# Artists and/or Writers



## RedNumberIX (Apr 12, 2009)

I remember one day I submitted a piece of work to a critique site hoping to see if anyone thought it had publishing potential. I don't think I'll ever forget the response I got when I asked a person if they would buy it. They said "It depends on the cover art."

I've seen a lot of mixed reviews by a lot of authors around the net in response to author/artist co-ops, and more than anything I've seen a mutual separation between the two. Some written publications (ROAR!) purposely reject covering their books with art to emphasize the value of written media. But all too often I see comic artists who make their layout choices at random and suffer for it with poor pacing and a horrible storyline. (Most everything on DrunkenMonkey.com)

Lately I've been reading a lot of Scott McCloud's books, (Understanding, Making and Reinventing Comics) and I see in comics a medium that desperately needs us both. Art in the furry community is plentiful and makes up the bulk of any artists alley in any furry convention, but it usually lacks substance and can't hold an audience for very long by itself. Writers seem to capture the heart an soul of this fandom, but I know I'm not alone when I say that we just don't seem as attractive to a general furry audience.

How the hell did Alan Moore do this crap?

I wish we could have a venue to recruit writers in cooperations with artists (and vise verse). What do you all feel about this disconnect? Have any of you found ways to overcome it, or are we all just too arrogant to work in tandem?


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## foozzzball (Apr 12, 2009)

Comics are fun, I like comics. The thing about writing scripts is you don't get exactly what you write down - the artist also expresses themselves, and as a writer, a lot hinges on how well you express the story on a technical level as well as an emotional level through the script.

I am buddies with a lot of artistic types, and one of them used to do illustrations in the way-back-when of graymuzzle times. The thing he said, which has stuck with me, is that it wasn't neccesarily the stories so much as the characters that he ended up illustrating that he got recognition for.

Fans like connecting with characters a great deal - just see Zig Zag, for instance, who commands a legion of fanboys. Prose fiction is good at character development and complex plots, single pieces of art good at conveying single moments and emotions, comics do a lot to bridge the gap.

I'm not sure about comics in the fandom, but Alan Moore - and most of the british imports to America - got their start in small weekly comics like 2000 AD. In a business situation, it's easier in many ways to develop a working relationship between an artist and an author. Informally... well. Not so easy.

Also, writing for comics is very different to writing prose. And drawing up pages is a _lot_ of work. :/

It really ain't easy!

Illustrated fiction is, of course, an alternative. Maybe folks should start soliciting for that over on the requests board?


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## Chanticleer (Apr 12, 2009)

The writer/artist disconnect is quite serious actually. I've repeatedly tried to get artists to help me with comic projects and have been totally ignored. Finally I just started doing my own comic artwork with my terrible (but slowly improving) art skills. 

Still it's definitely a different kind of writing, setting for instance is emphasized much more heavily (which should have been a no-brainer, I know.) I just drew a panel showing the room in which most of my story's action took place and had to note just how empty the place looked: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2181168/

It would be very nice if artists and writers could work together on projects like comics more easily, but constructing a venue for their collaboration might be tricky. Especially here on the web.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 12, 2009)

I help bridge the gap because I'm both an artist and a writer. 
Joking aside, if I got a comment like what you got, under the same circumstances, that would just make me feel like my writing isn't quite there yet.  Obviously the writing itself didn't impress this fellow, right?  Well, that's the way I think, anyway.
But you are right that such things as art and writing need to work together.  And really, they do in the mass fiction market as well (so far as I know).  You can write the best book in the world, but it has to be noticeable in the bookstore.  And the best way to do that is to give it an eye-catching cover.  So you need to pair up with a great artist, someone who will read the story and then make an image that encompasses it and works simultaneously as an advertising tool.
Now, things like webcomics don't seem to need great art to be popular (8-bit Theater is an example), but it does help.  And really, it seems to work so that if a comic has great writing, it will eventually become popular, and if a comic has great artwork, it will also become popular eventually.  The two apparently can be mutually exclusive.  Which makes you wonder what would happen if a comic had both great writing and great artwork, right?  Which I suppose is your point.


> Illustrated fiction is, of course, an alternative. Maybe folks should start soliciting for that over on the requests board?


People have a few times, since I've been here anyway.  But it's usually for some self-published unedited crap they make through Lulu, so very few become interested.  Anything published by a legitimate medium (Sofawolf Press, for example) seems to always get illustrated by one of the big names, like Blotch.  I have, however, also seen series of images that show up on this site or on ArtSpots that apparently are scenes from someone's work of fiction, so it can certainly be done.  You'd have to find someone who really loved your story, though, I would think.  Unless you were willing to shell out a bunch of cash.  Making the drawings for a story takes just as long as writing the story itself.


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## BrothBone (Apr 12, 2009)

I'm not an expert on the subject and I might be repeating what others already said here in acknowledgment. I personally like to write stories and doodle sketches. I do believe both art and words go together. Although its true that the written word is very powerful and at times surpass a simple image, the issue of furry writers not getting enough attention is because desires and attention is grasped through the eyes. Reading a story usually takes a longer time then viewing so if someone is going to dedicate time to read, there's got to be some incentive. Having a catchy title helps but as the good old saying goes 'a picture is worth a thousand words'.


