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

[corilannam.livejournal.com]

I like the idea in theory, but for me it kind of depends on the specifics. Do you mean that writers have to have a complete rough draft by May 20th? Or that we have to give our artists the 15-20K that we're supposed to have by that point (which I think is already required)? Or that the match-ups should happen later?

I definitely understand why artists would want the full rough draft in hand before committing to a writer, and I would totally support that if the schedule could be adjusted to give both the writers and artists the full amount of time. But there's no way I'll have the whole thing done by May 20th, so if that were the case, I would have to decline an artist match-up altogether.

[gwyntastic.livejournal.com]

Just butting in here. It isn't required to have 15-20k before artist sign ups it's only encouraged. Which means an artist could get a 5k story in their inbox.

The really weird thing is all other bigbangs ask for rough drafts before artist matching. With just about the same time frame. Since it's only a super rough draft it doesn't have to be prefect it could have huge holes in it. It's just gotta hit the word count.

[corilannam.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with submitting the 15K!

[gwyntastic.livejournal.com]

That's because you are freaking AWESOME. Which we all knew already.

[reni-m.livejournal.com]

It's not shifting the schedule, it would just be an extra step for artist match ups. Writers wouldn't be required to have a complete story draft. It would be a confirmation to artists that the writers on the anon summery post have been confirmed to have 15K ready.

As Gwyn said above the 15K is only recommended, not a requirement.
I've talked to a few artists, who participated in the past, where their paired writer didn't meet the requested word count in time for match-ups and it wasn't an enjoyable experience.

Ahaha, I think the last thing an artist would like is less time to work on art. As a traditional artist, I can use all the time I can get. Especially since I like to make more than one piece, and it can get quite time consuming. So the schedule is good in terms of that, it would just be nice to have some confidence going in!

[corilannam.livejournal.com]

Submitting the 15K seems perfectly reasonable to me! I guess when I hear "rough draft," I automatically think of a completed (or very nearly completed) draft of the entire story.

But I don't have a problem with saying that only writers who actually have the 15K in hand already (and can prove it) can sign up for an artist. That seems fair to the artists, who don't know what they're jumping into. And it's good motivation to slower writers like me to make sure we keep on schedule.

[reni-m.livejournal.com]

I edited my wording so it was clearer (you can see why I am not a writer XD )!

Thank you so much for your adding to the discussion. As you said it would be a positive change for both writers and artists!