A recent incident and some talk on discord kind of poked me into wanting to bring up the topic of working with others on comics, and knowing when it is a time to try to gracefully back out before shit hits the fan.

I was working on a high fantasy sex comic with a friend about a half elf guy who bangs elves, the idea was Hawaii was isekai'ed (no mention of truck-kun being involved) into a world of furrifed fantasy races.

It started out great, ideas going, world building happening but the moment things like page rates and trying to nail down the story so I can get more concept/production art down and things kept feeling like it wasn't going to work out because I could see problems down the road like who gets the credit (he says he wants no credit, I offered a pseudonym because I want to create my writers, and that could one problem later), and honestly I love the idea of extremes the thing would had worked out better as a series of images instead of a comic, and he wanted an ongoing while I figured on an oneshot.

That and I have other things I got going on, trying to find a bill paying job and wanting to work on my comics, it was becoming obvious without setting a firm price on the commission and other things it wasn't going to work.

I am a huge comic book nerd, or rather the production of comic books and I know a lot of the legal headaches that happen so I figured on just ending the project as nice as I could, we're still friends but I feel this was the better route to go.

Just want to share that, and see if others had that kind of thing happen to them on this forum.

I could never work on a collaboration, because on the one hand I already have problems finding time to draw my stuff, and on the other I have all my mind schemes that I want to follow and maybe the other guy wouldn't follow the same logic, and thirdly doing something with others means that I'd have to adapt my schedule to others.

I would love to find an artist so I can finally put away the dolls but I'm not good at putting my stuff together so others can follow it. One can hope I can pull it together and find anyone willing to illustrate my wacky ideas.

@marcorossi That was a problem I was having, trying to sync up with his schedule, the hammering out of payments that never happened and the fact I was told we was doing some rough outlining but seems like it was more like it was not happening and it was already hard enough to communicate.
@Lothar I wish, towards the end it got kind of uncomfortable even by my standards.
Side note, is that show good or bad or mid? I heard a lot of it for a while than it just, disappeared.
@bravo1102 I think your dolls give your comic personality.
But yeah, I had been trying to find a writer to help out with a lot of my work for a long time but I feel like I wind up just doing that myself.

Furwerk studio wrote:
Side note, is that show good or bad or mid? I heard a lot of it for a while than it just, disappeared.

It was good.

I loved it. A lot of the original voice cast of Futurama was in it. The final season was a bit rushed. I heard they had originally planned to go longer. But it all wrapped up mostly well.



Btw, sorry for derailing the conversation to talk about elfo.

Collaborators can be real assets to your project, provided that you're all on the same page, and working collectively to reach a single goal. I've been fortunate enough to collaborate with some people like this, such as my creative consultant Marie Kerns, who was so crucial in filling in some of the gaps throughout the course of VAMPIRE GIRL when I found myself faced with stumbling blocks.

On the other hand, I've also worked with some collaborators on other projects who turned out to be so flaky and unreliable, that it has been a detriment to the development of such projects. One time I produced a pilot for YouTube that was an anthology of puppetry shorts (think KABLAM!, but with puppets instead of cartoons), and one participant was not only late with their submission (which delayed the pilot's release date by two whole days), but they opted to just submit an older video of theirs as a last-minute offering. One of the reasons I've also had to shelve MORON LEAGUE 4 several years ago was because of the hard time I had getting other voice actors on board with the project: some would either participate and then just drop out (sometimes with an explanation, sometimes with no explanation), while others would express interest, but then would never give me a solid response after my initial casting call.

I've done collaborative works in terms of providing short stories that I both wrote and drew for anthology comics, one for Lite Bites and one for the DD Dream anthology. Also I once invited one creator here on DD - Hushicho - to collaborate with me on a short piece for my comic Molly Lusc which worked out very well I think.

I've sometimes toyed with the idea of teaming up with someone to do at least one of my comics as a whole together, a co-writer or an artist. But I feel like I've written myself into a corner working all of the comics into the same setting, having an all too precise world-building and an all too strange artisitc direction on everything for anyone to adapt to working on^^

Right, let me weigh in as I've done a hell of a lot of collaborations, so clearly am “DA OFFORITY” on the subject…

Well maybe not but I can share my insights.

Naturally it's much easier if you're working on a small scale or short term project. There's less chance of things getting in the way and creatives are often less precious about small side projects. Even so these things happen, you never know what's going on with other peoples lives and unexpected things can come up, even with a 6 page mini comic. I don't tend to be very precious about the smaller projects and embrace the differences in approach other creatives might have.

Long term is much harder, as others have pointed out, be it business, reliability or creative visions getting in the way. I've done a few and they've all have bumps in the road and only one has been completed… so far. I tend to be hesitant to start a large collaborative project because of having to rely on others. It really helps to build a working relationship on smaller projects, even so there's no sure fire way of knowing whether you'll hit bumps down the road.

I love doing collaborations, they help feed my creativity, but they aren't always easy.

Speaking of which I need to start trying to sort some more collabs for Lite bites soon.

Genejoke wrote:
I've done a hell of a lot of collaborations, so clearly am “DA OFFORITY” on the subject…

I love doing collaborations, they help feed my creativity, but they aren't always easy.

What ever happened with Lite Bites Comic Jam 5?

Yeah that kinda died with a lack of interest, so will try and get it going again soon as you left it on a neat place.