What do you guys look for in an unpaid collaboration

One of my top issues is how rare it is for writers seeking collaboration to have any existing writing or published work. Particularly if you frame yourself as serious about the project, it just makes more sense to actually work on your craft and self publish before/while looking for a creative partner.

I could appreciate extenuating circumstances may exist, but generally I think most of these people are all talk.

Besides that, most collaborations are about the writers big magnum opus, which is just kind if a bad starting point.

Then there's entitlement, people framing what should be a commission as a partnership to avoid paying, people soul insist the comic will make money with no experience to support the assertion... etc.

Ah, and 99% of writer collab requests are people who only make a board to seek said collaboration and otherwise have nothing to do with tapas or the forums. I'm more likely to trust a writer that is part of the community.

I'm honestly not down on collab so, I swear! I think it's wonderful when two or more creatives mesh. It's just challenging to make that connection. =)

Yeah, it`s like asking for marriage to strangers. Is unrealistic to expect that level of commitment at such an early stage.

"but.....exposure.....and.....hum......endless opportunities!.....don`t leave!,please.... i swear i have more fancy buzz words!"

That`s the key word. Connection.....Trust and a compatible vision are neccesary, and being compatible to work as a team.

The only collaboration projects I've done for comics is with the Fundy Comic Art Society. The money we make selling the comic goes towards our next publication and the rest goes to the Public Library.
I can't participate in all of the projects, because I don't have a lot of time for side projects.
Our group have people of all ages and all skill set and most importantly it gets the community into comic creation.

I've accepted some collaborations with this group, because it serves the community.

The unpaid part is 100% a turnoff. Comics take a LONG time to make, and even longer to finish. Asking an artist to dedicate years to something that might make money someday when they can just make that portfolio work themselves or look for someone with more qualifications/previous projects to make something with eyes on it, is a pretty tall order.

If I take unpaid collaborations, it's short - REALLY SHORT, 5 pages, or a zine contribution, or even an anthology where I can meet new artists that share tastes. Someone else's 20 chapter epic that they've been writing since they were a kid is far from that, especially since I've already got mine with none of the pressure to finish it.

Three things
-Reliability. If somebody wants my hard work, I want to know they'll be doing theirs.
-My admiration. At the end of the day, I am a writer before I'm an artist. I put hours upon hours into drawing to make my story come to life. Even for pay, a writer has to convince me I want to work on their story more than I want to work on my story. I cannot see myself doing a free collab, but there's a small handful of writers I would give almost anything to work with.
-Their respect. In comics, the art is part of the story. I would have trouble working with a writer who just saw their artist as an illustration machine. A comic artist does the lighting, the camera angles, shows emotion is faces, and all of that can make or break a story.
That also means a good writer needs to be willing to work with an artist. This means making scripts that translate well to panels, clear communication, and being willing to listen to the artists ideas of how they could help the story be more clear and impactful.

I don't really do unpaid collabs anymore, but I did several in the past and learned a lot from them via trial and error.

When an artist is willing to do collabs, its often because they're interested in an opportunity to grow. Either they want to take on an unfamiliar genre, or just get some practice. Another reason is sometimes you just want to do a fun casual project on the side because maybe you're getting bored or frustrated with your own stuff.

In these cases, you would want to partner up with someone that actually offers more to the table, someone you can actually learn from or is able to do both writing and the art. You would also want it to be short and sweet like others have said. But unfortunately this is not what a lot of these collab posts offer. Rather, you get a lot of long difficult projects with possible revenue down the line and 50/50 split.

So to give an example:

I sincerely tried to do the work as an artist partnering with a writer working on this long fantasy epic webtoon hoping it could eventually become featured on Webtoon. And the writer really tried as well, they tried to help with layout and lettering, wrote a good script that came with references, and communicated well (we even video chatted . . .). I tried to make that connection and was determined. . . . but I eventually burnt out.

After that any collab that I did was super super casual or a short time investment. Also, I required that all of the writing was finished since my main focus was on the getting better at art and webtoons. Then it got to the point where I was able to do comics professionally and now unless I really really want to, unpaid collabs are just not on the table.

Unpaid collaboration is sort of like the check is in the mail....

As a writer I've been in 5 collaboration projects. The first 3 went absolutely terrible but my most recent 2 was great. If you don't care about how they went you can just skip to the last sentence.

1st project: In this collaboration the artist was helping me with converting my Dark/Romance Novelette into a manga. So one part of our agreement was to do check-ups every 2 weeks. So when the first check-up came. I found out that the art they showed me when we first made contact belonged to someone else. So I just decided to end it there.

