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

[silverraven0]

A few scenario I can think of why someone want to work for free is :

• it's a friend, family or whatever they actually trust.

• just doing it for fun because they didn't care about money.

• charity work etc. for good cause or other.

• inexperienced artist want to practice more for short term to raises their skill.

• working with some very very very famous person they believe will get them a good exposure(but honestly, it's not really a good payment).

• artist get roped into it without really knowing how it actually affect them monetarily in long term. Worse if they get a long term contract without pay.

Basically the artist got scammed into it.

Just tell me if I missed some other way or if you think I get it wrong. (I don't want argument but feel free to give me some perspective).

[snowy]

That person who approached you sounds like a dick. Hope he wasn't just trying to steal your ideas in the first place.

Still, my point is people can manipulate or simply bullshit others into working for free, without actually forcing them to do anything.
Maybe I've only seen the wrong kind of situations, but unless the person expected to work for free is independently wealthy, bored and has too much time on their hands, I honestly can't even imagine a situation were that person isn't being exploited. Agreeing to it doesn't change that imo.

[skicoak]

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.

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.

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.

I don't know what specific situation you're trying to reference @FatalMoonManga but I think the majority of us are talking about situations, contract or not, where money is being made from your work but you're not receiving any of it or you're working directly from rigid directions from another creative ...and all just for "experience" or "exposure".

And it's a symptom of the culture that's been built up around exploiting creatives.

And I absolutely know the difference between exploration and collaboration, I'm moving into my third year of collaboration with a collective of creatives on our series here on Tapas.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

Ahh you mean those, ‘I will pay in exposure’ choosing beggar people? They suck.

If it’s collaborative and funds are being made then it’s only natural for a 50/50 split. You don’t partner with people and not give them a cut of their contributions to your idea. For both sides, writers and and artists. Who in the world are you people interacting with that do these things? I only ever see stuff like that on other sites.

[skicoak]

If it’s collaborative and funds are being made then it’s only natural for a 50/50 split.

There's a whole thread on the forums devoted on the unnatural state of the 50/50 split...

Not trying to flame any writers... but as a cat who's doing a little bit of everything within our group... No way does writing = artist in terms of workload. Not even close. Even if it was just about availability, you can't throw a rock into crowd without ricocheting off a dozen writers looking for an artist. Finding viable artists is like a truffle hunt. We need a new formula... something like Writer 25% and cat doing everything else 75%.

The general gist is publishers do not pay out to the creative teams by anything near those ratios for the creative work involved to produce a project.

The 50/50 doesn't reflect workload drains OR the value publishers put on each creative position.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

That thread is ridiculous in assuming that writing isn’t as valuable as artwork. Without writing there would be no plot, no dialogue. Sure, silent comics etc but even those have some form of written planning. But that’s not the point. The point is equal pay for both people involved, it’s illogical to give for example an artist 75% of the profits if the idea and the characters do not belong to them nor did they create them. This also stems toward artists who try to claim a writers work as their own, as if they did all the writing and the character creation. However I am certain there are people who would attempt to argue with that because to put it simply, greed is a fickle thing.

Overall a writer and an artist, regardless of who seeks who out, need to come together as a collective understanding and have appreciation of each other’s individual talents. They need to decide what works best for them as a team.

[snowy]

Isnt it about actual working hours more than "value" ? I mean, it takes me a few hours to finish a 4 page scene. Takes my artist about a month.

And again, I like your positive approach to collaborations, but anyone asking anyone else to work for nothing is not exactly showing them appreciation in my book.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

The amount of detail one puts into their work depends. Coloring etc in addition to everything else naturally will take longer, that’s why if they ask your assistance on certain things you should help them out. But not everyone does color.

I speak from personal experience with the few good people I have met. Collaborations are about people working together, it doesn’t matter if there is payment involved right away, if they, once again, both have a mutual understanding and agreement between one another.

Workload can easily be split, if descriptions for every scene are written out act by act, that’s just one example. One person’s work time is not more important than anothers,

[skicoak]

That thread is ridiculous in assuming that writing isn’t as valuable as artwork.

If you look up what publisher's pay each position in a creative team...you'll see only writers evaluate themselves as worthy of a 50% share.

it’s illogical to give for example an artist 75% of the profits if the idea and the characters do not belong to them nor did they create them.

