Team ~3 people for project (Novel and Comic)

Jobs Volunteer Work
1

Hello,

I’m searching for ~3 people to team for my project (Novel and Comic).
Positions:

Graphic (LineArt) → I’m totally bad in LineArt, so I need someone who can even with really bad Sketch (my LineArting and Sketching suck) create somehow good LineArt.
Graphic → For help with coloring, backgrounds (I have some basic skill in it, but nothing special). Coloring will be pencil black&white with minimalist colors (similiar to style as Warriors: StoneClan's Ghost | WEBTOON but digital way, and with dark painting).
Translator (CZ/SK to EN) or English corrector and “adjustmenter” (gramatic, style, etc), who know English and Artlang on hight-level.

Description of Novel and Comic:

I have secrets, like everyone else. But one of my secret is that I’m not even that, what everyone thing. I’m only someone, or better said something behind mask. My mask is human body. Who is not totally human. No one human know about my “little” secret.

#BL #Romance #Drama #SciFi #Aliens #Invasion #Horror #Action

Frequency/shedule:
** At least 1 page every week (A4 for novel, 3 panels page for comic)**

Require:
Krita and Graphic Tablet for Graphics
LibreOffice for Novel Translator/Corrector

What You will get?
Experiences
Promotion of Your name
and →

Graphic (LineArt) - 30-45% from donations
Graphic (coloring, background) - 25-40% from donations
Translator/Corrector - 20-35% from donations.

(copy from: Team ~3 people for project (Novel and Comic) - Collaborations - Tapas Forum )

2

Just some improvements for your pitch:

You should add an outline of the project so that artist that want to join know what they get themselves into. Most artists don’t want to commit themselves to a project that could go on forever, especially when it’s unpaid work. You mentioned a comic and a novel but how long will it be? How many words/pages do you expect to have roughly, 100, 300, more pages? 50000 words? Word count is especially important for translators and editors.

I have a friend, she works as a professional artist and illustrator for children’s books and fantasy novels. When she gets a commission the books are usually basically finished or at least in a late draft phase. I would expect at least one or two example chapters to look at to see if I even like the project I voluntarily spend my time on. It didn’t even have to be the exact thing that is going to be in the finished work, just something so I can get to know the style, the setting and something about the characters maybe or the fantasy races I’m expected to draw. Some artists are just better at some things then on others. I wouldn’t be exited if I had to draw just a few fluffy animals which I’m good at, and then it turns out the rest is humans for 90% of the time and it wasn’t clearly communicated (just an example of course).

Oh, one gets experience and exposure? You already made it clear that this is volunteer work so maybe scrap that completely otherwise this sounds like a good candidate for forexposure_txt :smiley: . I also get experience working on my own projects, and naming the artists of a book should be standard human decency (although maybe mentioning it is a good thing since the standard seems to be lower these days). Unless you really plan to actually promote the artists. Then I can tell you some stories from my time at an advertising company so you know what promotion entails. Just putting the name of the artist on the cover of a book, isn’t promotion.

I like that you put some potential revenue and who gets how much in your proposal. Although I’ve seen this sometimes as a bait to trick inexperienced artists into committing themselves to a project that is not actually expected to make any revenue. How do you plan to collect donations? Is it a patreon thing, are new pages created when a goal is reached? Did you have some donation based projects in the past and how much engagement can be expected?

Just how you probably expect your artists to send in their portfolio and projects they worked on as a reference for you, for this kind of project it’s just fair when you do the same. Link to projects you’ve already done, examples of your writings or artworks. Your volenters have just as much a right to know who they are working with and what to expect as you do.

Hopes this helps and good luck.

4 Likes
3

Thanks for answer,… this is my first project in Novel/Comic in this way (I wrote novel before, but never published on Internet)

You mentioned a comic and a novel but how long will it be?

