I made a video on why you should work for free (sometimes)

[edmourabarbosa]

Hey guys!

I made a video where my partner and I discuss why (sometimes) working for free is a great option. Please take a look and tell me what you think about it!

[skicoak]

I tried to watch your video, and no disrespect to your own opinion, but you lost me at the experience/exposure point.

Anyone who can provide quality experience/exposure to get you future jobs, should also be able to pay you for your current services. It's a catch 22 to suggest otherwise.

[edmourabarbosa]

Maybe you should have watched the whole video then. We explained our positions on exposure further for example. I say that I've never seen in my career an valuable exposure opportunity. I explain that in thesis, it should be a good trade, but it RARELY is.
On the experience point: are you against colaboration projects? because that's working for "free". That's our point.

[skicoak]

On the experience point: are you against colaboration projects? because that's working for "free". That's our point.

You made a point of saying that it was a specific kind of experience that was valuable in getting future work. The kind of experience that employers are looking for...professional level experience.

If you're engaged in a professional level project and you're the one NOT getting paid...you're being exploited.

Working on a collaborative effort with friends for "fun" isn't in that category of resume builder that you're talking about. Neither would equal amateurs collaborating on a beginners level.

[edmourabarbosa]

I clearly say on the video what kind of experiences are valuable when collaborating with others: working with a team, working on someone else script and etc. These are definetly not only "professional level" experiences. You can get that with any kind of project. And of course companies take these kind of experiences seriously! Do you really think that a professional write/editor looking to hire an artist for professional work won't look at your small project because it was "for fun"? That's literally what beginner portfolios are made of!

[skicoak]

Do you really think that a professional write/editor looking to hire an artist for professional work won't look at your small project because it was "for fun"? That's literally what beginner portfolios are made of!

You're back to describing a beginner's portfolio in terms of presentation to professionals. A beginner's portfolio is to get critique and feedback for growth...a professional's is to get work.

Professional companies are not looking to sift through the efforts of a team of collaborative amateurs. That's why the big boys have specific professional level tryout samples at every skill position to display your abilities. Sample scripts for pencilers to draw from, professional pencils to ink on, professional inks to color... Anybody trying to sell you on working with them to create "professional level" resume projects is selling you on something entirely else.

We're going to continue to disagree about the "value" of collaboration because we see it as different experiences. If I choose to collaborate with others, it's entirely for personal reasons ...you can't sell me on it having external value I couldn't gain in other ways.

[AWFrasier]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say exactly. Working on a passion project as a collaboration between friends =/= working for free (or "for experience")

You go on to talk about how to work on a team, and how to talk to other industry people. This is also something you can learn from (paid) apprenticeships or school. Or hell, there's a bunch of industry people in different fields who mentors emerging creators.

All of the experience you're talking about is something you can get through paid jobs. It's the same with "You thought you liked working in retail, but you realised you didn't." No one asks retail workers to work for experience. (And if they do, lol what the hell)

Creative fields are one of the only fields where people have fostered a system that makes people work for free because "it's for experience" or "exposure". And honestly, it's not right. They're preying on people who don't know better or who think you'll be fine working for free because it's "a calling" - or even worse, people who think it's necessary.

If you want experience with a creative field and you want to become a professional, get paid jobs. Otherwise you won't have experience with one of the most important parts of the business; getting paid. With everything that entails (asking for a fair pay, figuring out your monetary worth, etc.)

[forg]

I've taken on unpaid internships at companies and done volunteer work for non-profit orgs (not art, but still creative industry).

I would not recommend that anybody searching for experience to do this, particularly in creative industries.

If you want experience, you should lead your own passion projects and reach out to more experienced creators for feedback and guidance.

Now collaborating with friends is different as someone before me pointed out. In this sense, it's not work in a professional context, so the demands and environment are different.

If you're looking to get into comics as a professional, do not ever take on unpaid work, internship or otherwise. Comics is demanding and a respectable comics professional should know to set aside budget to pay for human labour.

