What if Tapas had a mentor program?

I
you make good points but here's a counter argument that I have in these moments:

1. what if I don't know what to get better at, where do I start if I don't know what to do after getting to the summit, and how do I get pass to more advance art techniques, which is one of the scarces thing to fine in these ocean of beginner tutorial

2. how do I notice which character is being in the spot light too long?, what is my weakest link and how do I find it?, my readers love where I am going but my subs are dropping why is this? I am stuck in a rut I haven't changed my art level for 2 years now what? where do I go to get better? what should I do? where do I start?

3.this is more about marketing then general art training so, no rebuttal here except that you should do a business or marketing course, better than entering blind

also if it's a waste of time then don't apply like punkarsenic said =/

The problem is that there are limits to how well you can see the flaws in your own work. First, you'll always lack objectivity. And second, you can only see the flaws that your skill level allows you to see.

• A layman will look at an artwork and sense that something is wrong
• A novice will look at an artwork and know that something is wrong
• A master will look at an artwork and see what its creator was trying to do

To be fair, a lot of resources on the internet, at least the more popular ones, often times have errors you would not otherwise know about unless you have someone who's had some experience with the topic at hand. For example, a ton of 2-pt perspective examples online are problematic because the vanishing points are often too close to one another. Foundational skills have a ton of nuances some people sometimes don't pick up, and having an extra set of eyes will help catch mistakes early on before those mistakes get cemented into your skillset.

Not to mention, what happens if you don't understand something? Are you supposed to ask the tutorial maker, who very likely doesn't want to help people beyond what they've explained themselves? At least with having a mentor you have supplemental knowledge, so if you don't understand how the figure should look like in a frame or whatever you can ask for some insight.

And if a hypothetical mentor is trying to mutate your project into something they like, then they're not being a very good mentor.

this my god this so many comic artist go on an on about not needing someone cause they wouldn't get their vision and that they would morph it into a monstrosity and blah blah blah not getting that the person, if their good at their job, wants to help you make the best possible product while maintaining the original vision and felling,

=/ I guess the "Arteest" mentality that critiques don't get art or nobody understands me is strong this generation

I agree with what many of the people said above in response to Aspie’s comment. An artist is not an island; just like online resources can be utilized to learn, so can people from the industry.
Having someone to point out things you haven’t noticed are wrong is a huge help too, especially for beggining artists who still haven’t developed their own artistic abilities and sight to a point where they can tell what’s wrong themselves.

Back to the topic, though, it seems like a lot of people are genuinely interested in this, but I can’t help but be worried over how it not being a physical internship can being problems too... For exmaple, if the mentor asks the trainee to do work for them but doesn’t have anything to give back in return. Hypothetically this can work in a normal intership since the trainee will be learning from the work and from viewing the mentor while working, however I’m not sure doing flats for someone can have quite the same effect.
Also, on one hand having specific goals may be too time consuming and won’t allow the mentor to focus on their own work if they’re focusing on helping their trainee get work done, but on the other hand not having goals can cause a situation where the trainee doesn’t actually have any direct questions to have or work to review.
I was wondering whether there should be some kind of time limit on the program, or if the mentor and trainee should decide that for themselves? Additionally, if there should be any universal “basic goals” the team should achieve during the program.

This is sometimes an issue. However years ago, a very very talented artist agreed to help me with my art and I did lineart for her. Tracing over her pencils helped me immensely. So even though she was in malaysia, it still worked out okay. I've also done collabs in art programs that let two people draw at the same time. I learned how to color that way.. recently I've been skyping with a professional manga-ka and they are literally showing me and watching me practice inking with dip-pens even though we are a world apart. It's not the same as working in person, but it works. I think the terms of the agreement might be different for each pairing, based on the goals established by the mentorship.

Honestly we just need someone to develop the program and give it a test run for 6 months and see how it goes. I doubt tapas would do this in any official capacity, but I'm sure some of us on the forums can organize something?

I can't participate since I have a million things on my plate, (plus someone has already expressed an interest in having me do a lecture for art students on making it in the business and that alone would take a lot of mental strength for me to do) but I think it sounds like a great idea and I hope tons of people get good experiences out of whatever becomes of this! Voluntary collaborations with mentors and editors are only positive!

I think this is a cool idea. If I can participate or not depends on where I am in terms of my work load when the project starts. Right now, I wouldn't have time... but in a few months when I don't have any pressing deadlines, I'd be open to it if anyone was interested in learning from me.

I've been trying to think about things with my practicality-glasses on, and I think keeping the first round limited might be a good idea. If there were... I'm going to go with a range of 2-5 mentors interested in participating since that feels like a manageable number for a test. Each mentor could fill out a short questionnaire about their genre, experience, tools, skills, schedule, etc to give the potential apprentices an idea of what sort of lessons they had to offer. Then the people applying could choose the mentor they'd be interested in working with and fill out a questionnaire about themselves and the things they're looking to learn or improve upon. Then the chosen applicant could work with the mentor to set specific goals for whatever time limit ends up being set.