2nd Project: This was actually a paid collaboration. This was also for my Dark/Romance Novelette. Since I was paying this time I wanted to meet someone in person. So a buddy of mine suggested one of his colleagues. So after a few days of talking we agreed on $500 a week over the course of 8 weeks. So $4000 in total. I thought this was pretty high but I could afford it at the time. So as a part of our agreement I would pay the $500 then she would give me the completed chapters the following weekend. A week passes after I paid her and it's time for me to receive the chapters. An hour passes after our scheduled meet up time and I don't hear anything from her. After waiting for another hour and a half I go home. So after two days of me trying to contact her and my friend getting ignored by her, I just gave up.

3rd Project: This time it's for a different story of mine. An Action/Coming of Age kinda story. Anyways me and the artist mutually agreed to end it, after we couldn't get along with each other.

4th Project: This one actually went well. This time I was helping a random artist I found on Instagram. It's not much I can say about it. It was just an overall great experience and we both were able to hold up our end of the deal.

5th and my current collaboration project: This time it's for my main Novel and will total about 500+ chapters (yes this unpaid, surprisingly). So far everything is going well.

All in all I just want someone I can trust. Someone that believes in me just as much as I believe in them.

Honestly, I can't believe a lot of the posters I see have the chutzpah to ask for unpaid artwork (or writing, but it's usually art).

It's one thing to ask an existing good friend if they want to join forces. It's quite another to blanket blast complete strangers with unpaid work requests.

I'd be down if people weren't demanding such a long commitment. Unpaid and 5-10 yrs of dedication do not connect for me.

Yeah. You can't get any lower than that. I've had to deal with that for commissions before but never for a Collaboration.

Thanks, it's just that I really want to see my stories become an anime or movie someday, so I just gotta keep going.

Sometimes I think people forget that a ton of artists are creating (“writing”) stories of their own and have a lot of their own ideas they want to draw out.
And Tapas is wonderful because it has a novel section for writers.
I know it’s cool to see a story come alive visually, but I feel like there’s got to be some compensation.
There’s no problem in asking for a free collab, but it just tends to get nowhere unless an artist is asking for a writer or if the writer isn’t presenting (preferably finished) material of their own.

I've mentioned this before on here, but the way I was taught is that "collaboration" is always unpaid. If there's money involved up front then it's a job you've been hired for.

That off my chest, I agree with everyone saying the projects need to be super short. Start off small, see if you work well with someone, and then see if they even have time to work with you as co-creators of the monster you have under your bed.

I'll do unpaid if it's for charity. Usually charity zines and the like is fanworks anyway so I never have to really worry about copyright. But, most of the unpaid collabs on here that aren't charity or some sort of cross promotion, are completely unaware of the time commitment art takes and are extremely demanding (and they'll have REALLY intense deadlines too, of 30+ panels a week and it's like good lord you aren't paying that person!) I don't want to work with a controlling bossy person.

And like, I'm an adult, so in my mind, forking over a couple hundo is what you would pay to fill your car that month with gas. It's what an artist deserves, so they too, can fill their car with gas. If you refuse to do even give as much as gas money, then it looks like you are either a child (which is fine, but I'm an adult so it would not be appropriate me to work with an underage person that closely behind private DMs. Some stranger-danger there, so I don't respond to those collabs.) or, that you are an adult but you have absolutely no confidence in your work to invest in it, and that you are actually looking for an artist to fix your project for you.

And then finally, many of the collabs are kind of...poorly written, as just a collab post. So it's like...you want to be my writer and you can't write a post? And I know it's because of the age of the collab makers, many of them are teens. But, they are trying to convince seasoned artists that they're a better writer than them. All artists on here also write and are sitting on like 3 or 4 scripts at all times, that's why we got into webcomics. So instead of writing a boring collab post that reads like a grocery list, write to get me interested. Convince me my script isn't anywhere as good as yours, and then I might look twice at it.

Being unpaid for me is the big fat no if I don't know them.
Sure they may seem warm and welcoming but I've seen cases where that went south real fast.

I have a good friend who I'm currently doing a collab with for a comic but that situation is different because some of the characters in that story are my own and I also pitch ideas.

Seeing what you come up with on a smaller (and simpler) scale is, I think, the best way to decide if you work well together without wasting too much of anyone’s time. Both should be clear about what they want out of the collaboration—growth, experience, fun? Also…if you’re not interested in the same content, it’s probably not going to work out.

Artists have ideas too and might want to develop them with an experienced writer, but I almost never see that offered in requests. A while ago I was helping my friend develop her comic (plot/characters) in my free time, and she was going to look over my short story to estimate its length if adapted—an exchange rather than a collaboration, I know, but my point is that someone who can’t draw can still contribute in other ways, even outside of a shared project.