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fanart.lionking.org is the largest collection of
Lion King fan artwork on the Internet, currently featuring
8589 artists with a total of 401392 published
pictures inspired by Disney's Lion King universe.
Administrator's Message:
Improvements (9/9/2009)
I've been making some changes to the site software lately in order to try to relieve some of the processing load that leads to so many "closed for maintenance" messages that I know everybody hates to see (believe me, I hate them too). The real solution will have to involve moving to faster hardware; but until that's in the budget, these software tweaks should make some difference.
The technical details are that: 1) the ZIP updating process has been decoupled from the upload/insertion process; and 2) the new-pictures notification for users with you in their Favorites has also been decoupled. What this means is that when you upload, the ZIP archive and the new-pictures table are not immediately updated, but instead a background process handles the updating of those structures in an asynchronous manner. It's only delayed by a few minutes at most, so users shouldn't see any drop in usability; and artists who upload, especially those with a ton of watchers, should see a huge increase in processing speed after you finish uploading a picture.
Again, this is just a stopgap measure, and I don't expect it to totally eliminate the "maintenance" messages; but every little bit helps, right?
Thank you all for your patience!
—Brian
Artist Bulletins:
Current Art Contest: Circle of Fun
Last 5 Artists' Uploads:
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Tigre - 03:52 Sat 11/21/2009
 Main Folder
Sorry for kind of abandoning everyone here...
I think I'm back. For now, anyways...
First up are al the trades I owe people.
This one's for Majordomo. It's Engedi ^^
Comments and such appreciated, as always.
Oh, and if you want to visit me on DA (where I upload more regularly), go here: http://tigreghrin.deviantart.com/
Color JPEG
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This picture was uploaded by an artist whose gallery is not publicly visible.
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This picture was uploaded by an artist whose gallery is not publicly visible.
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The Lion King Fan-Art Archive
Nadra
Stepping into the spotlight this month is Nadra, an artist from Finland who in her three years here at the site has produced an
impressive gallery full of canon and directly canon-linked art, using a variety of digital techniques that with every picture
become more complex and ambitious. Specializing in multi-character scenes portraying often complex interactions, the viewer gets
the feeling that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Nadra's art. She says as much herself:
In the Artist's Own
Words:
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What..? I wasn't expecting this to happen yet... What so great have I done to deserve this? I haven't got very unique drawing
style, I haven't finished my comic, I haven't told those stories I have in my mind... What you have seen is just a little
piece of all that I'm planning to do in following years. I really wasn't prepared to write this "speech" yet. What should
I say now..?
The least I can do is to thank you people who voted for me. I want to thank my fans and all the artists in this page. I want to
thank Brian, because I don't know what I would do with all these of sketches without him and this page — thank you, thank
you, thank you.
As a kid, I was thought to be weird because I loved The Lion King so much. "You're so childish", the other kids said. Well,
I want to share with you this piece of advice I got from an artist years ago: "Never lose the child inside you. There's no
more beautiful way to see the world than through the eyes of an innocent child."
-- And what's so weird about me loving The Lion King? It's a great movie! I wonder if any other Disney movie has given so many
people an inspiration to draw...
Speaking of drawing, I don't know where I got my skills from. I've been drawing my whole life. I've also been pleased with
my drawings, which I think is pretty unusual. Hopefully I'll be able to continue this way. I don't ever want to stop drawing
and leave TLKFAA!
I can't help saying this again: Thank you!
~ Nadra
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Perhaps what sets Nadra's work apart from that of so many other popular and well-regarded artists is her focus on canon. Rather
than putting her effort into only tangentially Lion King-related material such as self-created characters and species
inhabiting a world we can only recognize as TLK's if we squint, she has spent her time here dwelling on the subtleties of the
characters we already know, and only inserting her own characters to the extent that they mesh well with the existing well-known
cast. As a result we get detailed, contemplative portraits of characters such as Mufasa, Sarabi, and Uru, exploring facets of
their personalities only hinted at in canon material, thus adhering very closely to the traditional meaning of "fan art".
This delving into the backgrounds of the characters we all know so well has produced a stream of fascinating views into the
earlier years of the canon cast, particularly Scar (Taka) and the lionesses of his and Mufasa's generation. Nadra's envisioning
of these characters in their youth is highly plausible, adapting the tried and true models of such characters in their adult
stages and transforming them with a dash of original personality coming from the artist's own insights. You really get the feeling
that Disney had fleshed out these characters themselves, based on how easily recognizable and effortlessly familiar, yet
excitingly fresh and reimagined, each of them is in her art. The same, naturally, goes for the other end of the time
spectrum—Simba in his old age, for example. It really brings out the depth of the TLK universe to see it extended in this
way.
Nadra has embarked on an acknowledged campaign to improve her work and stretch her creative capacities, by a number of methods
such as comics, which are (as she says above) still only in their early stages. Still, you can find plenty of great examples of
what these projects will look like by poking through her gallery, where the first parts of her "Missing Mysteries" comic have been
posted, giving readers a tantalizing look at things to come. With the level of detail and ambition evident in these comic pages,
where she cuts few corners and fills panels with lavish backgrounds and crowd scenes where other artists might seek to avoid the
hassle, Nadra clearly conveys how important to her her artistic standards are: she knows the importance of those details, in
landscapes and background framing as well as in composition and page flow, to creating an immersive world. It's obvious that this
project will be a very rewarding and auspicious one, if these first few pages are any indication.
Nadra joined the TLKFAA nearly three years ago, and in that time has risen to be one of the most well-respected artists on the
site. Yet if her own words are any indication—and her impressive body of work is proof that they are—there's a whole
lot more great stuff in store for us from her in coming years. As she hones her skills to the point where she can produce Lion
King art at Disney's level and beyond, those of us following her progress will be richly rewarded.
Congratulations!
Visit the featured artist's
gallery!
Past Featured Artists
The "Featured Artist of the Month" is determined through your
votes! You can only vote if you've logged in, though; so go up to the top
of this page and set up your personalized service so you can vote for your
favorite artist!
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