I really have not good idea about how long it will be. But I estimate, idk, maybe it will be long series with scope/range of around 5000 panels of comic, and attributable range for Novel (idk, but my first estimate is about 120eps = 500 A4 pages, propably more) so around 2-3 years, with faster tempo. This is something, I can modify, so it will be more pleasant for team.

I would expect at least one or two example chapters to look at to see if I even like the project I voluntarily spend my time on.

I can add these pages in few days. Saturday/Sunday propably. But I was preparing for this story for few months, and my first idea of it was 6 years ago. So I hope it’s not totally crap.

Just putting the name of the artist on the cover of a book, isn’t promotion.

Ok, understand, then I’m not promoting them. I just though I would add links or “ad” images from their works to my website, novel, comic, etc…

How do you plan to collect donations?

Patreon, total voluntarily, without fast pass or benefits for supporters (everything free for everyone).

Did you have some donation based projects in the past and how much engagement can be expected?

yes and no… no for this type of projects, but yes as developer/programmer for open source software.

Just how you probably expect your artists to send in their portfolio and projects they worked on as a reference for you, for this kind of project it’s just fair when you do the same.

Because this is first project of this type, I want to publish, I don’t have nothing to show to others for now. But I hope, this week I can at least write 2-3 pages of Novel.

4

Is this volunteer work. I know that you have posted it in this category just wanted to confirm.

5

So, with the 3 panel pages you mentioned earlier this amounts about 1667 Pages. Is this a lot?
So leme take some random comic books from my shelf, I have one that is about A4 in format, has an average of 8 panels and about 100 pages. That’s 800 panels. Another one, a manga book of typical size. 180 pages, average panels of about maybe 5 or 6 (I’m just estimating). This makes 900 panels. So lets take the physicist approach and do a zeroth-order approximation and assume every comic book has 1000 panels. This is still just 1/5th of what you are planing. So basically you want to do five comic books. And with a schedule of one page with 3 panels out of 5000 a week this would take … uhm yeah about 32 years assuming I did the math right. I work in a senior dev like role and when you would send me a draft for a project like this I certainly would scratch my head. Actually this is a thing I experienced a lot when interns and entry level devs are in my office. They have these big ideas about their cool software or game that are destined to fail just because of how big they are, not because the idea is bad. As a dev yourself you have probably seen this too.

So, when this comic should actually be done in under a third of a lifetime then you either have to step down on you goals, have a tighter schedule or increase the average panel count for you comic which also means more artist work. I would probably advice to do the first one first and make your project a fair bit smaller, like something that can be done in a year or less. When it turns out things work well and your artists are really into the project you still can do more.

Then I would ask what your reach is. What channels do you have for promotion, how many people can you reach, what is the engagement on these channels, how much engagement can the artist expect. Just posting their artworks will not do the trick. That’s why a news channel would not just show pictures of a thing when they do a report they actually tell something about it. When you want to promote someone this is work, maybe you need an interview with them, tell something about them. a simple reteweet will only do it when you already have millions of followers that like the same thing you just retweeted. Just reposting their works will probably just send their fans to your website. Just my two cents from my 4 years as a dev in a advertising company where we mostly wrote algorithms to measure the effects of this stuff and how to advertise things (turns out you need more math for selling ads then for ERP software what I do now :laughing:)

What you want to do, to get volunteers is making them exited about your project. Show them what they can expect, what is expected from them and how long it will take. By all means be honest. Maybe give them some creative say, an opportunity to develop and steer the project with you, not for you. Otherwise they rather opt for something payed since excitement is pretty much the only thing that can make people engage in a project like yours.

3 Likes
6

I really am not good in estimation of time or how long that series will be. I just calculated it by average length of typical Webtoon comic, but I’m not going to do it in WebToon format (most likely). And about that 32years, nope it will not be that long,… I want it to be propably little shorter than actual is for example this comic: https://tapas.io/series/NoFuture/info which first episode was in 2014. So 2000 pages with average 5 panels per page = 10000 panels for 6 years,… so I just want half of it. But I see, that it’s updated much often.

