Actually, doing fan content is cool.
So, when I started my social medias almost a year ago, there was 1 thing I was actually very wary about. The 1 thing in question being fan art. I surrounded myself with art when I was growing up, it always spoke to me and called to me. One thing that never called to me however, was to make fan art. I've made hundreds upon hundreds of artworks of my own characters and things relating to their stories. But the first time I had legitimately made artwork for any type of media was when I was around 15/16 and I did 2 or so "fan art" for mystic messenger. Sadly, one is lost to time but the other one is this mini comic, that's really just 3 panels...
Besides this picture though, I've never really been into making fan content on my own behalf unless I was role-playing in some place, and even that interest has faded now. It wasn't that I was against drawing fan content. Hell, a good portion of my online years before the social medias, I was apart of a Mystic Messenger fan project! Not a very good or well ran one (I think it's still going on, though I don't care for it much, the project owner is a blog post in herself.) I was drawing Deltarune characters in 2022 for the same project owner's charity stream. (No, I didn't finish it, but it was a lot to ask for, especially for free in my hindsight now.) So, I have been interacting with fan content since forever ago, however, besides 1 or 2 role plays that got boring quick, I never personally initiated any sort of effort into making fan made content. Typically, if I'm thinking of people on fan projects, I'm thinking of people with fanfics, fan art, cosplays, ANYTHING to show they're a fan of this specific thing. But I'm the complete opposite in that regard I think! When I did work on these fan projects, I just did it whilst making my own character content. If you knew me for the Mystic Messenger stuff, you purely knew me for the Mystic Messenger stuff. If you knew me outside of that, you'd have 0 idea I liked Mystic Messenger. Another example is The Legend of Zelda, or Pokemon. Both are games and medias that I truly do adore, I just haven't made fan content of it. That's if you exclude the one drawing I did of myself with an Eevee.
Recently, however, I find that attitude changing. Not overnight of course, this opinion of mine has been gradually changing the more time passes, but I think I do owe a sort of explanation as to how, why, and what went on in this changing of my mind. Let's start at the beginning of my dip into fan content.
As I mentioned previously, I used to work on a fan project. What I didn't tell you is that I worked on multiple, smaller fan projects by the same project owner. I won't mention much about her and the full nightmare that she was for an artist (I plan that later in a look out for this sort of way.) Either way, the project I joined in 2016 has made very minimal progress since then in 2025, and as I was burning out in all aspects of life except art I had cut her off shortly after starting up my social medias. If you're thinking "Oh Mubinna that does not sound bad." then I'd have to disagree.
I had worked on in some form (published or not):
- Being a concept artist in a Mystic Messenger Fan project.
- Being a concept artist for a scrapped Hadestown cover project.
- Being a moderator for a role play
- Being an admin for the same role play.
- Being a key character for that role play again (mainly out of a "I feel bad my friend is stressed way.")
- Being a moderator for her own community server that was quite inactive.
- The artist for the images you see above, it was a announcement video for streams that I could not finish.
- A plethora of unused roles I agreed to that didn't end up much.
On top of being a student doing A-levels, the calls we already had often due to our friendship, being someone that used to defend her public image, my own depression, and my family situation at the time, it's no wonder to me that I did indeed burn out. You may read all of this and say "Well, Mubinna. You agreed to all of this right?" I did, you're right. But, I was her fan as well as her friend, and I just did not have boundaries.
But my issues with boundaries back then, actually contributed into the exhaustion I felt for fan made things. So I actually shocked myself when in October I made the first fan art without anyone asking me to since I was around 14/15. It was Leon from Rune Factory 4. Old game now I know. I did a redesign of him I honestly want to redo. The redesign was just to design him in my own culture's clothing instead! To me he's Egyptian coded without being super Egyptian. I would like there to be one day where I draw both his original design and his design with a south Asian twist on it.
Ok, be nice. This was my first fan art in years, and for that I'm actually quite proud of it. That only means if I choose to redraw it, it will look so cool.
But since then I didn't dabble in fan content publicly, rather I did it privately. I did upload this private fan content once, but other than that I'm purely gonna mention what it is. It's a bunch of art and fanfics of Mystic Messenger that's more private now. Otherwise, I have dabbled in fan content here and there. I really also love ENA Dream barbeque, so I made a drawing out of it! Mainly a self persona of ENA. I was growing used to posting in more niche fandoms, and making fan content that at first only I could enjoy. Which is good for me, I wanna make the fan content for me.
And these are fun to do, trust me. I do like connecting to people from active fandoms and sharing whatever we can with each other!
And then Cookie Run Kingdom happened. This is mainly what inspired this blog post.
Holy crap, the cookie run kingdom fandom.
So I really love the design in Cookie Run Kingdom, and I really love the characters in Cookie Run Kingdom. Cookie Run Kingdom, for those that don't know is a mobile gacha game where you fight with cookies, you level them up, build your kingdom, etc. One of my favorite cookies is Shadow Milk Cookie. So I drew him. The amount of attention I got from that is actually unreal on Tik-Tok. This isn't to say "Oh do fan content because it gives you views." No, this is me saying do fan content because I didn't realise how much I missed being in public fan spaces. Is it cool to see numbers go up? Absolutely. Is it cool that people enjoy my art? Definitely. But is the interaction with a fandom better than all of that? 1000%
Doing content on your own characters is so lovely, it is genuinely liberating to work on something of your own after such a long time on working on things for other people that rarely see the light of day. But, I'll admit it gets boring over time. I grow stale at my own brain. Cookies? Now that has something I can draw with. Cookies? Now my brain is clawing to get at it. The people I am interacting with and having fun with based on these cookies? I love it, waiter give me 19 more of them. I think I'm growing to enjoy fan content more. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to do my student registration.
Oh! By the way, here's the Shadow Milk Cookie artwork in question!
Until next time!
This is your local, friendly Mubinna signing off!
Comments
Post a Comment