I think this idea has potential, but it is deffo gonna be a lot of work to organize.

That also raises questions as to who will be accepted to be a mentor and who will be accepted to be a trainee. Mentors may have to be filtered, but will Trainees be as well? Will there be global requirements, or will they be handpicked?

I think both should be filter, mentoring needs not only experience but being able to teach in an effective and concise way, that ain't something you can learn on the fly =/, and trainee should be people who at the very least have some kind of future worth,E.I they already show some promise in drawing and or storytelling they just need to grow more, so the platform can get some premium content, it's like a job if you pass the interview they will train you for 3 month and then you work for them the most effective way possible

or at least that's what I think would happen don't know XD

Yeah, that makes sense! I was also thinking it may be troublesome if a trainee was already a petty high level, it might be difficult to find a suitable mentor (moreso as it’s a fairly hobby-like environment!)

Hi. Thanks for responding to my post. I'll answer to the best of my ability.

1. For me personally, I was for the longest time like many young artists caught in the vicious cycle of always receiving praise for my art growing up which in hindsight really damaged me as an artist since I genuinely believed I was drawing good and thus wasn't aware of the many many flaws my art style had and still has depending on who you ask. I know the frustration that comes with wading through an endless sea of the same cut and paste tutorials because Sturgeon's Law.

That said, I'm always surrounded by art since I follow both artists I like and general "anime" accounts on Twitter and Instagram since drawing is one of my obsessions in life and as such, my brain tends to absorb certain details in other people's art like a sponge and of course, I make a habit of liking or saving pieces I really like if I think it could help me down the road. This for me was my "ah-ha" moment after trying to go the "mentor" route, but not having the results I was looking for either because we didn't click, they didn't teach me anything I didn't already know, or some of them weren't interested in my plight.

Knowing what to get better at really just comes down to your willingness to critically look at your own work and the most common way to do that is to simply leave it alone for a while then come back to it with a fresh mind. Often I've done that and would notice things like "Oh, her shoulders are too broad" or "The gesture her hand is making doesn't look that good." that I wouldn't have noticed had I just drawn it all (roughs, inks, coloring) in one sitting and even then, just by drawing LoaA so much, I've gotten better at noticing mistakes on the fly during the roughing stage of the process and therefore can quickly fix them without having to take a break and come back later which saves time when you are on a schedule for your comic.

Here are two examples of finding and improving upon flaws in my art all on my own using the previously mentioned method of using a search engine for tutorials and such and the aforementioned method in this post of keeping (and saving) a list of anime art pieces I liked and how it helped me easily acquire a better coloring palette for the latest chapter of my comic without me having through hours of trial and error.

Drawing example: I didn't know how to properly draw convincing breasts on my female characters growing up. Searching on DeviantArt for good breast drawing tutorials fixed that. Particularly, the best one I came across suggested to think of women's breasts as a half filled water balloon with the end pinched. Another way to put it would be to think of a circle, then apply gravity thus giving it a tear shaped appearance which is closer to how most women's breasts actually look irl. (Of course, some may have a more rounded appearance, more saggy appearance, and some are so small that they are barely there, but the same general idea still applies.)

Coloring example: When I started Chapter 6 of my comic, Life of an Aspie, I decided to experiment with the color scheme for my characters since the coloring scheme for Chapter 5 while decent left a lot to be desired. At first, I didn't know what to do so I just hopped on Twitter, scrolled through anime drawings of girls I had previously liked, saved a few of them that I thought had a good coloring scheme, opened them in Clip Studio Paint and using the Eyedropper tool, I was able to sample the different colors the artists had used to create a convincing color pallets. As a result, my colors for my comic right now in Chapter 6 look much better than the colors I myself came up with for Chapter 5.

As for "getting to the summit", I don't think there's ever a point where you reach a "summit" even if you are one of those advanced artists. A plateau sure, but speaking of advanced art, the biggest thing that separates advanced art from beginner art is realism and for that, there are books you can buy, artists with realistic styles you can study, even a simple pose practice website can help you learn the more advanced concepts like dynamic lines and foreshortening even if you just rush the drawing because of time limits.

In fact, Going back to tutorials for a moment, there is one that I found in my niche that really stuck out to me that talked about the different different skill levels of an artist and used an animu girl to help illustrate his point of going from "noob" to pro with the starting levels having the girl drawn in a choppy cartoon-y style that any beginning artist would inevitably draw in without the use of more advanced skill techniques with the later skill levels having her gradually looking more realistic which you would come to expect from somebody who's applied themselves.

2.

