Fan Art Friday, Now Fortnightly

Posted on by scott

Yes, having missed fifty percent of the last few Fan Art Fridays, I hereby declare Fan Art Friday to be Fan Art Fortnightly. (It’s not easy being a lazy blogger, okay?)

This part 2 of the Non-Drawn Fan Art trilogy, guaranteed to have zero paintings or drawings, but with lashing of tattoos, cosplay, and photography. (Fan fic will be the concluding edition, in two weeks.)

First up we have tattoos, which are the most flattering/disturbing medium of fan art, because they’re, like, PERMANENT. This should go without saying, but I’ll say it: Do not get fan tattoos without serious consideration!

And yet, kind of awesome.

For all you Midnighters fans, here’s an awesome mindcaster tattoo on a fan I met in Florida. I have forgotten his name! (Sorry, dude. But I follow you on Twitter.)

And showing even more commitment, here’s an unknown rockstar in Russia who is obviously a huge fan of Keith’s!


Photo by Theodor Melmoth.

Note that this isn’t from Leviathan, and is Westerfeldian in no way. But as you all love Keith as much as I do, I thought you’d want to see it.

Finally, here are a couple of non-real facial tattoos. (Non-real being the way to go with facial tattoos, I’d say.) The first is from Rachel, and is a mix of Special Tally and the cover of my (very) adult book, Evolution’s Darling:

And here’s another (fake) Special tattoo, spotted on the Behemoth tour last October:

By the way, if you want to read an academic paper on tattoos and body modification in the Uglies series, click here.

And now for some cosplay! Here’s Saiyuki-15, playing multiple roles:

Yes, that’s some awesome costuming AND jewelry making.

Here’s an intense Dr. Barlow, from FlyingBicycle at Deviant Art.

And now some photography from Zvaella, featuring a page of Leviathan:

Our last piece of FAF is photography plus Photoshoppery, from Ponylov. It’s one of my creations that amuses me the most, Shay’s eye-clock from Pretties:

It appears to be showing five four o’clock, given the angel of the eye and the fact that Shay’s clock runs backwards.

So here’s a mind-bending question for you: Why does Shay’s eye-clock run backward? Yes, it’s partly because pretty fashion is always silly, but there’s also a perfectly reasonable answer. Bubble-headed Tally and Shay never figure out in the books, but I bet you guys can. First correct commenter gets a virtual fist-bump from me.

(UPDATE: Solved in comment 2. But many other good theories have been proposed.)

Okay, that’s it for today. Come back in a fortnight for the all fan-fic Fan Art Fortnightly! Sorry to take so long, but there’s a lot to organize.

In the meantime, those of you in the New York City area should remember that my Book Expo America events are coming up next week! Hope to see some of you there.

87 thoughts on “Fan Art Friday, Now Fortnightly”

  1. hehhe. that second girl with the face tattoo was from the vancouver signing 🙂
    I WAS THERE!!! 😛
    (still have to say the guy with the goggles was the best costume there 😀

  2. HEY where can i get some of those coooolllll necklaces that the picture hadof deryn and alek

  3. Hmmmm… maybe i can make those necklaces in my metals class, maybe, the clanker one at least…. maybe

  4. @ random Wow, that comment was quite an eyeful, but the truth of it was staggering. I read that whole rant and it was worth it just to see someone with a brain in their head whereas most people blindly care about what the the media says they should care about, like looks. Aesthetics are the engine that drives our confidence and personality, and basically our lives. We’re not complete without a pretty face and sexy legs. Or the commercials that play when reality shows take breaks would have us think so. And we believe it! Or at least some of us do. We buy all the beauty products that make our hair soft and silky, our skin like a baby’s, and our minds consumed with ourselves. Once that’s accomplished, we can fritter away our petty little slips of green paper and alter our minds into thinking we’re lesser if we can’t buy our special makeup.

    That being said, I’ve never read the Uglies series.

  5. @The Joker-la: ha wow thanks for actually reading all that! yeah the media has messed us up, probably beyond repair. i hate it all, i don’t believe what they’re trying to sell. yes some people are strikingly beautiful at least physically, but we don’t see the things that are truly beautiful anymore. and if we do…it’s through a big flat screen tv! it’s almost life-like but still we don’t see the true beauty of anything, only what we’re meant to see or what others believe to be beautiful. it’s people like us, the ones that truly know what’s going on, that will make all the difference (if we so choose). and if you haven’t read the Uglies series then you should get on that haha. it’s perfect! if you like what i wrote and think how i think, then you’ll fall in love with it…trust me.

    ok so the guy who predicted the end of the world had a “minor” miscalculation…the world is now supposed to end on Oct. 21, 2011…boy who cried end of the world…this is the 3rd time! i’m getting sick of it, but people buy into this crap time and time again…i guess you can get people to believe almost anything. i hate watching our world slip deeper and deeper into insanity…yet, i have to laugh…yeah i’m a little twisted. XD

    ~IF i don’t look at you, it’s because i can’t see who you truly are.~

  6. Wow, even I don’t know what I was just talking about; thanks for reading MY rant. It might have been the deepest shit ever, but I wouldn’t have known. Yet, as Bob Dylan said, “sometimes I think there are no words but these to tell what’s true”.

