CAMBRIDGE.- A new art community is around the corner – and it its creators are calling upon artists and art enthusiasts to make it happen.

anipan is a new and unique art community created by the team that built MangaBullet, a website for manga-inspired artists. They also consulted with pixiv, Japan’s sixth mostvisited website (Video Research Interactive Inc., April 2012) with more than 4 million users, for their international-facing site, pixiv.com.

The community, which is scheduled to launch into closed alpha in June, will host a tailored feature set that distinctly separates it from any other art community. One key feature is the ability to drag-and-drop artwork onto any page of the site, simultaneously uploading it to anipan and connected social networks and other art communities.

“anipan is a 2012 approach to what an art community really should be,” says Eddz Walsh, Director. “It is designed to not only make it extremely easy for artists to publish their work around the web, but also to truly put the emphasis on presenting artwork beautifully and intuitively – almost as if you were viewing the piece from within the walls of a real-world art gallery.”

Another of anipan’s defining features will be its re-imagined art display pages, developed to provide an optimal viewing experience with a unique “detail view” magnifying lens which has the added benefit of reducing copyright infringement.

Art display pages also encourage multi-cultural interaction: viewers who are unable to communicate with an artist using a common written language are encouraged to express their reactions to artwork through drawings of their own, rather than words.

“Art is a language in itself and should have no barrier to entry,” Mr. Walsh continues. “As such, we’ve built anipan to rely on as little text as possible, favouring icons and illustrations over words. Our intention is to let the artwork to speak for itself: an unfamiliar language will never stand in the way of enjoying a beautiful work of art.”

anipan is using the Indiegogo crowd funding platform to raise the funds needed to kickstart a launch. With crowd funding, many people make small contributions, together raising a greater amount. As a result, projects of all sizes are able to be completed independently.

The campaign page can be found here: http://www.indiegogo.com/anipan

The creators are aiming to raise $25,000 by May 20th, 2012. anipan was awarded “Campaign of the Day” by Indiegogo on May 7th, and has so far passed a quarter of its funding goal.

To show appreciation to those who support anipan, a selection of exclusive rewards has been prepared for backers. This includes a poster, “anipan backer” t-shirt, invitations to the closed alpha program, and a trip to Tokyo. The complete list of rewards can be found on the campaign page at http://www.indiegogo.com/anipan