curious about collaborations

[ratcreature]

Are there any forums or communities for organizing author/artist collaborations that are not Big Bangs (or Reverse Big Bangs)? Like say a notice board where authors announce describe their WIPs and express an interest in getting a cover made or illustrations or any number of things (say a pretty map for your story with a quest or other world building stuff), or artists can post what they'd have an interest in illustrating or maybe propose their project ideas that would need an author as well as art, and then people could comment and find each other?

Comments

[tassosss]

None that I know of, but that sounds like a fabulous idea! Most of what I see like that seems to be spontaneous, fanworks of fanworks, but it seems to happen once either the art or the story is done.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I've illustrated a fair couple of stories, but I'd like to try sometime to create something together with an author, where maybe you talk about what to illustrate, and could get clarification how things are supposed to look. And maybe if the story is still in draft seeing sketches of stuff would inspire authors to to elaborate on something, I don't know, I haven't ever done that. And then it could get published together.

Or I have some art ideas that would really work better as part of something with text, like for example a Sanctuary idea I have, ideally it would be a thing like field notes of an adventure the team has with an abnormal, kind of like epistolary fic. But I can't write adventure stories.

[tassosss]

A real collaboration, I like that from the writing side too. One of the things that I found difficult when I did Trek Reverse Bang last year was that during the process of writing, my story changed enough from the initial conception that fitting the story to the illustrations felt a little forced as I wrote it.

And for the SPN Crossover big bang I did I really wanted a map but the etiquette isn't to dictate to your artists.

[ratcreature]

Huh. I guess that they want to prevent the author viewing it like getting commission art for their story where they could just ask to get illustrations for specific scenes to their specifications with approval of the thumbs beforehand and so on, but I think some back and forth wouldn't be dictatorial yet.

I've never done a Big Bang myself, because the whole setup seems daunting, and the timeline from signup to getting a draft seems so long for artists.

I suspect apart from attracting enough writers/artists for a viable pool the main stumbling block of such a match-making comm would be that rejections are a possibility if you offer yoursel. Like say there's an author posting about their WIP project and you find that interesting, and offer, but the author really dislikes your drawing style, and rejects you. Or you put out your idea for a comic, looking for a writer, but the author who responds is one whom you recognize to absolutely clash with your view of the characters, so you have to say that it won't work.

And then of course there is the more general popularity issue. I mean, very popular authors/artists that are widely known to produce great stuff are more likely to get offers, so that could be kind of crushing to have it made visible like that.

[domarzione]

I don't know of any collaborative communities as such beyond artword over at LJ, which is a challenge com that's been dead for a few years. I did it twice (well, three times, except I punked out once). I found it a mixed blessing at best. One time I worked with a stranger and once with a person I e-socialized with and both times, I found there to be communication difficulties of different flavors.

On the other hand, the very few times I've been given art unsolicited, it's been amazing and just what was called for. I dunno.

[ratcreature]

Well, it is certainly less complicated to just illustrate a finished thing, and then the author can take it or leave it. And you see that happening fairly often too. I mean, probably not "often" in relation to the total amount of fanfic, but a good portion of the fanart you see posted seems inspired by fic. OTOH it seem rarer for an artist to get a story written for their stuff, even if the artist is popular. And of course either is much less likely to happen spontaneously if you are more in the broad midlist of popularity and/or talent.

[yue_ix]

I've done similar things in 3 occasions, within certain spaces, but it wasn't always intended to go the way you describe it here.

With imaginarybeasts, each book is launched as a theme, and people can sign up as a writer, an artist, or as an illustrator. The illustrators are officially described along the lines of 'sign up here if you want to illustrates someone else's story', which would look like a Big Bang, though out of the few times I signed up, a couple of times authors contacted me with 'I want to start from scratch with you. Do you have any ideas we can play with? Here's mine', which would fall under your project. (It was, by the way, lovely with some people, and a bad experience only with one person,who wanted it 'BB style'. But in general people were nice about all this and we respected each other's creativity.)