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## RedNumberIX (Apr 12, 2009)

> Illustrated fiction is, of course, an alternative. Maybe folks should start soliciting for that over on the requests board?


  I think youâ€™re right maybe I was being a bit limited in only speaking of Comics, and I donâ€™t see why illustrated fiction shouldnâ€™t be paired with fiction that is illustrated. But I think thereâ€™s a heart to this problem of this disconnect that I really wanted to discuss.


> So you need to pair up with a great artist, someone who will read the story and then make an image that encompasses it and works simultaneously as an advertising tool.


    This quote doesnâ€™t exactly suit my point but itâ€™s the only thing I could find in the discussion. I think the problem is that maybe the art is used too often as the auxiliary medium for advertising and nothing more, while the writers must stay and never ever change. I understand that the writing is the meat and potatoes of any story (and what I just said on a message board specifically geared for writers is totally wrong), but Iâ€™ve seen first hand the reluctance artists have when being â€œrecruitedâ€ to draw images for any story.


> In a business situation, it's easier in many ways to develop a working relationship between an artist and an author. Informally... well. Not so easy.


      So what if we as writers allowed ourselves to be recruited? I have found dozens of artists with incoherent series of characters, all related in some alternate universe in their heads with absolutely no medium to connect them with. Yes we would effectively be giving up control to work in another manâ€™s universe with a limited vision, but good writers (supposedly) can take anything and mold it into a great story.


> Anything published by a legitimate medium (Sofawolf Press, for example) seems to always get illustrated by one of the big names, like Blotch.


  Artists are commissioned to draw images of unfamiliar characters in unfamiliar worlds so why shouldnâ€™t we write the same? If you look at any independent artist who is solely, or even mostly dependent on income from their work, the bulk of their money is achieved through commissions as opposed to original prints. So why shouldnâ€™t we do the same?


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## Tanzenlicht (Apr 13, 2009)

The reason you, personally, might have trouble finding an artist to work with is that your writing just isn't very good.  Most artists who have been through the battery of English courses in the American school system are likely to feel they could manage something just as good.  As for ideas, ideas are a dime a dozen and that's what you pay for the good ones.  Artists have plenty of their own and even if they aren't writing them that doesn't mean they want some hack writer mucking about with their characters.

Normally how a comic works is that you get what you pay for.  Someone pays a writer for a script and then pays an illustrator to bring it to life.  Everyone gets money out of it.

A pure collaboration for the sake of it means that both parties have to feel like they are getting what they put into it, preferably more than they put into it.  So whoever is doing the soliciting is likely to attract a collaborator who produces work of lesser quality than they do.  Someone who will feel like they are getting a great deal in having your work as a part of theirs.

I went through my email and I had a four year hunt trying to find a writer to work with on a comic, because my art isn't that great.  It was even less great four years ago.  So I tended to find writers who produced writing that just wasn't that great either.  Writing that I felt was actually of lesser quality than my attempts (this is a subjective thing and clearly I'm a lady of grand and inflated ego) and often it seemed that the writer felt the same way and I was coopted into writing stages of the project.  Leaving me doing the majority of the collaborating and the writer just providing ideas. Remember what I said about ideas?

Eventually I lucked into someone who was interested in writing a script (rather than making a comic).  This meant that what he was getting in exchange for writing wasn't so much my art (not quite worth it) but a finished script and an idea of what an artist might do given such a script so that next time he can write a better one.

This also meant that he wasn't someone who had written a story and wished for me to transmogrify it into a comic for him.  A short story and a comic are entirely different things.  When you are writing a short story you are encouraged to focus on emotions, on what is heard, touched, tasted, smelled.  In a comic you have two things, you have the visual and you have dialogue and you better not have too much dialogue or no one will want to read all that and you'll lose the visuals under speech bubbles.  Stuff had better happen too.  You can have two guys talking in a room and make it into a fascinating short story, it's not gonna translate for comics.

Drawing a comic is a different thing from drawing a picture.  An artist thinks about layout and color theory and anatomy.  A comic artist has to do all of those things in each panel, then lay them out on the page and make sure they all make sense. Even if all they have to do is read the script and draw what it says it's a lot of work.  It's the difference between writing 'scroll rack' and drawing one.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 15, 2009)

> If you look at any independent artist who is solely, or even mostly dependent on income from their work, the bulk of their money is achieved through commissions as opposed to original prints. So why shouldnâ€™t we do the same?


Maybe, but I'd personally rather work on my own stuff in the little time I get to write fiction.
And writing is generally not as well received as art anyway.  I could write you a short story involving your characters, but what are you going to do with it?  You can't use it as an avatar for a website, you can't put it on the label of your home-brew, you can't blow it up and put it on a banner over your store window, etc.  People generally commission artwork because they have a need for a certain image.  While it's true that occasionally you'll get someone who just wants art for art's sake (maybe he just needs a more concrete picture of his character, or maybe he just likes to see how various artists portray the character or whatever), anyone who gets any significant amount of money from commissions will be doing it mostly for businesses or other folks who actually need to use the image for a concrete purpose.  And you just can't do that with a piece of writing (at least, not as easily), so it becomes more lucrative to just write original pieces and send them out to magazines or what have you.
Just a thought.  I don't know how accurate it is.


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