Hey.
If you've been looking around the 'Collaboration' forums, you've probably seen me.
While comics are my hobby, in terms of art most of my time goes on paid commission work. I've also worked (and am working) on paid comics work. I've also done non-paid comic work collaborations with friends and my comic group, as well as with The Comic Jam project.
Personally, I love unpaid collaborations.
I completely agree with this statment, but it's importnat to understnad that's not what all unpaid collaborations are. Most of these people are kids, unexperienced, unable to pay, and probably with a pretty shoddy unoriginal high fantasy idea about 4 kingdoms and their epic battle. (Not to say that kind of genre isn't with it's own merits, Avatar tla was great, but at some point you notice a pattern.)
Thiss is what we should all be looking for. Projects we love aren't work for us, just like the comics we write outselves. Working with other people is fun, it's motivating, there's no reason we, as artist, should look at that as work-only. A poject can, without a doubt, gian from having an experienced writer and an experienced artist working together, and both doing it because they love & believe in the idea.
How to know which collaborations to avoid? (general guidelines, none of these are a must)
Can't say how long the collbaoration is
(seriously, you'll see me bring this up every time, if your wrtier can't tell you if a comic is 10 or 1000 pages that is the biggest red flag)
"I won't say my idea because you'll steal it, PM me for more details"
(Usually comes from extremely young artists covering their magnum opus, you do not want to go there, will cover later)
We split profits 50/50
(the chances profits will even be split-able is so low, if your writer is focusing on that you probably want to avoid working on the project. Not to mention, 50/50 is far from fair)
Incomplete ideas
(if the writer is only pitching you a worldbuild rather than a plot. Using my own comic as an example, if I said, "it's a story about a guy who hallucinates he's an angel" vs "It's a story about a guy who beleives he's an angel, following his attempt to get professional help during a portion of his life where the hallucinations seep into other people in his life and affect his relationships with them, eventually resulting in a violent response from him to try and understand what's going on in his life.")
Inexperience.
(If your writer has never finished a manuscript before. Be it a novel, comics, or something else completely, if your writer is unable to put in that last sentence and call the piece done, don't trust they'll be able to with your story either)
Self Deprecation
(This isn't a must, but each coin has two sides. just like artists who're sure their ten-million page comic is going to be the next lord of the rings in comic form, if the writer's going to type up a paragraph about how imperfec they are and how bad their writing is but please work for them anyway, you're likley looking at a bed you don't want to put your head into. the line between self hate and modesty is THick, don't miss it)
Adaptation
(the novel is already complete, now the writer wants someone to illustrate it. That's not a collaboration, it's free work, and you shouldn't do it.)
Magnum Opus
(touched on this before but here it comes again; don't work on someone's magnum opus. The peice of their life, their big passion project, the script they put 15 years into. Most of the time, magnum opus stories aren't actually good- they're overdone and overthought and overworked, they're long as hell, and the writer has such a stong image in their head everything you'll do will seem like compromising. Don't put yourself in that position)
Don't overwork yourself.
(calculate how long the project is, if the writer is asking for 150, 350 pages and you've never worked with them before- don't do it. You're risking months, sometimes years, of your life for a script you don't know you'll be able to go through with and you don't know the wrtier will be able to go through with.)
How do I know which collabs to join? (general guidelines, none of these are a must)
You want to join a collaboration
(this isn't for everyone. if you're coming into this thinking 'gosh i can't believe im doing free art for this thing', or 'id rather work on my own projects' you're probably not suited to work in an unpaid collaboration, in which case this thread is pretty irrelevant to you and you're better off saving the heartache for you and the writer)
Everything I said shouldn't be missing before, exists
Know who you're working with
(check out their work, check out their involvment in the forums, ask for their discord and just get to know eachother for a week -and yes, iv'e personally done this. Get to know who you're going to be spending your time with.)
Communication!
(the most important part of any relationship. make sure the two of you can talk, about the collab, about the work, figure out your battle-plan, because different artists want different things, and different writers want different things. there is no cookie cutter solution here, so make your own collaboration work for you)
Take a look at at least portions of the finished script
(I've personally agreed to work on a project i thought sounded amazing, but then when i read the first few paragraphs i realized- this is not what i had in mind at all. even though we both loved the exact same niche-as-fuck genre and made a solid idea together, in the execution the writer focused on everything i disliked and threw away my favourite parts. this doesnt mean it wasnt a good story, just that it wasnt a good fit for us to work togehter. you can't really know what something will look like..till you see what it looks like)
Bonus:
Writer is also an artist
(this is a BIG non-must, but ive seen that collaborations work a lot better for me when the other person is an artist as well. artists tend to know better what a panel will look like -for example, ive had writers tell me what a room smells like-, how hard something will be to pull off, how much details and conversation can go in one panel. The technicalaties. And sometimes can even help with thumbs, chararacter design, etc)
Don't join out of necessity.
(this is a bit hard to figure out but... if your writer is picking you becuase you're the only one willing to join, not because they actually enjoy your work, you're both probably gonna find yourself a bit unsatisfied)
So all of that said, I wish all of you good luck finding your dream projects,
and if you're a writer who went through all those comments and you're looking for an artist..
hmu.