A Tapastic Short Stories Collective: Test Run

[El_Psy_Congroo]

Problems with Collaboration Posts

Many a thread (including this one) have addressed some of these issues but I'm going to bulletin a few common ones below:

• Vague or no information regarding the poster and/or project: no examples of art or writing
• Little or no actual work put to paper - basically spit-ballers: "I've got this great idea for a comic in my mind"
• No payment yet demanding creative control and a release schedule. Artists are creative creatures, they require sustenance in the form of monies or emotional investment in a project - any of which require time and labor. Hence there are often no incentives to collaborate

I feel as though many collaboration posts go nowhere, or at the very least, since people often message each other privately, the actual progress, and therefore whatever the successes, go largely unknown.

Some of these issues stem from the fact that many are noobs when it comes to comics (I'm one and I've made some of the mistakes mentioned above). However, I believe there is a space in this community for people who are just starting or even those who have experience and want to further develop their skills and craft to do just that. I have found that people here are super supportive and always willing to share advice and give serious critiques (seriously, you guys rock). I've also seen a number of posts of people wanting to try out short self contained stories, to dip their feet into the art of comics, before launching into bigger works.

Hence, I want to take these poor bewildered initiates and the cooperative energy of the forum and channel it into a project I call:

The Tapastic Short Stories Collective

(or TBD if you dont think thats snazzy enough)

How it works is that those creators with wretchedly vague (or not) concepts and no money to their name would start a forum thread titled Tapastic Short Stories Collective: (working title of their project) where they would post the ideas they have as coherently as possible while other new wannabe writers, and the occasional bored forum guru, would contribute in that thread to build up a short self-contained comic story from zilch. The goal of each thread would be to have a finished comic. All collaboration would happen on the forum thread and anyone can feel free to give their input. The final comic would be published on a tapastic profile created for the collective and the names of all collaborators would be posted in the author's comment at the end along with links to their respective profiles.

Simple right?

This project is not for people with long stories in mind. It is also not for those ideas (we all have them) for which you want more creative control, since this is pretty much artistic communism or something. The authorship is shared with those who collaborated on the forum. Now, clearly, one person may have been solely responsible for an aspect of the finished work. They will of course be credited as such by request. Communication between the moderators of the Collective (which for now would be just me) and the original forum thread would be necessary. This is so people who read the comic and are blown away by some aspect of art or story telling can be introduced to those who's handiwork went into it.

The acknoledgement might look something like this:

Colllaborators:
marysue - Line art
LeroyJenkins - coloring
GeorgeLucas - Script
BarackYomama - Story and Writing (people who contributed to the plot/writing)
MicheleYomama - Story and Writing
IlikeYomama - Maybe some general form of acknowledgement even if your contributions didn't make it into the final production

This "plan" of mine is obviously not flawless and the purpose of this thread, aside from getting the idea out, is to get your input and suggestions in making sure the project bears the intended fruit. I'm open to any criticisms or concerns in order to make this project succeed.

I do hope to accomplish these goals:

1. Provide a creative space to allow rookie creators with fledgling ideas to experience a project from inception to completion (and actually feel with their bodies and souls how much effort goes into such things)

2. To provide people with the experience of actually collaborating with others (and learning the pain of letting some creative control free) in order to make a production they would not have otherwise been able to make alone.

3. To expose artists looking for collaborations to the meat and guts of the makings of a story so they can better decide whether its something they would be interested in or passionate about.

4. In the a fore mentioned thread, @Kaykedrawsthings said:

   "the only collaborations I've even considered have been from people
   who contacted me directly with their stories. I think finding an artist who's work you think fits the story and contacting them is a better way to go about finding an artist than just posting "ART PLEASE" threads on a bunch of different forums."

Here, people on the forum are introduced to each other in a serious creative environment that might get some to wonder "Wow, this person has some very good input and may be a good fit for me. I think I'd like to message them to see if they want to work on another serious project together some time."

5.To incentivize collaborators by directing reader interest towards their other work

Finally,

I don't think this will fix every issue with collaboration posts but it may help some people find something productive and fun to do while looking for collaborators.

If you're interested in being a part of this, great! Respond to the thread. If you have any suggestions, respond to the thread. If you think my idea's bunk or that this forum is just not the place for this, that's fine too - just tell me why! Respond to the thread =]

[somvi]

A good collab is really hard to find...

As an illustrator I tend to look for writers that already have a clear pitch and a workable script. I feel these starting blocks need to be in place or we would just end up derping around in circles and never reach production.

