (JPG / PNG)
Large files in sRGB with sensible compression, and PNG wherever transparency matters. Previews give you a feel for the style and quality while holding back the full-size file.
Working files (PSD / CLIP)
Every stage on its own layer: rough, lines, flats, shadows, light and effects. Brilliant if you draw too and want to take a finished illustration apart to see how it was built.
Recordings (MP4)
Process videos, sped up or in real time, encoded as MP4 (H.264) at 1080p or 4K. Lengths range from a two- or three-minute timelapse to a long tutorial taken one step at a time.
Brush packs (ZIP)
The artist’s own brushes for Clip Studio Paint, Procreate, Photoshop or SAI, plus palettes, textures, overlays and whatever else they rely on daily and pass on to subscribers.
What a listing tells you
All the details covered in the fans section, along with credits. Tags by series, character, style and technique make it quick to narrow down what you want.
Licence
By default, the licence covers personal use only (wallpapers, prints for yourself). Streaming, printing for sale, merch or editorial use require an extended licence or a dedicated commission. Redistributing, reselling or using the work to train AI isn’t allowed without the artist’s permission.
Ratings and the rules for posting
Artwork here uses the same ratings as the rest of the catalogue, as set out in the publishing principles. All ages (全年齢) covers work anyone can look at. R-15 covers sensual work or mild ecchi: a suggestive pose, a bold outfit, a hint of erotic tension. R-18 covers hentai illustration and explicit adult material, for over-18s only, with fans verifying their age and artists verifying their identity under 18 U.S.C. § 2257.
Some lines hold at every rating. You can’t sexualise minors or childlike characters, plagiarise or trace another artist, pass off AI output as your own work, or post anything that breaks the ethics policy or the terms of service.
Fan art questions, answered
What fans and artists most often want to know before buying or posting here.
Yes. Anime, manga, games, light novels, films and the rest of Japanese pop culture are all fair game as source material. What you make is derivative work, in the spirit of the doujin tradition, while the character itself still belongs to whoever owns the rights. Respecting those rights, and the terms of service, is your responsibility as the artist.
Very welcome. Original illustration sits alongside derivative pieces, provided it links back to otaku and Japanese culture through style, look or theme. Your own character designs, anime-flavoured concept art, OC illustrations and anything with a clear manga influence all belong here.
Plenty of artists accept them, drawing the character, pose, style or setting you ask for, from small icons to full scenes with a background. Send a private message on the platform to agree the brief, the fee and when you’ll receive it.
Yes to both, under conditions. R-15 pieces (mild, suggestive ecchi) go up with the right label. R-18 (hentai and explicit material, adults only) means the artist verifies their identity and the buyer verifies their age. The publishing principles spell out the criteria.
Yes, the standard licence covers personal use like that: wallpapers, prints for your own wall, social media avatars. Anything that earns money, such as stream banners and overlays, printing for sale or merch, needs an extended licence or a commission arranged with the artist.
The platform exists for human creators, which means nobody may present AI-generated images as their own work. An artist who uses AI tools anywhere in the process must say so openly. See the ethics policy for the full rules.
Make a free account at fans.otakuoshi.com, turn on the creator profile, create your subscription tiers and post your first drawing. There’s no waiting for approval to sign up. If you plan to post R-18 work, identity verification comes first. How it works takes you through each step.
File a report through the complaints and reports page, where you can ask for the infringing material to be taken down. Plagiarism and unauthorised reposting are treated as serious breaches.
Plagiarism, AI work that hasn’t been declared, a misleading rating or any other breach can be raised on the complaints page. Anything else goes through the contact page. Reports that touch on safety are dealt with first, as the active response policy explains.
A quick glossary
Fan art / fanart. Visual work by fans built on characters and settings from an existing series. · OC. Short for original character: one the artist invented, tied to no existing work. · Character design. The complete look of a character: face, build, costume, palette and expressions. · Concept art. Exploratory drawings of ideas, places or characters, made before or during a production. · Lineart. The clean outlines that fix the shapes before colouring. · Cel shading. Hard-edged shadows with no blending, the familiar anime finish. · Timelapse. A sped-up recording of a drawing from start to finish. · Commission. A paid, one-off piece drawn to a fan’s brief. · Expression sheet. One character pulling a range of faces on a single page. · Turnaround. The same character from front, side and back.
Policies worth knowing
Everything posted in this category is moderated under OtakuOshi’s official policies.
Publishing principles. How content is rated and what separates each age level. Read this before you choose a rating for your work.
Ethics policy. The wider ethical rules, especially on undeclared AI images, child protection and the lines that never move.
Terms of service. The general conditions of use, covering derivative work, copyright and redistribution.
Complaints and reports. The place to request removal of anything that infringes your copyright, for example a stolen or reposted illustration.
Privacy policy. What personal data is collected from artists and fans, and how it’s stored and used.
Follow your favourite fan artists, or open your own page
Finished pieces, roughs, character sheets, recordings, tutorials, brushes and commissions, shared by independent illustrators straight with the people who back them. Signing up costs nothing.