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

[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.