You're not describing a collaboration here... That sounds more like a work for hire situation and you should be paying the artist for doing exactly what you request. If the artist is in the reverse position and just requesting dialogue, they should be paying the work for hire position.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

I speak of splitting profits, everything should be even. If the situation was reversed, the artist is the one seeking out the writer, do you believe that such a thing is still fair?

[snowy]

If you can somehow split the workload so everyone works about as many hours, then sure, go 50/50. I can't see that working at all in my comic, so when it does start making money, 25/75 sounds more than fair to me.

And (also) again, agreements can be too easily manipulated. I get the feeling this is going to devolve into an argument about semantics and conflicting personal experiences, so I'll just leave it at that.
Thanks for sharing your views though.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

It’s as simple as making sure the agreement doesn’t get manipulated. Again, it all depends on the people involved and no this will not be experiencing any form of devolution.

[skicoak]

I speak of splitting profits, everything should be even.

That's where myself (and a bunch of other creatives) and publishers disagree. The person(s) doing the line art, the inking, the coloring and the lettering get more in every formula.

If you find an artist willing to agree to your philosophy, good for you.

If the situation was reversed, the artist is the one seeking out the writer, do you believe that such a thing is still fair?

I would never pay one creative in a 5 job industry/production, 50% for doing ONE job in the chain.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

In a five person set up the budget is what matters, if there is no outside funding things have to be worked out between people. Money doesn’t grow on trees, the funds someone DOES have down the line can attribute, so the split would be evened out. Otherwise they basically profit off of your idea more than you do for the simple fact you need their help.

That in itself IS an example of exploitation.

[vothnthorvaldson]

The problem is as simple as... time. It's not about who's the most important, it's about who spend the most time on the project.

I'm mainly a writer, who turned to drawing because I don't have a good language anymore (lost a lot of my native language and never got to a great level in English).
To be entirely honest, I was never a professional fiction writer, but I wrote non-fiction professionally and was considered a apt writer for that.

In a comic setting, I can imagine cases where I would spend as much time in writing than in illustrating; and would be okay to share 50/50 with a writer if I needed one.
For eg. If the writer needs to do a tremendous amount of research (weeks or months before starting project; the writer needs to learn about a whole new field), and provide the artist with a story already in the form of a storyboard (or at least very easy to convert into one). Or, the text is not that demanding, but the art is super simple, like some slice of life comics. I could even imagine under that last category, a case where the writer would spend significantly more time than the artist, and should be paid in consequence.

But these are specific and rare cases. It looks like the common situation is that for a creator who does both the art and the writing, at a SIMILAR LEVEL of quality, the writing is a smaller portion (often significantly so) of the total time spent on the comic.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

It depends on how long it is overall honestly. Something shorter takes less time, something already written out takes less time, something that has not been written out takes more time.

Took me three years to finish my novel, even then I still tweak it, didn’t hire an editor because that was an expense I didn’t have the money for.

A big long term project takes more time on any side overall.

[vothnthorvaldson]

I'm speaking about RELATIVE time (between writing and drawing).
This novel that took 3 years, could correspond to a longform comic, that could be 10-15 years long. Obviously not as long if it was the main professional activity, but I assume your novel is not your main activity either.

[TheYaoiEmpire]

It is in junction with the manga being produced of it, I have several more books in the series to write. That isn’t going to happen overnight, nor in a few hours or days or months.

everyone should be treated equally in the end, anything else is poor business practice.

[skicoak]

Someone is gonna have to give me some concrete examples of this "time intensive" writing because as an artist//writer I have yet to find something that took longer to write than to draw/ink/color.

And the research angle is bogus, if the writer does a deep dive on a historical period, say the age of sail, the artist(s) HAS to do exactly the same. You can't (or at least shouldn't) draw a man-o-war from memory/imagination. Ever draw rigging?

[vothnthorvaldson]

That's true that the artist has to research too. But they can use the writer's research as a base. I'm in my tunnels right now, but this evening, I can tell you what specific (personal) example I was thinking of; however, I stress again that I think it's POSSIBLE, in RARE cases, that the writing takes as long; but the overwhelming majority of the time, it's not the case, and by far.