Since many people have asked about how to know if something is fan art since I posted this: Tips To Avoid Plagiarism I'm going to take a fan art that was recently removed and show you step by step how the member could have avoided using the fan art.
We'll start with the first image here:
At first glance it looks like it's fine. The image is even listed as a Mangaka. However as you can see by the red stars I added, the name of the Mangaka is actually a link so let's move to that page here:
Now here you will see things that are a red flag that indicate this item is actually a fan art and not official artwork that can be used. The first one with the little points beneath is the link to their pivix account.
Pivix is a site for artists to host their fan art. Though some official artists, and by official we mean published, have accounts there; it's better to stick to sources where you can actually verify if it is published or not. A good rule to follow is if you aren't certain, simply do not use it.
Also, it's a good idea to check the other links provided like the last one that I've put the red stars by. I'm going to show you where that leads to here:
This time I highlighted the relevant information with yellow stars. As you can see this artist clearly states that using their work without their permission is not allowed.
So if the person who used this image they got from zerochan had taken the time to look at the links associated with it, they would have seen that it was fan art that they should not have used here.
I'm going to wrap things up on page two.