    “The truth is out there, and it’s looking for you. And it will find you if you want it to.”

    – The Matrix

  7. @Random: On Monday we debated this topic (about the end of the world) in my honors english class, and all 27 of us agreed that he was gonna try and cover his ass. And everybody’s kinda twisted, mostly us, but we’ll seem the most sane when everyone else is actually crazy. If that makes any sense.

  8. What do you think scott would do if they suddenly changed the meaning of fortnightly?

  9. Hello… I would like to see a picture of Dr. Cable.

    This ought to be interesting if you can do it. 😉

  10. One project down….five more to go. 🙁

    Aaaaaannd I still have to start my Leviathan collage. How to make one….anyone have any ideas?

  11. Ooh I LOVE the eye! But I guess I always pictured Shay’s eyes as kind of golden Hazel… Hm maybe I was wrong.
    I read the whole Uglies/Pretties/Specials/Extras series in like a week. I just couldnt put them down! (Why, pray tell, did they change the covers though? I liked the old ones)
    Keep up the good work!

  13. @TheWordMaster: I think…….. that… I don’t really think. BUT I do have an idea, if your usin’ kieth art you can arrange the pics in a vague shape of a whale, maybe. If fan art I have no clue. I’ll get back to you on that… *searches internet for ideas*

  14. @alice: yeah that guy will cover his ass until someone finally shuts him up for good. whenever that happens i’ll be happy haha. and yeah everyone is a little twisted, some more than others, but i totally understand what you mean. we who are twisted now, and can see these things happening but seem insane when we talk about it, we will be the ones who can say “i told you so” to everyone else and we’ll be there to clean up the mess that everyone else will inevitably make. so YAY! for being twisted because eventually we’ll be sane 😀

    ~If i don’t look at you, it’s because i can’t see who you truly are.~

  16. I don’t know or care if anyone reads this but, I sort of thought that Jaspert, deryn’s brother might come back from the first book because he seemed like a guy that would have something to do in the story. Just a thought.

  18. …….Mr. Westerfeld, isn’t that tattoo the Polymath symbol? I thought the Mindcaster symbol was the thirteen-pointed star.

  19. @Alec: Hell yeah! Jaspert is just that awesome! I can almost see him hating Alek in that protective big brother kinda way, but I’ll be happy if they just mention him.

  20. @Alice: I don’t think jaspert was even mentioned in Behemoth, maybe he was transferred to the Goliath or something.

  21. @Alec: Like they never mention him and then he shows up all dramatically, in Goliath, and everybody’s like “Oh CRAP forgot about him!” or somethin’.

  22. @Alice: exactly! Think of the possible reactions, they are endless! And what if the spoiler removed on the word cloud was Jaspert, that would rais some eyebrows.

  23. @Alec: YESSSSSS! That would make the best plot twist ever. And his entrance has to be dramatic, nothing else will do. There shall be explosions, and breaking glass, and best of all, blood everywhere.

  24. @Alice: Yeah, it would probably be after or during a battle, and sense I don’t think Scott will use the same thing twice it will probably new, like a siege on a city. The Goliath will or whatever ship he’s in would come and save the city and the leviathan then would most likely to send down people to help the wounded and one would be jaspert.

  25. I advise evry1 2 go google “deryn and Alek”. thats all you need, and you will find yourself A LOT of deryn+alek fan art..75% of which are them kissing. We all want it to happen Scott-la!
    SOrry i just noticed tht my post had absolutely nothing to do with all the other ones…well, i was too lazy 2 read them. anyway, I am REALLY HOPING that deryn and alek kiss in Goliath. Hopefully with alek knowing that deryn is a girl, and hopefully not in some very public place where evry1 will see them and assume theyre gay… WHO IS WITH ME??

  26. @pony-la: Yeah, that gets a bit awkward when your friend looks at your screen and they’ve never read the book. And yes that happened to me. She gave me a weird look like WTF.

  27. I’m sorry Scott, but that’s definitely the polymath symbol. Unless you switched them on us. I agree with @pony-la. Deryn and Alek FTW.

  31. I don’t mean to be rude, but that is a Polymath tattoo, not Mindcaster. I didn’t want to have to correct the author, but Scott, i just felt i had to.

  32. I squealed so hard when I saw this blog entry. I know it was posted a month ago, but I missed it.
    That’s me in the first picture.
    I’m actually about to get it finished, and have it arc over my shoulder, with the other 4 symbols. The Polymath one was just my favorite, so it’s the one I got first. The Arc is gonna be 13 inches long total, and each are going to be separated by little 13 point stars, if the artist can do it.

  33. Damn, Wylde is a f-ing great six string player. My own brother in law maintained indicating to everybody I needed to search him right up in Youtube.com and dang is actually amazing

  34. I think the “flash” tattoos are cool. I wonder if you could draw them on your self… and how long it would take…

  35. because hes from australia and everything runs backwards there like toilets and obviously clocks

  36. That’s always how i imagined pretties’ eyes, not how they are on the covers. I think Shay sees the right time in the mirror but since she’s a bubblehead she doesn’t realize it’s backward to every one else! 🙂

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