If I'm understanding your post, you're willing to start working with people really early on in the process (ie. no script, just a bunch of ideas, maybe a text wall description, etc.). Great, but I hope you have something in place to weed out the "idea guys" posting half baked concepts for everyone to poke at until it moves.

I feel as though many collaboration posts go nowhere, or at the very least, since people often message each other privately, the actual progress, and therefore whatever the successes, go largely unknown.

You may be right, but yes everything does go down in the PMs. What you're proposing is that all work be done in a fish bowl environment (ie. public forum). Although it's interesting to see the creative process and the potential shitstorm of input that the artistic commune could offer, this can be a bit daunting for newcomers to have everything on display. However, this isn't reddit or some other anonymous neckbeard haven so this may actually work on this forum?

Just my initial thoughts. It's good to see you're interested in helping peeps get started so I encourage you to give it a shot anyways.

[El_Psy_Congroo]

Hey, thanks for the input!

So the goal would be to aim for short stand-alone stories which would hopefully provide enough of a focus that there isn't too much room for derping around. My general feeling from the forum is that its a constructive bunch (dunno about the neck beard thing though) and hashing your ideas out in a public place - especially for a first timer - may be a good way to build some confidence. After all, you have to show your finished work to the public eventually.

I do want to formalize a process so that things are productive and that will no doubt take some refining. As I mentioned, the process begins when someone posts a topic with Tapastic Short Story Collective in the title (to make it easier to search) and would put their initial ideas up. I've seen collab posts where people put up genres (slice of life, romance, sci-fi), tropes, character ideas, influences, etc. Combinations of these are obviously a good start but only having one of these categories would probably end up going nowhere. So a poster may be encouraged to have some kind of unique "seed" idea to get the creative gears rolling. EDIT: I should add that some responsibility would likely lie with the original poster, to keep the process constructive and ongoing.

I'm going to post my own idea for a thread as a test run and see if it can't be "poked into life"

[El_Psy_Congroo]

Hey guys, this is going to be a trial run that I myself will initiate for the project. This is very much still in the experiment phase and a lot of refining may be in order.

My "seed idea", if you will, is a relatively vague one on purpose - just to see how difficult it is to bear fruit with little to start with. Appropriately, I got the idea from a dream I barely remember:

In a fictional city the mafia and the police have comparable power and hold a tenuous peace. One day that peace is put in jeopardy when an oracle claims to have made a prophecy.

Now, before any drawing or even scripting commences there are a number of things to establish:

The Plot

Beginning

We need perhaps a mini plot line to establish the world and setting. This might be some problem that is quickly resolved that establishes the relationship of the mafia with the police, introduces the main characters, and then leads into the oracle's prophecy which sets off the rest of the story.

Middle

The rising action would deal with the consequences of the prophecy. Some questions to answer:
In what way was the peace kept and how did it break?
What was the prophecy?
Did the conflict occur separately or was it indirectly caused by the prophecy itself (think Macbeth)?
What will the climax be? A violent stand off? An urban war?

End

How will the climax be resolved?
What will happen to the main characters? How will they change, if they do?
For a short story, the way it ends would really set the tone. Is this story a tragedy with a sad ending? Is it an action adventure romp with an exciting one?

The Characters

Note, for a short story there should be a limited number of deeply developed characters for the sake of brevity, so long involved backstories are not always necessary.

The Oracle

Is this a cryptic character who masks wisdom in riddles and who's past is shrouded in mystery? Is it an ordinary person who finds themselves with an unwanted ability? Is this person involved in any sides? Do they directly influence the story in a way apart from their prediction?

Leaders

Some characters are needed to represent both sides and perhaps the logical place to start would be the leaders of these groups. What are their relationships with their subordinates? What is their relationship with each other? How do they feel about the circumstances of the world they live in?

Some side character ideas may be mentioned if you feel the story needs the old Bar-owner informant trope, but again keep in mind that this is meant to be a short story so serious thought should be placed on their overall necessity to the narrative.

The Setting

Is this a historical or futuristic setting? Is it steampunk, cyberpunk, etc? Are the characters human or something else?

Everyone who contributes will be listed as a collaborator with a link to their website of choosing so readers can take a look at their other work. Because you will be credited regardless of the amount of your contribution I ask that you please police yourselves when it comes to keeping the thread constructive (and civil). But this is Tapastic so I might not even need to say anything =]

I can't wait to hear your ideas.

[Bail]

The thread you've set up has been closed, so I'm just going to leave a couple ideas here.

