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

[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.