What makes you avoid paid collabs?

[darthmongoose]

Whenever I have the offer of a paid collab, it's a case of weighing things up.

I have a part time job that makes up most of my income, and I have a webcomic I really love that brings in some supplementary income.

If I want to make another comic, I would need to stop doing one of those things to have the time.

So this means, in order to replace my job, the comic needs to pay at least as much as my job does (this is unlikely. Edutainment is a much more lucrative field than comics), and it needs to be guaranteed as either a long-term project, or it needs to feel like an investment of time that's more worthwhile than my webcomic.

Obviously the webcomic would be the more likely candidate to get put on the back burner while I do a paid commission, and so it becomes a question of: "Do I feel like this is more worth my time than making Errant?" It's not impossible, since Errant has just a modest following and makes just a modest income, that if somebody with a history of making extremely good and popular comics and who had access to a much wider audience than me, approached me with a banger of an idea, I'd be like "Okay, I need to put Errant on hold for this, I can't miss this opportunity!" ...It's just unfortunately pretty unlikely. Errant has over 2500 subs and a place on the creator bonus program, so whatever somebody's offering, I need to feel confident it'd perform significantly better than that, or at least get me something valuable like a foot in the door with a good publisher or something.

Sadly, in the vast majority of cases, even with offers from professional people now, the answer is "no, this isn't a step up from what I currently have"... but I'm open to the possibility.

[sushy00]

I avoid people who want a free test panel/page/sketch first. I have an entire portfolio full of comics, and else you can pay for just one panel/page etc. Making art takes much time, so I can't do everything for free.

[Legendofgenii]

@sushy00 I never knew that was a thing. How cheeky of them.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I know what (and who) you're talking about. It does seem kinda unnecessary. Wouldn't it make more sense to hire someone on based on their portfolio and them pay them as they get training on your lineart style. I guess not if you're trying to save money.

[joannekwan]

In my early days I had actually taken paid collab positions, but now I barely consider them for these reasons. And as I get jilted with even more commission-based models, I am even less inclined to give them a second thought for the following reasons.

1. I don't know you beforehand: I don't know your work ethic or how trustworthy you are. I am more likely to work with someone I am familiar with, be it a colleague in the webcomic space or someone I just see around actively participating in the community, than a random stranger that I've never seen posts from.
2. I'm not getting paid enough for this: This wouldn't be the only thing I'm working on, so I have to have my time spent on this collab project worth it to take away from something else I could be doing.
3. I'm expected to do too much: Be clear with what you want from your collab partner from the get go. Too often does it start vaguely and more and more responsibilities get piled onto the partner's end and the pay just doesn't cover it.

[Caro]

I feel like most artists aren’t going to be super keen on collaborating because they have their own work they enjoy doing already and combining all the factors everyone else has already listed it just doesn’t seem like a good time investment or worth the risk.

I’ve turned down two six figure advance splits for big publishers with established writers because I just didn’t want to dedicate 1-2 years of my life on a project I didn’t personally enjoy and I already earn a comfortable living off of my own projects between advances from publishers and royalties (and to a lesser degree Patreon) and I have full creative control over them.

One of the reasons I turned down those two bigger deals was because I was only going to get paid that one time because they didn’t want to give me part ownership or royalties. My own work over time has made well over the number that was offered to me and I get the most important thing of all— media rights.

Optioning your work is one of the big ways to make a very substantial amount of money and a LOT of things get optioned. Especially comics. Doesn’t mean it’ll be made into a show or a film necessarily but you still make money. I’ve been involved with media talks for a while but if I had stopped what I was doing to work on someone else’s project I would not be in this position.

All in all, there is more value for me on a personal level and financially to be in full control of my own projects.

[angie_draws_things]

I took on two Instagram collabs fairly early on after starting my comic because I am a sucker for small businesses. The first one went well, and my compensation was the item. My comic is a weekly comic consisting of one-shots, so making a bonus comic centered around an item is easy enough.

The second request was from the same individual and very slapdash. They wanted me to turn around a comic practically instantly well into the holiday shopping season and failed to communicate this, save pestering me to hurry up. It certainly was not my fault that they waited until after Black Friday to even initiate the discussion on the collab, much less expect me drop everything to draw up a comic in exchange for a $13 item.

After that one, I was irked, and decided that even though I wanted to help a small business, it was not worth it for the item itself. Any additional requests would have to offer more compensation in exchange for the effort that went into making a comic centered around their product.

I have been offered additional collabs, but I brush off several of them off as scams or ones that failed to offer proper compensation, and I outright refuse to compete for slots to collab. If someone wants me to collab, they can reach out to me directly with a well-considered plan.

[sushy00]

maybe a certain situation but I have seen it so many times so this is not even about something/someone particular because it happens way too often.

[jgreene2433]

Lack of interest in the idea or story or something that I morally just don't want to depict. I just recently turned down a job because the writer wanted me to illustrate a sexual assault scene. I hate even the thought of that and have no desire to ever show that in my work.