The Oracle could be a young adult who seems to belong in one side but really belongs with the other (i.e police informant, Mafia spy etc), which could work well to establish the story (these are the two sides, this is their relationship with each other, this what the Oracle is like etc.) The prophecy is delivered, however (maybe they just wake up with a notebook titled Prophecy in one hand or something) but it's written in some unknown language so that the Oracle cannot translate and is left unfinished. Recognising that they just wrote a prophecy (it would have to be a common enough occurrence in this world that they knew what it was or maybe their great grandmother was an Oracle or something) they agonise over which boss to send it to, before releasing it to the internet (or equivalent) so that both sides start on equal footing.

The prophecy is everywhere in the next couple of hours, a cause of much speculation and panic, and so the police and mafia get wind of it. They hire/kidnap a translator (could be a cause of conflict, depending on how many there are around, how easy they are to find, whether they actually want to work with the people trying to hire/kidnap them) and translate the prophecy, which the general gist of is:

'So-and-so Great McGuffin Weapon is up for grabs and could totally help you in this little Mafia/Police stalemate thing going on, putting you in a position of power and so on and blah blah blah, and oh, by the way, it's in-"

And so, to get the rest of the prophecy, they need to get the Oracle. Maybe both sides hire the Oracle to hunt themselves down because that would be hilarious. It could be that the Oracle still doesn't know what the prophecy means. The weapon can be mythical, magical, technological or whatever and the prophecy shouldn't rhyme because it's been translated from one language to another, and anyway, what reason does it have to rhyme in the first place?

Of course, now that I mention it, instead of just the police and the mafia racing to see who gets it first, there could be other groups as well, all with different motivations. What about a group of Oracles who want to induct this new one into their group, or to teach them, or to get them into their favour so they can make power plays over other Oracles? What about a new crime organisation that needs the weapon to pull the mafia out of their little crime niche? Surely other countries and the government would be super interested too?

They could make alliances with each other or fight with each other or so long. I hope the Oracle keeps this a secret for almost the entire story, but they might have no reason to. Maybe phrophesising is illegal and as soon as the rest of the prophecy comes out their head will be cut off. Maybe Oracles are ostracised. Maybe they like the way their life is at the moment and doesn't want anything to change. Maybe they're struggling over who their true alliance is with.

But either they tell someone or they find out somehow, because you don't keep secrets like that forever. Maybe someone betrays them? But all of a sudden it's like hell itself is after the Oracle and they're on the run. Maybe they hide somewhere or fight back? Maybe they make a tentative alliance with someone outside the city's power-system or maybe they hook up with friends or maybe they go it alone. Anyway, there is probably a lot of conflict and the Oracle will probably be captured once or twice.

Anyway, sooner or later, the later half of the prophecy arrives and after last time the Oracle sure as hell ain't putting it up on the internet (or maybe they do, because they're an idiot). If the Oracle is captured at this time the person who captured him will have it anyway and now they have the sweet problem of finding a translator (or maybe they have one already, because otherwise how did they translate it last time?). If the Oracle isn't captured they most probably want the translation of it anyway, or maybe they wanted the translation all along because I'd want to know why a f*ck-ton of people were after me as well. So they'd have to kidnap/hire/rescue a translator.

This would probably be the climax point of the story. And because it would be boring for the Oracle to be walking to the McGuffin by themselves (unless that's going to be used as an epilogue), the end of the prophecy needs to be leaked (betrayal?). Now we have the various forces converging on a single point and there is a fight-fest. It would be nice if the Oracle got hold of the weapon somehow and had to chose which side to give it to, finally deciding who they're loyal to. The best case scenario would be if the weapon was somehow nullified or broken. It otherwise depends on who gets it and what their motives are and what the weapon actually does on what the ending is.

I have no real ideas to the characters other than that the relationship between the Oracle and whoever they give their information to should be interesting. XP

---

Other ideas for this storyline:

• The Oracle gives the prophecy in full and understands it but puts it on the internet anyway/it's leaked out somehow (again, betrayal). However it can only be partially translated (although why they just wouldn't put up a translated version is beyond me). Thus, conflict as they try to find the Oracle to translate the rest.

• The Oracle is someone else entirely, a child maybe or someone close to the original Oracle. The original Oracle protects them.

• The Oracle translates the prophecy themselves and goes off to find the weapon. Knowing there's a prophecy, but not what's in it, everyone else comes after them.

---

The setting/genre for the story line I thought up is maybe 20 minutes into the future with hints of (urban?) fantasy. A lot of action/thriller stuff with elements of politics (dunno if that's the name for the genre I'm thinking of). Maybe the city is a city/state? It's definitely a little rundown and a lot corrupted.

