Collaboration

I get asked by a lot of different people 'how do you find an artist to draw your comic?' This is a real tricky subject, as I imagine most of reading this don't have a bunch of comic book artists on speed dial,  so I thought I would tackle this subject here. When I first decided I wanted to write comics I had no idea how to find someone to render my thoughts and I remember asking this very question to various creators at a small press show in London. I got a few different answers, but I'm going to go into the main the ones that I find most effective.

Firstly the one that has proven most fruitful and for me because this is where I found Marco and Voxie who is the artist on No Romance (a book written by me that will be published next year) is advertisement on various forums such as ZWOL. There are forums out there that are specifically designed for writers, artists and other comic creators to hook up. Now truth be told these sites tend to be dominated by writers looking for artists, as many an artist is under the impression they can write and some are right, some... not so much. So if you do go down this route make sure you're ad stands out, be specific about what you want from the artist in terms of art style and tone. Also make sure you make your project sounds exciting, believe me writing and exciting pitch that lures artists in is good practice for pitching to publishers later down the road. Finally be clear about what you're offering your artist. Many of the artists looking at these ads will expect to get paid, unfortunately that is not something I can afford to do and I aslo believe when you find the right artist they become the co-creator, so I offer a 50% share in the project.

The second way I tend to look for artists is on deviantart. This can be broken down into two main categories  firstly you can advertise on their forums and secondly you can browse though their comic art groups and contact artists you feel would suit your project. Now I have to say I've never had much luck on the deviantart side of things, but I know some writers swear by it.

Finally I also like to go on general comics forums such as 11 o'clock comics and once again you can either post an ad or look at some of the art threads and contact perspective artists. Again I've personally not had much luck with this, but do find the forums a great place to gain advice and get intrest in your project going.

So all in all I think what I've pointed out here is that when looking for an artist, the internet is your friend. The other thing I would point out is that you must be patient, you will get sent a lot of terrible artwork and it may take months to find the perfect artist. I had to put my ad up a bunch of times before I I found Marco, but look at how thats turned out.

Tony