I really have no idea with this.

But yes, I think, I maybe little overdo it… and I propably want to sync Novel and Comic progress… After sunday, I will have a lot of free time, so I will start with it, and I will see how it will be. Maybe if team would have some times, when they will produce even more pages (for example 3, or 4) for one week, it would be in normal time.

I want to have prepared at least 20-30 pages ahead, before publishing, publish 1 or 2 pages every week. And work doing independly on publishing shedule (so I would not worry about few weeks if work will be stopped)

This is my first project of this type, so I’m noob in it.

7

What are you bringing to the team? I guess sketches for panels and the overall story? But you said you;re not good at sketching or drawing, so I guess they would be more like storyboards than sketches prepared for lineart and colors, right?

If I were you, I would start smaller, much smaller. In game development there is this term “vertical slice” or “minimal viable product”. In case of a comic, it would mean making either a part of the story, or maybe a smaller comic first. I would suggest the second option. Think of some very short story, can be in the same universe you want your comic to be, can be a prologue, can be a fancomic, anything, that could fit on, let’s say, 10 pages. That should be done in less than a month, I guess. Pitch your story to people, maybe you’ll get some team to work on this much smaller project. If not, try to do it all yourself, yes, with lineart, colors, effects, lettering, everything. (Note that if you’re a very beginner in drawing, you might find that you’re drawing much faster than professionals, usually because beginners tend to accept any line and add much less details than even average-level hobbyists, so check how much time other people take to draw their pages). Count the time very precisely, make sure to count the time you spend on preparing the story, drawing sketches of characters etc. too. That will take you just a portion of the time you’d spend on the main project, but you’ll get much better idea what you’re going to do with that. Ahh, and yes - publish it. If you want a webcomic, publish on a free webcomic website, if you want to print it, print it (just a few copies, for you, your family/friends, your team will do, just make sure to do all the steps).

Then you’ll stop being a noob so much, you’ll get a better idea what you’re doing and it will take you only a fraction of time, and then you’ll be much better prepared to go into the main big project. And potential co-authors will be much more comfortable committing to the project knowing that you have some idea how much it will take etc.

Some more wisdom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AoOtfkVTxw

4 Likes
8

thanks so much for answer, and valuable tips…

I know it looks like I want to jump dirrectly to something too big, even when before I didn’t experienced work with such smaller projects. And I think You are right, but don’t really know how should I shorten my story to 10 pages (mainly because it has a complicated story with a lot of plots and long story time. So yes, I will propably place this story to my table of waiting projects. And I will start with something much smaller.

Thanks so much for help.

3 Likes
9

Hey!

Can’t say I am able to help you out as per your requests but I am also doing a comic of my own and have spent years on it to bring it to life.

If you think you have valuable content or something really good, do not put it aside.

Feel free to ask me anything, here, anywhere, start a new Krita comics posts or whatevs’.

Comics are about heavy organization and doing it smoooth and slickery. And even a weak story can become very cool and capturing. Just keep the puzzle going.

10

Don’t be so hard on them.

Yes, and yes, you do have a very objective view in the sense of the current 'Western digital world" on products and whatnot but creativity and art should have nothing to do with that.
Nothing.

While I mostly agree on rearrangement in the name of being able to handle the impulse coming… that is also the back-breaking of creative intentions.
Let it go free.
Free.
Excuse the anecdote, I just liked to hold a candle for art’s sake.

On a more dull, serious side, yes, you give useful and important insight and some good advice. Don’t get me wrong. I just did not find any wisdom in that video. : )

One should never be afraid of their own imagination, especially not in a case like this.
This has to be approached with more care than telling off.

11

ill help if you need me

12

Hello, thanks for offer. Right now I don’t have a lot of time, but in december, I would be able to prepare sketches and other things.