Poorly made collab requests and specific reactions (Rant)

[skicoak]

it'd be nice to see someone start a thread where we compile a bunch of users comics or novels who've actually managed to complete a project that started out from one of these.

I asked for examples, in another thread, about half a year ago ....no responses.

Most examples of Collab on this platform seem to come from outside the platform/forums.

[Jenny-Toons]

And to that point, a lot of the collabs that do come of fruit, it's basically by people who got to know each other on the forums and outside of the forums. Two examples I know of are the one I worked on with other Tapas creators, which was this:

Super Comic Collaboration

And the Over a Cup of Coffee collab, which to be fair was paid, but it worked and they made the finished book:

[image] [image] Coffee. We drink it hot, cold, with milk, with sugar, with whiskey, alone, with friends, at professional meetings, while waiting, to wake up, to share a moment… Coffee is so much a part of our lives that most of us don’t even spare it a thought anymore. It is like a constant background character, it gives an extra depth to our stories, an extra flavour to our mornings, sometimes an excuse to go out and sit around a table. So why not talk about it some more… Over a coffee? …

Hey... Guess where you can already buy Over A Coffee digitally? That's right! Our website already has the digital version ready for you to read! Prefer to go through Amazon? It's on Kindle too! Go and give these artists some love eh?

There were also a few Fight Club threads that happened that made some comics.

Again -- a lot of the collabs I've seen work down happened less because people were looking for strangers. Rather, they were looking for people they had already known to have established some sort of connection with, be it professionally, friendship, or they knew that "hey, I could work with this person because they can get shit done"

[ar-ninetysix]

Hmmm that's pretty bad lol but like.. okay, was that the point of the thread itself or was it a somewhat related question in a reply in that thread? I feel like there'd be different people interacting with the former and the latter, like for example, somebody who would've answered might've not been a part of that so they never saw your question to begin with, because it was in a thread they weren't interested in clicking on.

For all we know there could be a handful of these collaborators that are regularly active on here and they could give some insight as to how it all worked, but there's just no place that's relevant enough for them to give such an answer? I dunno, it'd just be interesting to see all of the ones who've made it out of production hell in a single spot on here

[Trevor]

maybe you should make a thread on that?

[AceRagz]

My whole body of work online so far has been collabs. I had nothing more than a rough idea of what I wanted out of my first comic. I didn't think I could write it out all on my own. I also felt like I would be better off with someone helping me keep motivated. So I asked someone I sort of knew through rp groups if he wanted to help out. 16 years later he's my best friend and we've stuck by each other through a lot. And we still work on comics.

However there are some issues I see not being brought up here. I mostly see people arguing over pay. Ownership over characters should be addressed and agreed upon by collaborators. With me and Typh we have an agreement that we will use one another's characters in our comics and retain ownership of what we personally create. We also jad agreements with other members of our rp group that we could use their characters.

[skicoak]

Hmmm that's pretty bad lol but like.. okay, was that the point of the thread itself or was it a somewhat related question in a reply in that thread?

It was one of the typical threads about Collab requests. It was asking, and making a point at the same time, that for the abundance of cold calls for collaborators on the forums... You don't see anyone returning/championing it as a success story. Maybe they are out there...but they really don't pop up in these threads to defend the process.

Oddly Vanilla is a anthology if collaborations but it's core creators met outside of Tapas/ it's forums. (mostly WAY before Tapas even existed.)

We originally dabbled in trying to find more artists on here to Collab with for the anthology...using the forums approach. Seemed like we had the perfect scenario for new artists... short form collabs with our writers willing to write to the artist's strengths. No looming deadlines or external pressures.

The results varied from abominable to just a confusing "ghosting" after sending one lovely completed page.

It didn't get us anywhere because we weren't reaching people who,as Jenny-Toons said, could "get shit done".

I mostly see people arguing over pay.

It's the big ticket issue though...it's gonna get the headlines.

I started explaining collaboration like this...

I'm actively working on my own passion project(s), as are most the other creators "getting shit done." If you're trying to convince me to give that up, to work on some other form of collaboration...it's going to have to be a heavily incentive based proposal . Be that pay or other forms.

[skicoak]

Ski quit cutting up my posts to justify your own

I was only interested in pointing out the point of why people argue over pay...didn't care about your secondary points of character ownership ...or distribution stream control, or future usage in other media or the hundred of other things that would take place after a desire to form a collaboration occurs.

[AceRagz]

I really don't know what your big problem is with me but it always seems you love to target in on me. Why is that? Am I still too new to the forum for you?

[skicoak]

love to target in on me.

No idea what you're talking about.

I quoted the part of your post that pertained to my points in the overall discourse.

