#thanks again for asking me purplelea! Honored you think mine are good.

[regallibellbright]

Thank you for tagging me, I’m flattered! As a general guide, I’ve found this one from Veronica With Four Eyes is good and I've got a similar philosophy in general for art (and especially fanart) I didn’t make. The same site has a very useful guide on cosplay image descriptions, too, which is handy since I've only done a few cosplay IDs. For how I specifically approach fanart beyond that, with the note that I tend to go long and detailed and that's by no way required:

- My general rule is "What's important to describe here", which is one part "what's the subject matter" and one part stylistic details like color scheme or art style. In a photo, I'm also going to describe what's important (if I'm taking a picture of a doll I made, I'm going to describe who they are, what they look like, and any details I'm particularly proud of) versus what's only in the picture incidentally (I might mention I'm holding the doll in the palm of my hand, for scale, but I don't need to describe the background or if I'm holding a shoe so I can get a better shot of it.) A lot of figuring out what to focus on is a learned skill, especially when trying to be concise - I know when I started I added a lot more detail than was really necessary, and you're trying not to make it longer than you have to. Practice helps, and personally I've found trying a really detailed piece and breaking down what I see in it and what I think's important has helped a lot in identifying that. For editing down, think about what details you can consolidate and what ones you can leave assumed.

- With characters who get multiple outfits or appearances in a series, I usually say something like “Beat from Neo The World Ends With You” or “Sora from Kingdom Hearts, in his outfit from the first game” to specify what version, assuming they’re just in their standard look. If the art’s entirely focused on the character - say, this fanart of Cure Prism - I’ll describe their appearance in detail, but if the primary focus is what they’re doing, I’ll probably just leave it at that so the description of their appearance isn't overwhelming, and assume anyone who's looking at this fanart already has some idea what they look like. (Especially when the outfit's complicated - if Cure Prism were doing anything interesting in that piece, it would be completely swallowed up by the description of her dress. If I felt it was SUPER necessary to include something about her appearance, I'd probably stick to something like "A preteen girl with long pink hair and a ruffly white dress," and move on.) That said, if it’s something new - say, fanart of Pokemon from an upcoming game - I’m going to describe their appearance in detail anyway, assuming the viewer isn’t familiar with something revealed that day/a month ahead of release/etc. This is entirely subjective and there’s no real rule there on my part or otherwise.

- If the character is wearing something different than usual - a redesign or a “let’s put these characters in formalwear” - that gets a more detailed description of what the outfit looks like and how it differs from the “standard” one I’m assuming the viewer’s familiar with. It it were something like an outfit swap, I’d just say “Sora, wearing Roxas’s clothes.” It’s less important to get across what those clothes look like than it is whose clothes they’re wearing. And if a character wears several different outfits or variations without a main one, I’ll give a quick description of what they’re wearing if that's the focus. (Say, "Usagi Tsukino, wearing a light green button-up shirt with a light blue denim jacket and a long, pale pink skirt," vs "Usagi Tsukino in civilian clothes" for something where what she's wearing doesn't matter so much as her not being in her Sailor Moon getup.)

- A lot of it’s contextual. For example, and I’m not linking these just so I don’t spend an hour tracking them down since this is long enough, I’ve seen two text posts using box art from a Kingdom Hearts game. One of them’s a post asking if a zombie and a ghost can come from the same person where someone reblogs with the KH2 box, the other’s talking about how evocative the art for the original KH1 cover is. With the first one, the joke is just “this is a central plot element of Kingdom Hearts 2,” so I’d just say “the cover of Kingdom Hearts 2″ and leave it at that. What the cover specifically looks like doesn't matter. With the second, the post is focusing on the art, so I’d go into way more detail about what it looks like and what about it is so striking - the use of color, the heart-shaped moon and the characters in the darkness in front of it, how they're posed and where they are relative to each other. We want it to be descriptive without being super-interpretive - I have trouble reading Sora's facial expression on that cover, so I'd probably describe it as "neutral" or something, compared to his more confident smile on the 1.5 HD cover. (And then back up that adjective with the way he's sitting on the throne.)

When there's dialogue or a comic, I usually do "description of panel first, then dialogue," but I also think about pacing with those in particular and how I'm reading the comic and will sometimes change things up based off the comedic/dramatic timing there. For example, with this Spy x Family comic, in the second panel I described Anya's pose and her dialogue first, and then describe the contents of the drawing to keep the same "Oh, that's cute wait WHAT" we get reading the dialogue. It won't do to reveal her small child nightmare fuel right away. (In hindsight, I'd probably do the fourth panel with the inset and dialogue first and then describe the lamp panel after.)

- Playing off that, personally I tend to look at a piece and go “Okay, what about this am I paying attention to? What do I think is important to getting the sense of what this image is?” I’ll usually mention the medium (traditional, digital, papercraft, crochet,) and a bit about the style and color scheme if it’s something distinctive - pastels vs monochrome vs bright colors on a black background, for example. I’m not great at explaining differences in artstyle I see, but I can at least mention it’s “cartoony” or “watercolor-like” or in the style of a different series or artist. If something particularly catches my eye about the piece, I’ll try and mention it. Since I'm adding descriptions to things I didn't make myself, I'm usually asking myself what about it I like and what about it makes me want to reblog it, and then adding some of those aspects to my description.

All that said, a minimally-detailed description’s better than no description and quick to read. If you don't want to go into huge detail, that's fine! It's still a description. I can certainly stand to work on making mine be shorter, and I DO go further in on the interpretive side than average. That's by no means required.

And now for an example, I'll go back to the Kingdom Hearts 1 box art and break down how I'd describe it step by step. Under the cut, since this is long enough.

So. Here's the box art. What do I notice here?