If you want to be respected, you need to respect yourself enough first not to work for someone else for free.

[DiegoPalacios]

[TheYaoiEmpire]

If you're engaged in a professional level project and you're the one NOT getting paid...you're being exploited

That’s not totally true. Some people can engage in that quality of work and be on equal terms with each other. An equal understanding that doesn’t need hoops, perhaps a contract to clearly define everything so they are both on the same page. You don’t need to be friends with someone first to do anything, I only commission my friends when I have the funds to do so, we don’t collaborate because that’s just not something that would be realistic given schedules.

[vfinnigan]

The only time I've ever worked for free, it was as a volunteer for a benefit comic. I did it because it was for a good cause, and I knew up front that it would be for free. I don't trust anyone promising "exposure." Volunteerism looks better on a resume, especially if you're collaborating with industry veterans.

[skicoak]

That’s not totally true.

If it's a professional project (and not for charity), and requires contracts...and you're not getting paid...you're being exploited.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

.and you're not getting paid...you're being exploited.

Again I reinforce that if two people working on a project mutually agree on something, the contract is just a safety measure to make sure they both fully understand one another, you’re not being exploited, you’re making an agreement.

[Iris-Grimoire]

Volunteer projects are fine, no one's getting paid to work on a Zine and most of the time the profits go to charity, but in a professional capacity, don't do anything for exposure if they clearly could be paying you.
More often than not, that'll lead to a lot of disrespect, after all, you're looking desperate (might not be true, but from the outside it's easy to assume), and you're doing high quality work for free which must mean it's easy for you and they can be as controlling as they want over it. It's like charging less than five dollars for a commission, the people you get USUALLY don't treat that as a steal and actually think your work is easy to be this cheap.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I feel you both are referencing two different things. If there is a professional project with overhead, contracts, and a team, not just two friends who decided to do a project together with a contract, that sounds like exploitation. If you're having to report to someone above you, not just your friends, and the only thing you're getting out of it is exposure, then I think it's exploitation.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

Exploitation: the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work.

A mutual agreement between two or more people is not exploitation if they both agree to everything being done and are both mutually invested in said agreement.

[snowy]

Maybe I'm not seeing what you're getting at, but getting someone to agree that their work is not worth being paid for is not a good thing.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

Never said that, and no you aren’t getting at what I am saying. I am saying that if people agree on something there is no issue. No exploiting anything, no conflict, no self esteem problems etc etc etc that doesn’t factor in. This is because going in both people are in agreement about what is going to happen, they don’t have to be friends, just work well together and not have any risk of ripping each other off. It’s not all about one person in a collaborative effort, it’s about everyone, that’s something most people don’t seem to understand.

Believe it or not there are artists looking for writers to work for them for free and they just kind of, expect it to happen just because they can draw. There’s no discussion, the artist just wants to do what they want to do, the writer be damned, I personally was suffering this kind of abuse from a user until I cut off communication. Those kinds of people are what you are thinking about.

[snowy]

I guess I'm having trouble seeing how they arrive at this agreement. I mean, the only way I've personally seen this happen, is when one (unscrupulous) person convinces another (usually younger, insecure, less experienced) that payment somehow isn't an option.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

That’s a predatory move, people like that cannot be trusted. The proper way of going about things is communicating with each other, the person seeking to collaborate needs to make it known they cannot afford to pay, perhaps at a later date that might change, but they should never try to force anyone to do anything.

I am a writer, I got boxed in by an artist on here who approached me about collaborating and then dropped my project because I rejected his irl level harassment and his declaration of basically all my ideas were trash and I was nothing without his ‘generosity’, I cut off communication after that. That’s another thing that needs to be watched out for, you need to talk to the people you are working with to get a feel for them as a person. Someone who tries to convince someone else to do something for free by tricking them into thinking or forcing them to go by what they want is not a good example of anything proper.

You’ve merely seen the wrong kind of situations.