A Source of Shame
Dec. 23rd, 2021 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI’m still thinking about that article about the webcomic artist who didn’t want “to be turned into a product,” and I’m going to say something horrible. Here goes:
I used to commission people to draw comics based on my scripts, and it was a lot of fun. It was fantastic to share our work and receive what I consider to be a “normal” level of feedback (ie, hundreds and sometimes thousands of notes on social media instead of maybe fifteen), but what I really enjoyed was the process of exchanging ideas and messages while working with artists.
Because it was fun, I kept doing it, and I think I got better at it. Communication is a skill, after all, and so are finding references and drawing thumbnails. I gradually gained confidence, found my voice, and started to envision more ambitious projects.
What I’d love to do one day is work on a short graphic novel (a graphic novella?) with an artist. I could use Kickstarter to publish it, and it would become my ticket to table at conventions. Maybe it might even be the start of a career.
The problem is that I have no money. This is mainly due to the pandemic and having to support members of my close family when they had to leave work. Maintaining multiple peoples’ lives by paying their bills so their power didn’t get shut off while they were in the hospital blew through my already meager savings and totally destroyed me around this time last year. So there’s that.
But also, a bunch of artists whom I commissioned to work on longer projects (mostly submissions to comic anthologies) totally flaked on me, by which I mean they took hundreds of dollars and then ghosted me after letting deadlines pass without producing anything, not even initial sketches to include with pitch documents. These artists are all people I know in real life, which is why I felt comfortable working with them, not to mention why the failure of these projects is especially shitty.
Anyway, based on my experiences since I started working with artists about four years ago, I think I can say with confidence that, if a commission or collaboration fails, the artist is always American. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why this was, but I think I’m starting to understand. In America, there seem to be two assumptions: First, that working on commissions or collaborations is a source of shame and embarrassment; and second, that any money given to an artist should be a donation.
As an aside, I’d like to mention that I’m irl friends with a few published comic writers, and they’re all straight men. When I’ve talked about this problem with them, they say that they’ve never had an artist flake on them. So I wonder if maybe gender has something to do with it too…?
So I guess what I want to say is that I wish my work as a writer was considered to be valuable. I wish the attitudes of American artists and the prejudices against writers weren’t aligned in such a manner as to create obstacles in the way of creative collaboration. And also, it would be nice if writers got paid.
I mean, I’ll keep trying, and I’m sure I’ll succeed eventually. But this is what I’m up against, and I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I’m not a finance person or a social media expert, I just want to tell interesting stories and make cool art.
I used to commission people to draw comics based on my scripts, and it was a lot of fun. It was fantastic to share our work and receive what I consider to be a “normal” level of feedback (ie, hundreds and sometimes thousands of notes on social media instead of maybe fifteen), but what I really enjoyed was the process of exchanging ideas and messages while working with artists.
Because it was fun, I kept doing it, and I think I got better at it. Communication is a skill, after all, and so are finding references and drawing thumbnails. I gradually gained confidence, found my voice, and started to envision more ambitious projects.
What I’d love to do one day is work on a short graphic novel (a graphic novella?) with an artist. I could use Kickstarter to publish it, and it would become my ticket to table at conventions. Maybe it might even be the start of a career.
The problem is that I have no money. This is mainly due to the pandemic and having to support members of my close family when they had to leave work. Maintaining multiple peoples’ lives by paying their bills so their power didn’t get shut off while they were in the hospital blew through my already meager savings and totally destroyed me around this time last year. So there’s that.
But also, a bunch of artists whom I commissioned to work on longer projects (mostly submissions to comic anthologies) totally flaked on me, by which I mean they took hundreds of dollars and then ghosted me after letting deadlines pass without producing anything, not even initial sketches to include with pitch documents. These artists are all people I know in real life, which is why I felt comfortable working with them, not to mention why the failure of these projects is especially shitty.
Anyway, based on my experiences since I started working with artists about four years ago, I think I can say with confidence that, if a commission or collaboration fails, the artist is always American. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why this was, but I think I’m starting to understand. In America, there seem to be two assumptions: First, that working on commissions or collaborations is a source of shame and embarrassment; and second, that any money given to an artist should be a donation.
As an aside, I’d like to mention that I’m irl friends with a few published comic writers, and they’re all straight men. When I’ve talked about this problem with them, they say that they’ve never had an artist flake on them. So I wonder if maybe gender has something to do with it too…?
So I guess what I want to say is that I wish my work as a writer was considered to be valuable. I wish the attitudes of American artists and the prejudices against writers weren’t aligned in such a manner as to create obstacles in the way of creative collaboration. And also, it would be nice if writers got paid.
I mean, I’ll keep trying, and I’m sure I’ll succeed eventually. But this is what I’m up against, and I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I’m not a finance person or a social media expert, I just want to tell interesting stories and make cool art.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-24 11:13 am (UTC)The artists generally got the lion's share of the project budget and in collaborative projects the artist was the most likely to miss deadlines, if they didn't ghost entirely. There was an idea "anyone could write" and so writing was a place developers could cut corners, even in story-centric genres like visual novels. Likewise, non-programmers rather notoriously don't understand the value of good code. I can see how this undervaluation occurs but man did it eat people up.
I knew some artists who had a great work ethic and the main thing they had in common was they were all older/not in college and they had a lot personally invested in the project and were committed to seeing it through. I think cost of living ends up being a factor too.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-28 08:21 pm (UTC)And I don’t want to make any promises about older games I can’t play, as 1990s game creation systems like ZZT will probably forever be a foreign land to me, but I love your writing and would consider it an honor to check out your work if you’re comfortable sharing it. No pressure, of course. Just saying.