The easiest way to notice when a certain character is hogging the spotlight at the expense of underdeveloped ones is how much you physically insert them into the narrative. This can apply even to the main character who's supposed to be front and center of your story. For example, in Chapter 4 of LoaA, I had characters talking about Susan and had waited till near the end of the chapter to have her make a physical appearance. This way, I allowed my other characters to have a little bit of development as they discussed her actions in that chapter. In fact, I created a new character who saw the events of the chapter unfold from his perspective as he wandered through the school picking up bits and pieces about what happened.

The weakest link in a comic could be anything as different people have different opinions, but if there is a general consensus among readers that there is one part that sticks out like a sore thumb, then the weakest link becomes that much easier to find and fix. i.e Starting out, it was some ugly ass tones I was using and stubbornly clinging onto certain that I would find a way to not make them look like ass. Initially, my plan to fix that was to revamp the art of the older chapters completely and add color to them as well, but real life got in the way of that several pages in and I had to resort to simply using de-toning my tones so that they looked more paint like.

Lastly, subs come and go. You'll never really know why your sub count is dropping at times unless its a really bad story decision you made or something where its clear you screwed up on your part and it wasn't simply because the sub got bored or the story didn't click with them anymore.

This post got really long, but I do hope this answers most of your counter argument.

My counterargument to your counterargument is that I know a few obviously self-taught artists who never got better despite years of practice and loads of fans.

Chill out, noone here has the solution that will work for every artist.

Some people want to be mentors and some people want a mentor. They are obviously the people that need it and work well under such circumstances. Let them find each other and be happy.

Some people improve and work best on their own. Hell, I'm one of them. Let them work on their own and be happy.

Working with a mentor or editor doesn't mean someone gives up their artistic integrity unless they don't want to do it or don't feel it's right for them, and working without one doesn't mean you will never improve or that your stuff will turn out crap.

There are many different tastes and work methods, and one isn't more right than the other. This thread was aimed to approach something that could be really positive for some people. It wasn't implying anyone has to do anything they're not comfortable with.

Leave space for people to discuss the "how", "who" and "when" of this program.

This would be really helpful and will help the site grow too

...coughs

Leave space for people to discuss the "how", "who" and "when" of this program? Please? o_o

Last time we were on topic, the discussion was focused on whether mentors etc should be filtered.
I will have to agree with previous additions that some filter is probably good. Partially so that participants involved match up as well as possible, and partially so that each party gets the most out of it. Unserious participants might leave a sour aftertaste and affect the possibility of the program reoccurring in the future?

I really like the idea but it has to be something individuals have control over selecting the mentees. I did a program like this on Deviantart to teach illustration through a group that randomly paired people together. Every mentee I got wasn't interested in learning as much as trying to figure out what magic brush I used to make everything happen. When they found out there was no such trick, they bailed. :T

See my idea of the mentor ship is different then others, apparently. I don't want someone to help with my arts so much as I want someone to help me understand the business. I draw, I take art classes, nude models, art school, all that. If i want to improve in my basic art technique that's where I turn to. Would i turn down digital art tips? No, but I have already settled on my style, or at least the style I use in my comics, i don't need help developing that. I would just like a mentor that looks over stuff and says, "this could be improved." Or "You might benefit from advertising on X forum." Or explain the best approach for keeping consistent updates. I had no idea what a buffer was before I had already started posting. That sort of thing.

I take nude models

Is it possible to learn this power?

Already part of web comic groups and forums. Following people on twitter all that. I have come to the point where i have googled all i can google. You are talking to a Art history major here, when I research I research hard. Still getting first hand advice from a mentor would be beneficial i think. My school does have a business department so i might look into that.

oooh you have a business department? then you should go and ask I'm sure some business teacher would love to give you some tips on how to market more your comic and give you a rundown of how you could promote it more

I disagree. Getting feedback from a go-to person with established rapport is different from asking the public for feedback. That difference may not be a big deal for some folks, but it's huge for others.

That said, I fully agree that the way people have been talking about this so far, this looks like it'd be a massive responsibility for whoever's organizing it.

Could there be a lower effort, more laid back version? Like, simply have sign-ups for mentors and mentees (the list would include link to their work, brief introduction, strengths and weaknesses) and just let people contact mentors privately and work it out on their own?

Someone would still need to keep the list updated -- like when a mentor adopts a mentee and is no longer available. But no other monitoring besides that. How does that sound?

EDIT: I guess one problem with that approach is like, one person hogging multiple mentors since everything would happen privately...

I agree that it would be good if Tapas would have a mentor programme for both comic writers and novelists as it would allow new writers and comic drawers to improve their skills and build rapport with the rest of the Tapas community As a relatively new writer i would definitely want to receive advice from more experienced writers on how to improve my writing

How about instead of a traditional mentorship program, we do these collaborative crossover events human-swarm style.5

I don't know what a human swarm is but I like the sound of it.