About

Channel-tans are anthropomorphized versions of television channels and media broadcasts, mainly those dedicated to cartoons. Since its conception in 4chan's cartoon and comic board /co/ in mid 2016, it has gained a substantial fanbase of artists and writers that has inspired an expanded universe.

Origin

The earliest concepts of channel-tans come from a /co/ drawthread submitted on June 4th, 2016, where an anonymous user requested anthropomorphized versions of Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. Later in the thread, artist aipiepo^[2] submitted as an anonymous user the art request, featuring three girls with their designs inspired on the three channels (shown below).^[1] In the same thread, more requests for channels were submitted. The same day, aipiepo submitted the art on their personal Tumblr account, gaining over 26,000 notes in the following 10 months.^[3]

Spread

The same day the art was posted, a thread dedicated to creating more anthropomorphized channels was created.^[4] This started a series of threads where several designs were created, not only for TV channels but also for networks, broadcast companies and animation studios. This led to the creation of the /ctg/ (Channel-tan general) threads, submitted every Saturday and Sunday so artists and writers could upload their material.^[7]

On June 9th, 2016, a danbooru-like image board was created in order to store the fan art created in the general threads, gaining over 4,000 posts in the following ten months.^[6] Channel-tans also have presence on other 4chan boards^[5] and Tumblr.^[8]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References