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Oct 2019

This is a chronic issue I see in nearly every thread in this section. Doubly so for those looking for unpaid labor from an artist. We've all seen it. Those posts that say basically "Hey I need an artist for a project, are you interested?" just in more words. No information. No details. And far too often, no pay. So consider this your quick and dirty guide to what to include in your pitch to avoid being one of those people.

  1. Who are YOU?
    No one's going to sign on with a total stranger, especially if you're new to the forum. Even if you've never done another comic ever before in your life, share some content you've posted somewhere. Anywhere. A story. A tweet. Anything. And to that end, at least wait until you have an avatar to make your pitch. There's nothing less trustworthy than an expressionless gray face.

  2. What's your title?
    If your project isn't developed enough to have so much as a title, you're probably not ready for an artist. Plus having a title will make you stand out among the thousands of "Writer looking for artist" threads.

  3. What's your STORY?
    This is so important yet never included. Give a summary of the story you want to tell. Even if it's just
    2-3 sentences. You need to include more than just a genre. Sure something might be scifi, but there's a vast difference between Looper and Star Trek. You could say fantasy, but is it Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings?

  4. Who are your characters?
    Maybe more 3b. You need to sell your protagonists at the very least. Who will be carrying your story? Your artist will be drawing them every day, and there's a huge difference between a young girl in modern attire and a heavily armored cyborg or dragon.

  5. How long is your story?
    An artist needs to know how long they're signing on for. Is it a short, 50 page run or an open-ended epic that's going to last years?

  6. What style do you want?
    There is a difference between beefy western superheroes and willowy manga characters. You don't want to be pitching for realism and end up with pixel artists and chibi illustrators sending you their work. Name or even better link to an example of the sort of thing you want.

  7. What are you offering?
    Compensation. Simple as that. Most artists who are here already have their own comic that they're doing for free, so you will need to offer something in return for their time. Exposure and friendship are not compensation. A cut of ad revenue is non-existent for most comics. If this is an unpaid situation, keep that in mind with the scope of who might respond.

Use these to stand out from the sea of the overwhelming number of "someone draw my comic for me" posts.

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    Oct '19
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There's also perfecting that initial story/what's interesting about the project pitch. If you can't present your story and why we should read it with decisive sentences(even if it's a bunch) and show why you're sure that shared revenue project will work, then the artist won't be sure they'll be seeing a cent even if you're a good work partner.

You mentioned being gone for a while in a recent post, but I feel like I should let you know we kinda went over this while you were away!

There's nothing concrete or mandatory about using the guide they've set up, but it is a series of questions like yours. The idea wasn't to strictly enforce somebody to redo their post to answer each question, but to give those people a general idea of the stuff that usually gets asked about when these posts are made. There was a whole conversation about whether or not these should've applied for all posts from then on or if we could just make a new section for better collab posts while leaving terrible ones alone..? That's the gist of all the replies, we kinda left it at "well, we don't know what to do officially, so send 'em here for the questions if anything"

That's great and all but that thread stopped being replied to over 2 weeks ago and is thus completely buried unless you expressly go to the "announcements" page. Plus it's in a completely different section. It's also not pinned anywhere. If I didn't see it in my lurking, someone coming here just for the express purpose of pitching a their writing project sure as heck isn't going to see it.

So what's wrong with having similar topics posted in different places? It's almost like it's a good idea that should be more visible in this section, even if it's just pinning that one from 2018 so it's easy to find.

Like I said, that was kinda where we left off and it didn't really go anywhere. I felt it important enough to bring up since we as community just talked about it recently. I'm not saying you can't post this either, bc I agree! We do need to have it brought it up again and again, which is why I wish some new guidelines, maybe even a format to go along with it would be pinned on the collaboration category.

I just thought it'd be neat to bring up the post to see what we've already gone over and considered in terms of handling this issue better since you missed out on the conversation, that's it, man

Keep it simple, keep it relevant, know who you talking to. If I say "Power of Stardust is like Bizzaro meets Specter set in the JSA days" to a DC fan they'll know exactly what I mean. But to more casual readers I need a different pitch. Something like "A crazy spacegod comes to an Earth filled with reimagined public domain superheroes from the 1940's and tries his best to make things better."

Precisely. All you need is the "elevator pitch." The most basic summary to get people's attention.