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

[yue_ix]

It officially is, but only slowly actually gets there. The very banner text is authors-only: "Write, damn you, write". The round before last, every chat notice, every call for WIPs, every general cheerleading threads - they were all only oriented at authors. I've pointed this out to the mods and, like you said, was told this was something the volunteers there would have to do, which I agree it is. For that reason, I think it's very important that all members of that comm are aware that there's artists in their midst, and that if artists aren't very present right now it's partly because a great deal of them took one look at the comm and saw it wasn't calling to them.

This is a vicious circle, but one that already got a lot better last round because friends and I got up and posted and poked people more. It made me feel like an arrogant and annoying twat to always have to say in chats "and artists!" whenever people talked of posting participants and only meant writers. But I think it helped a bit. This year, it'd be very nice if more people remembered by themselves or if others artists stepped up. That's also why I'm not really for having a different comm for artists and for writers. For one we share a lot of elements, and secondly a big part of the problem is the separation everyone makes and being invisible. Doing our own things in another place would help with neither of those things.

[scribblemoose]

I wonder whether the problem is compounded by the fact that artists typically start work later than writers, by necessity, and by that stage the writers have their support networks established, making it that much harder for artists to join in?

I agree, it's not the comm itself, and it's not a mod/organiser problem, it's up to us participants- perhaps some of the artists like yourself could organise some friending posts or chats around the time of the matches? That would be a good reminder for us writers, too, that there's a whole vital section of the community that is in danger of being ignored!