Paperlegends

[einahpets]

So if any of you don't know, paperlegends had their announcement post today!  Yay! 
I've met the best people through this event, seriously. 

Anyway I was looking through the schedule and I noticed artists now have to submit drafts.
This is actually pretty cool, cause it makes artists more involved. 
But I think there's probably more that would make it a little more involved/better for the artists.

Question for my writer friends and artists too!! --
As it's done now, drafts aren't due until after artist/author matchups happen. 
Before matchups, the 15K word counts are taken in faith.  I can't tell you how many of my artist friends got burned because the author didn't have the suggested amount, and ended up dropping out or the artists were not able to make art to the fullest of their abilities since time is shorter for artists.
I was wondering if submitting a minimum 15K rough draft before match-ups is something you think would benefit your Big Bang experience?
As an artist, I see it as more of a guarantee that you're serious about finishing and I have more confidence going into the anon matchups.  ALSO!  I have so much more material to work with and create beautiful art from.  And please tell me of a writer who doesn't want to see beautiful art?

Question for my artist friends --
How would you feel to have betas required for artists too? 
There are so many talented artists in fandom who would be more than happy to take a look at your in-progress work.
In the past year I started sharing my IP work with fellow Merlin artists and it makes a world of difference. 
Be it for anatomy, composition, perspective issues, coloring, the atmosphere in the piece, how to do a certain technique, etc. 
Having an online critique makes such a difference, and it created such a supportive community. 
It's like an art class, but for free, and on your time!!
Would you guys be interested/supportive of this?

I've already talked to a few friends, but I wanted to see if there were similar/different thoughts from my flist/the Merlin community.

Feel free to pass this along!

Comments

[itzcoatl.livejournal.com]

The other thing, as an artist, I find. Is that, if you're lucky, you may be able to see a basic plan for the whole story, and have a rough idea of what's going to go on in a scene before it's written.

But until it's actually written, you don't know what they're wearing, what time of day it is, what room/sort of scenery they're in, what emotion is really going on between them in that scene... (And often the author won't know this either, since they are conditional on other things which happen in the writing during the lead-up to that scene).

I think it would be lovely to have some time after the writing is completely finished to do some extra pictures, or just some tweaking to pictures you've already started...just to make it tie in really well with the written story.

I LOVE, (love, love), your idea of a support-com just for the artists. It would be nice to have a community just for the artists on something like this. So artists could go there and post the works in progress and get comments/con-crit, and a bit of positive feedback just to keep each other going and the enthusiasm up.

[reni-m.livejournal.com]

Details always are the tough one. Sometimes I'll have descriptions that are fabulous and then other times it's just hazy and I have to pick the writer's brain for more.

I think making a support com for artists is a fabulous idea.
But for PL I'm think it would be cool to set up a post just for artists in the paperpushers community.

[itzcoatl.livejournal.com]

I totally agree that one couldn't spring a major change like the time schedule one onto PL at this late stage. Maybe it's just something to think of for future events. (I didn't even think of these things until your post...and then I suddenly thought...well...in an ideal world....)

However an artists support group shouldn't impact or change anything. (So long as the artists agreed not to share any spoilers outside the group.) Then I would think it would be very easy to incorporate into this years BB.

[reni-m.livejournal.com]

Oh that's true, I forgot that unlike snippets from a story, you'd be able to see the whole piece of art. Even if it was a work in progress we don't want to tell the secret early.

[altocello.livejournal.com]

But until it's actually written, you don't know what they're wearing, what time of day it is, what room/sort of scenery they're in, what emotion is really going on between them in that scene... (And often the author won't know this either, since they are conditional on other things which happen in the writing during the lead-up to that scene).

THIS!!!! And I love your idea of letting the artist have a month after the fic is finished to illustrate the last half of it. :D

[itzcoatl.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's something that might be incorporated into future events. I can see how it's way too late in the day for this year. But it does make you wonder how it might be possible in future BBs...

[altocello.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's too late for this year, but it's a good idea for future events!

[yue_ix]

These are really good point. I think a lot of authors don't realise how tiny changes can add or nulify tons of work from their artists. Graphics and vids require days of searching for a fitting pre-existing source to edit, often outside of Merlin canon, and then incorporating it in the art coherently. An seemingly incongruous change in the final can mess with all that work. As far as I've been able to ask, it's rare that artists were able to read the whole of their designated story before it was posted. I've been informed that that is sorely the responsibility of the authors, but I think that formally encouraging all parties in a Big Bang to consider the other's deadline more (and saying why, like your comment) would go a long way.

If the artists could be guaranteed a couple of weeks or a month after their base was done, I do think we'd see more art done for the finale or overall of a story, and it'd give them more time to beta it. It'd also give them time to exchange with their author without fear of bothering them when they are rushing to their own deadline, and ore time to plan on how and where this collaborative effort would be posted.

For the support comm for artists, this is something friends and I have brainstormed about before, but I felt that it might accomplish more if art events were siply more held on the already existing support comm paperpushers. There's a lot of artists, authors, betas and cheerleaders issues that other people also working on the same big bang project don't know about. I don't think that a lot of authors even know that artists can have betas, so it's logical they wouldn't think of that when planning their schedule. If they could see that sort of post go up on the support comm though, they'd know for sure and be able to adjust their views. As an artist beta, I've needed time to review people's works, and as a cheerleader I had to be included in conversations from an earlier point than I would have imagined. Last year, I really enjoyed working with both the author and artist as a beta and cheer for both, but that required a lot of communication and gentle poking. It's not something I had even imagined before it came up in a conversation with the author, but it's something I think others might be interested in doing - sharing the same support group, if everyone is willing.

For us all, it could make us realise all sort of factors for other participants that we had never thought of because we've never been in that position.