I've only done artword once, as the camelot_fleet's artword project, and though that never got finished, it was rather lovely too. Not every team started out with the mindset of 'creating something new together' and instead defaulted to 'I'll do something then you do yours and we'll see' due to communication problems, lack of ideas, or simply preferred way of doing things. I think that's okay, and is bound to happen in any such project, even if full collaboration from the start was to be encouraged most. So while my team went for that (even if we ended up splitting a bit), not all teams did. There were other problems linked to multifandomness, LJ-DW exchanges, lack of follow-up and mis-communications involved in this challenge from a moderator's POV though, so while I've enjoyed it (even though we weren't able to complete our piece) if it was to be redone it'd be held differently. =)

The third space where I was able to do this thing is in my own space - by leaving notes in my journal/on meme prompts/on other's journals that I'd love such collabs, and having people get back to me about it when they are interested. It has happened, of course, in RL time with friends being physically present in the same room and us all doing related fanworks at once, or doing something similar while chatting/skyping/video conferencing. That's very individualistic though and rather lacks any form of order or set-up. Most sessions do not end up productive, what with everyone distracting each other, and often results in complete crack.

It would be really nice if there was a centralized space to host such 'collaboration permission'. It could be in the way some spaces are presently done for artists or authors to leave blanket or specific permissions to make fanworks of their fanworks (such as podfic of fanart permissions). My comm Drawmelot has such a post for artists to leave permissions for authors to write things based on their works, and would allow anyone posting about them being open to collabs, but doesn't have such a post right now. I had hope that merlin_ficart would end up not unlike your idea but so far it seems to have leaned more towards the do-one-part-then-I'll-work-with-that side of collabs. I'm uncertain how that kind of thing can be avoided, considering how much people are used to that way of doing things.

All that said, it'd be a great thing to try, imo, especially with as many types of medium mixing as can be lured in. ^__^

[ratcreature]

I think the major problems with setting up a collaboration space would be what I mentioned to tassoss above. First, you would need a fairly large pool of writers and artists to have a chance that you actually find someone interested in your idea, even more if it was multi-fandom, and it would be hard for the comm not to die off in the initial phase (like artondemand where people could ask for art, that never really took off). Then there is the social problem of rejecting collaboration offers, and the problem of this kind of think making popularity even more visible.

I mean, it can be rather daunting to put yourself out like that when matching is not more or less guaranteed like it is in Big Bangs and fests like that. For example I have asked once in my journal whether someone would be interested in doing some writing for an idea I had, and well, it just got no reaction. In part it was probably just a problem of too small an audience pool to find someone, but otoh it's even scarier to ask something like that in big comm and then still have nobody interested.

[sholio]

I don't know of anything along those lines, but I think it sounds like a fabulous idea!

[ratcreature]

Yeah it would be nice if it existed. Or even if it was just more common to see such notices in fandom specific comms, so that it wouldn't seems so scary or unusual to post it. But most seem to be just for posting finished stuff.

As for starting such a comm, like I said in my comments above, I think it would have a hard time initially to become large enough to be viable for actually finding others that match what you are looking for. Plus the social awkwardness issues.

[janice-lester.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of one--once or twice I've put feelers out for artists to illustrate my fic, but that was very much a case of PMing a likely person and asking nicely--but I'd be interested. Especially if it was multi-fandom. I'd also be interested in artists posting works as prompts, finished art that they hoped would inspire people to write fic--a sort of informal reverse bang.

[ratcreature]

There was a community on in comic fandom, illustrate_me, where people could request art (whether for their stories or just something they wanted to get drawn). Unfortunately it's been dead for a while now, and was never that active. I filled a request there once and it was fun. It was modelled after art_on_demand which was not fandom-specific and iirc slightly more active but that comm's been deleted.

There was an attempt to start such a comm on DW, but that one never took off, presumably because not enough people joined. I think you'd need to attract a fairly large pool of writers and artists to have a chance that you actually find someone interested in your idea, even more if it was multi-fandom.

The other stumbling block of a comm that tries to facilitate collaborations rather than just using finished stuff would be that rejections are a possibility if you offer yourself. Like say there's an author posting about their WIP project and you find that interesting, and offer, but the author really dislikes your drawing style, and rejects you. Obviously that's socially awkward for the author, and bruising for your ego as artist, but obviously you need to like the creative output of the person you are collaborating with at least somewhat. Or in reverse as an artist you post your idea for a comic or an illustrated project, looking for a writer, but the author who responds is one whom you recognize to absolutely clash with your view of the characters, so you have to say that it won't work. Again with the social awkwardness and the ego-bruising.

And then of course there is the more general popularity issue. I mean, very popular authors/artists that are widely known to produce great stuff are more likely to get offers, so that could be kind of crushing to have it made visible like that.