artbase for Anime and Manga Artists: Fan Art, OCs and Community
Anime and manga style art, fan art and original characters are at home on artbase. How tags, collections and groups work for fandom artists, what the community is like, and how to settle in.
Draw in an anime or manga style and your work is probably scattered across four apps. Finished pieces in one, the fandom conversation in another, a copy filed somewhere for the tag search, and anything older than a month may as well not exist. Each app does one job well. None of them is a home for the whole body of work.
artbase is having a go at that last part. It is a community platform for artists and writers, public since July 2026 and built in Australia, and while it is not an anime site, the things fandom artists make (fan art, original characters, reference sheets, the occasional comic page) are the things it handles best. This post makes the case for bringing that work over, honest limits included.
The one-paragraph version: anime and manga style art belongs on artbase, fan art included, and original characters are as normal a subject there as landscapes are anywhere else. Work travels by its tags, so a series name, a ship name or your OC’s name is a working address for it. Joining is free.
A style is not a category
Plenty of art sites have a house look even when the rules say otherwise, and anime work posted to them ends up dressing itself down to fit in. artbase’s categories describe the medium (traditional painting, pixel art, digital illustration and so on), never the look, so a screenshot redraw and a plein air watercolour are filed the same way and shown the same way. Nobody reviews your style at the door.
That neutrality matters more for this style than most, because anime and manga work carries subjects the wider art internet treats as unserious: the hundredth drawing of a beloved character, a sparkly reference sheet, a self-indulgent AU. On artbase those are just artworks with tags, and the accounts watching those tags are exactly the audience you were after.
Fandom mechanics, translated
Most of artbase’s features map onto fandom habits without any squinting:
- Tags are how fans search. Name the series and the characters when you upload, and people who love them can walk straight to your piece this year and next. Gift art and challenge pieces stay pinned to those names instead of surfacing once and sinking. The craft of tagging well has its own guide, and the copyright and etiquette side of fan art has one too.
- Collections hold a cast. Give a character their own collection and their reference sheet lives next to every drawing of them. Hand that link to a trade partner and nothing needs explaining. A per-fandom collection does the same job for fan art, and adoptables can be organised for sale the same way. No cast yet? Start one.
- Groups gather the corners. A group can hold a fandom, a genre or an aesthetic. On a platform this new some of those rooms do not exist yet, which means the person who starts one gets to set its tone. Every fandom space you have ever loved began exactly that way.
- Fanfiction is not an afterthought. artbase added written work in mid-2026, chapters and all, so the fic and the drawings of the same characters no longer need separate addresses.
What you get here that a feed cannot give you
artbase is young, English-speaking and growing quickly. The argument for being here rests on what the place does. A comment goes somewhere, because the person leaving it is looking at your artwork rather than scrolling past it. Your gallery accumulates into something a commissioner or a trade partner can read end to end. A character you drew in March is still one tag search away in November. Most artists keep their fast-moving accounts and add artbase as the place the work actually settles, and our guide to where art gets posted walks through how that combination fits together.
The AI question
For fandom artists this is usually the first question, so here it is plainly. AI images are allowed on artbase only when the uploader labels them, anyone browsing has a switch that removes AI work from view, and artwork posted to artbase is never fed to a training run. There is no setting for that last one because it is not a choice we offer ourselves. Where every platform stands is set out in our policy roundup; if scraping is the worry that follows you around, this guide is the practical one.
The events already run through here
Fandom art culture is built on shared occasions, and the artbase calendar already carries them. Art Fight eats July, and the wave of new characters and mutuals it produces needs somewhere to land in August. OC-tober and its cousins fill the challenge calendar through the northern autumn. And on any ordinary day, dailydraw hands the whole community a single prompt to chew on, which is about as close as the internet gets to a shared art room.
There is a quieter argument too. artbase is young, so plenty of series tags are still close to empty. Whoever fills one first becomes the artist every later fan of that series scrolls back to. On an older, busier site that position was taken years ago. Here it is simply unclaimed.
If you want in
The full feature rundown lives in the plain explainer and the platform tour, so it will not be repeated here. The practical path is short: make a free account at artbase.au, upload a ref sheet and your five favourite pieces, tag them with the series and character names, and leave a real comment for whoever you find in the tags you care about.
Bring the fan art. Bring the OCs, lore documents and all. The tags are empty in the way a new sketchbook is empty, and that is the good kind.
Frequently asked questions
Is artbase good for anime and manga artists?
Yes. artbase is a general art and writing community rather than an anime-only site, but anime and manga style work fits right in: fan art and original characters are everyday subjects there, tag searches carry fans of a series straight to your piece, and a new upload collects comments rather than passing unseen. Joining is free.
Does artbase allow fan art?
Yes. artbase welcomes fan art. Use the series name and character names as tags so other fans can find it, apply the mature label where one is needed, and credit any character design that is not your own. Written fan work is supported too: fanfiction can be posted to the same profile as the art.
Can I post my original characters (OCs) on artbase?
Yes. Original characters thrive on artbase. You can give each character a collection that gathers their reference sheet and every drawing of them, tag work with the character's name so gift art and trade pieces stay connected to them, and sell adoptable designs from the same profile.
What does artbase offer an anime artist that a social feed does not?
A gallery that keeps working after the first day. Uploads stay findable by their tags months later instead of expiring, comments come from people who opened the page to look at art, collections let a character's reference sheet and every drawing of them sit together, and the profile reads as a portfolio a commissioner or trade partner can go through. Most artists keep their social accounts and use artbase as the place the work settles.
Does artbase use fan art to train AI models?
No. Artwork uploaded to artbase is kept out of AI training entirely, and there is no setting involved because it is not a choice the platform offers. AI-generated and AI-assisted images may be posted only when labelled, and a single account setting hides all AI work while you browse.