[DiegoPalacios]

On my experience with @skicoak he is like the local "Socrates", he doesn`t debate out of hostility, he is there to question points and to get questioned too.

I`m older than him on the forum, but depending of the topic he may still debate things i say XD

[joannekwan]

I was also going to say that character ownership, while ideally would be mentioned in a good seeking-collab post, usually comes after the initial question of payment. Like that would be discussed in the 'contract' step of collabs when a party already shows interest in working with the poster.

[skicoak]

I can't help you with any of that, unfortunately.

You're describing how it makes you feel when I disagree with you. I have no agency on how you feel about things...that's completely outside of my control.

And my disagreeing with people is just the result of a forum of open opinions. There's no logistical way to insure that people won't disagree with you...and there's no expectation for me to take extra measures to have an opinion that matches your own.

[IndigoShirtProd]

@AceRagz I understand your frustration but let's not pull this thread away from the topic at hand. If you have a problem with how @skicoak is quoting you then please take it up privately, not publicly.

[AceRagz]

I apologize and I should have taken this up privately instead.

[ble]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[joannekwan]

Click on the person's username in one of their posts and hit the blue 'Message' bar.

[SpectreFirst]

I wonder why nobody mentioned Endless Winter yet because it's a vivid example of a successful free open collaboration. The reasons it worked were:

• It was a collaboration of artists so it was possible to distribute efforts evenly
• It had no solid structure or logic – one person makes a page, next person picks up and continues the story however it wants
• It had no solid graphical style so people didn't have to adapt their styles and habits to work on it
• As far as I remember, they had some sort of deadline – if one person hasn't finished its part in a certain time, comic was passed to the next active member or something like that

All in all, it was practically a funny free for all with no uniform structure and it was done by a team of artists rather than teams of artist-writer which means that such pipeline is not suitable for any kind of serious work which most people are looking for.

And speaking of why most collaborations don't hold for long – free collaboration means no solid obligations so people tend to slack and prioritize other things over it (which is understandable) so perhaps the only real way to make it work is to start working on a project by yourself and invite other people to join you. This is what I did and it worked quite well – I kept working on my project regardless of other participants so people were free to come and go and contribute as much as they want; the whole project was done as a hobby pastime so nobody had to deal with IPs, payments, characters or anything like that. Project was not concluded because it had rather complex structure and logic and after a while I have left it in order to work on my main project. Nevertheless I cannot call it a failure because it gave me exactly what I wanted – it gave me a lot of experience, I've met different people and despite being very laborious it was kind of fun. Technically speaking, I can resume working on it any time I want so it's not dead but just dormant.

[ble]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[joannekwan]

Wow, that's really strange! Perhaps make a new topic on it?
(I'm thinking it might be some technical formality? Like if you haven't uploaded an avatar or your account is x weeks old?)

[ar-ninetysix]

@Trevor
Alright.. I mean, might as well just go for it, right? I'll make one after this comment

@skicoak
Yeah, no, judging from a lot people's stories that they've shared on here it really seems to be like a majority of these collaborators either don't seem to be willing enough to work on a project and see it all the way through.. or there's some sort of a disagreement that halts the progress of it altogether, even to the point of the partners disbanding and quitting said project. I find it baffling that even with all the right steps in place, the people who tried to work with you just simply couldn't pull through.

It doesn't seem like there's any threads in defense of the process to help prove the point that it's possible to actually have that work, so I'm hoping the thread I'm gonna make later would keep it at a more positive spot where we can focus on the successes of it on the forums. I doubt there'd be that much attention given to it though and kiiinda feel like it might devolve into someone saying "nah, these never work" and us derailing from the topic from there. No harm in trying though

@oksoup
Click user's profile picture or name and it gives you a little preview of their page, that preview also has a little button that allows you to message them. On mobile, you'll see a message button right next to their profile picture. If you don't see a button, that might be a glitch and you can ask about it, or just ask the user you wanna talk to if they wanna talk through PMs~

Now uh.. everyone else.

I know you guys are having your own conversations about pay and distributing rights and all that jazz, but we're derailing pretty hard here. It's no longer about the attitude towards poorly made collab posts and more about what they entail as whole, the benefits there should be in working on such projects, and what contracts need to be put in place to ensure both parties being satisfied with future actions involving the potential IPs in question, and honestly... that's not what this thread was about to begin with. I just wanted to whine lol I feel like the conversations could definitely be continued elsewhere as my issue's already being taken care of by the mods.

In short, it seems to boil down to.. if it's for fun.. you might get somewhere, god willing. But if it's for money and owning an IP, it gets real complicated, real easily.

So, @ratique if you wanna close this up, go for it. I personally think we're kinda done here