There's the huge heart-shaped moon in the center, which is what one looks at first because it's the biggest source of color contrast on the cover. Everything else is blue-black except the edges of the city at the bottom, and you can barely see that with the licenses. Second thing you notice are the characters, because they're in the center, just below the heart with two exceptions. Everyone's shaded in blue, same as the sky. Contrast again. In particular, we'll notice Sora in the center. Since he's in the center and standing up, we know he's the protagonist and we see his fancy weapon. He's also got a little bit of red visible from his outfit, which is underlining how important he is, but I think that's more detail than we'll need in a crowded cover.

So for an image description, I'd say something like "The box art from Kingdom Hearts 1, showing a massive, golden heart-shaped moon and the game's five main characters on an elaborate roof decoration in front of it, all largely in shadow. The protagonist, Sora, stands at the center of the moon, the Keyblade in his hand at his side."

Next most important thing - who are these other people? We have Riku, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Kairi. Kairi's sitting at Sora's feet, Goofy and Donald are sitting just below and behind them, and then Riku's standing (!) just slightly below Sora (!!), with his back turned (!!!), his sword over his shoulder and his eyes closed and facing downward where every other character is facing the same way Sora is, looking up and to the left. (Which, visible in this version as opposed to the artwork sans logos, is where the title is. Instead of putting it in the center, they put Sora and the moon there and then have Sora and everyone else looking out at it. Neat touch. By this point I'm used to seeing it as the artwork on its own.)

The cover's implying A LOT about Riku immediately just from that. And I don't have to go into any more details about his role in the game - just calling attention to the fact that he's contrasting everyone else but still positioned below Sora tells us he's got a significant plot role and it's probably antagonistic. I might mention he's the rival or Sora's best friend, because otherwise someone unfamiliar with the series is just going to ask "Who's Sora? Who's Riku? Who's Kairi?" if I only give their names, but everything else is implied. As to Donald and Goofy, I'm going to assume the viewer's familiar with the fact that they're Disney characters but will mention their weapons, since that implies things about their role in combat.

So, back to our description:

"The box art from Kingdom Hearts 1, showing a massive, golden heart-shaped moon and the game's five main characters on an elaborate roof decoration in front of it, all largely in shadow. The protagonist, Sora, stands at the center of the moon, the Keyblade in his hand at his side. At his feet sits his best friend Kairi, leaning back with her feet dangling off the side of the chimney, and behind them sit Sora's companions Goofy and Donald Duck. Goofy has a shield with a Mickey Mouse emblem, while Donald holds a staff with a wizard's hat on top. All four of them look out at the sky, upwards and to the left, at the title logo in the corner. Goofy and Donald have small smiles while Sora and Kairi have neutral expressions. On the right, behind and just below Sora in the moonlight, stands his best friend and rival Riku. He is standing with his back to Sora, a wing-shaped sword slung over his shoulder, with his eyes closed and his face downward. The wind blows Sora's hair out of his face and Riku's hair in front of his."

I decided to put Riku's description at the end to emphasize the contrast between him and everyone else on the cover, but you could just as easily put him before Kairi because you're going to notice him third. (Moon -> Sora -> Riku -> everyone else.) That would read more like:

"The box art from Kingdom Hearts 1, showing a massive, golden heart-shaped moon and the game's five main characters on a chimney in front of it, all largely in shadow. The protagonist, Sora, stands at the center of the moon, the Keyblade in his hand at his side. On the right, behind and just below Sora in the moonlight, stands his best friend and rival Riku. He is standing with his back to Sora, a wing-shaped sword slung over his shoulder. At Sora's feet sits their best friend Kairi, leaning back with her feet dangling off the side of the chimney, and behind her sit Sora's companions Goofy and Donald Duck. Goofy has a shield with a Mickey Mouse emblem, while Donald holds a staff with a wizard's hat on top. Sora, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy look out at the sky, upwards and to the left, at the title logo in the corner. Goofy and Donald have small smiles while Sora and Kairi have neutral expressions. Riku stands with his eyes closed and his face downward. The wind blows Sora's hair out of his face and Riku's hair in front of his."

Anything else worth mentioning here? There's the town on the edges, and there's a Heartless-shaped gargoyle in the lower-right corner, but they're not very visible in this particular version. Still, I'll mention the city at the beginning to give context for what the heck everyone's standing on. (Which... I have no idea how to meaningfully describe that thing.) I'd probably add that this is the PAL region PS2 art (It was the first one I could find an easily-saved image of,) but wouldn't describe all the logos. I also tend to break up longer descriptions with paragraphs for clarity, which is another reason why I'd give Riku his own section at the end - I can put him in another paragraph. So our final version, with the start and end brackets, is:

[ID: The PAL box art for Kingdom Hearts 1, showing a massive, golden heart-shaped moon over a distant city at night and the game's five main characters on an elaborate roof sculpture in front of it, all largely in shadow.

The protagonist, Sora, stands at the center of the moon, the Keyblade in his hand at his side. At his feet sits his best friend Kairi, leaning back with her feet dangling off the side of the chimney, and behind her sit Sora's companions Goofy and Donald Duck. Goofy has a shield with a Mickey Mouse emblem, while Donald holds a staff with a wizard's hat on top. The four of them look out at the sky, upwards and to the left. Goofy and Donald have small smiles while Sora and Kairi have neutral expressions. They are all looking at the title logo in the upper corner.

On the right, behind and just below Sora in the moonlight, stands his best friend and rival Riku. He is standing with his back to Sora, a wing-shaped sword slung over his shoulder, with his eyes closed and his face downward. The wind blows Sora's hair out of his face and Riku's hair in front of his.

End ID]

And that's how I do things, personally. Hope it helps!

anyone got any advice on how to write image descriptions. i kinda wanna start doing them