Pretty much the setting for this will have to include elements of fantasy, but here are a couple ideas that don't include fantasy in any way:

• The Oracle is a fraud/insane. Maybe they're trying to provoke the Mafia or Police into fighting each other, or maybe they're working for one side trying to topple the other.

• Somebody has invented a machine that predicts the future.

• People from the future come to the past (or claim to come from the future).

[LeoKi]

For the prophecy to have any large effect, the people or some influencial ones have to believe in prophecies. Is this a superstitious society? Or a fantasy world where prophecies tend to be true? Or is the oracle a scientific expert that a few will actually listen to, albeit reluctantly? In building the setting I think it is important to show why the prophecy is not going to be ignored. This alone is a good starting point for imagining situations that will depict the world in a believable way.

[SpectreFirst]

Is this project still going? We have a very similar open collaboration in another community so it may be interesting to share experiences and probably even join our forces and merge into a common place instead of having two separate groups.

[El_Psy_Congroo]

That might be great. I wanted to wait for a few more people to chime in before adding to the coversation but things got busy for me. Do you have a link for your project?

[csimma]

I find collaborations so fascinating.
Has anyone suggested starting story where each page is from a different artist/creator? it might be tricky to coordinate, maybe the artist/creator can declare their page in a post and edit post with that completed page?
I wouldn't mind working with a writer/creator on something short-form. maybe a good 24-30pg story. just my two cents.

[El_Psy_Congroo]

I actually think there was. It was advertised on the forums too but I don't know if its continued

Edit: found it: http://forums.tapastic.com/t/endless-winter-collaboration-recruiting-new-artists/11455

[SpectreFirst]

Yes, we have a separate Reddit community called Evotale

Right now our project is practically dormant, but I'm constantly poking around for new contributors and I think that if we'll somehow merge our efforts, we'll be able to bring more people in. Judging by your initial post, we have practically the same set of rules, guides and requirements, we also have an established workflow of sharing assets via Google Drive and Docs. Separate community is less prominent and needs advertising, but in my opinion it is easier to manage because you can have different topics from different contributors all stored in one place as well as sticky posts for common uses. I'm not advocating to move to our place, but we had a successful start and our workflow proved to be reliable.
Since I’m practically on my own at the moment, I can move around between the projects, but I’ll need someone to get me acquainted with your working assets.

Regarding your project: as far as I can see, your project have a couple of posts with synopses and ideas, but do you have any actual drafts, scripts or at least a repository of working resources? I must admit that our own repository is outdated, but it won't be a problem to sort it out or establish a new one for a new branch.

Has anyone suggested starting story where each page is from a different artist/creator?

Yes, in fact our community started exactly this way: our initial plan was to create a random story one page at a time when multiple authors can suggest their version of the plot and then we’ll combine, vote, refine and create an actual page. This system proved to be more or less reliable, but due to technical difficulties our current branch came to a halt and now I’m trying to attract people for a new one.

---

And a little stupid question: I've spent almost an hour trying to figure out how to send private messages here, but I still can't find it. What am I doing wrong? I'm not a fan of whispering, but sometimes it's more convenient to drop a private message to keep the main topic clean.

Edit: Endless Winter is a very good example of open collaboration, but it looks like there are only slots for artists while our project was designed for everyone.

[jgallo405]

Something that could help for future collab posts would be to create a format or guide based on the type of role you'd like to fill in the comic making process. Such as writer, editor, lettering, ink artist, concept artist, etc.

Perhaps if a group can divide roles, it can help break up the workload more evenly so it doesn't become too much of a strain.

Another avenue that could be pursued would be to create an anthology. Especially if the goal is to create an actual book.

I was a part of a writer's group and we managed to publish a book this way. By collecting all of our short pieces we were able to fill up a whole book relatively easy. And since there were about 12 os us. It made it really cheap to pay for the publishing process.

Hopefully that helps encourage more collaborations on here.

[SpectreFirst]

Workload distribution is one of the most important parts in any teamwork and that’s why I tend to be against strict division of roles in open collaborations. Strict role distribution is important for static groups, but open collaboration is a highly dynamic working environment so it would be much more productive if every contributor will outline the possible roles it can take. “I’m a writer so I will only write stuff” is not a good approach for such kind of work and I believe that everyone should aim for filling as many roles as possible.

For example, I cannot draw a stick figure by hand, I’m not very familiar with modern web technologies and I cannot proofread English, but I can do pretty much everything else: I can act as a project manager, refine story logic and plot points, do research and assemble moodboards, make 3D drafts for certain extent and assemble panels and wording into a page. I’m not an idea guy so I won’t be very helpful with generating ideas, but I can help with picking ideas from idea pools and assembling them into a working block.